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During the Second World War the Royal Navy received a large number of American warships, first under the ‘destroyers for bases’ deal and then under lend-lease. This book focuses on the destroyers and frigates, vital convoy escort vessels that helped fill a gap before British wartime production plans began to bear fruit, and later helped bulk out the escort forces.
A nice touch is that we start with a look at the development of the US ‘flushdeck’ destroyers that would end up in British hands, so we see them when they were new ships, largely produced to fight in the First World War and the best destroyers in US service. This makes a nice change to those books that start with them as outdated designs by the standards of 1939-40. A brief look at the British destroyer force of 1939 also points out that half of the existing Royal Naval destroyers at that date were of similar age to the American ‘flushdeckers’. This first chapter also looks at the more extensive modifications made so some of these ships - three that were turned onto long-range escorts. These fifty destroyers were followed by a large number of smaller escorts – Destroyer Escorts in the US Navy, Frigates in the Royal Navy. Unlike the destroyers these didn’t require many changes in British hands, and 78 of them were provided in 1943-44.
We then look at the modifications carried out in the ‘flushdeck’ destroyers, before they could enter British service as Town Class Destroyers. We see how this was split into essential ‘Phase 1’ and desired ‘Phase 2’ modifications, with phase 1 including basic structural work, a reduction in top-weight and an increase in their anti-submarine capabilities. Phase 2 focused on the fighting abilities, but didn’t happen to all of the Town class ships. This was often an extensive list of changes, somewhat delaying the entry into service of many of these ships.
The Deployment section looks at how the American ships were used. We see the Town class destroyers mainly being split between the Rosyth Escort Force in the North Sea, Western Approaches Command for the Atlantic (further split into sections for different parts of the ocean) and the 1st Minelaying Squadron, where they protected minelayers operating on the Northern Barrage (from the north of Scotland to Iceland). The Town class destroyers tended to have fairly short active lives in British service, with most leaving front line duties in 1943, just as the Captain class frigates were entering service. We get a list of where these were initially deployed, with most going to ten Escort Groups for the Atlantic and the rest to the Nore, Portsmouth and Gosport Commands. These later ships were used to support the D-Day landings, taking them away from their better known use as escorts.
The Capability chapter looks at how effective these ships actually were as escort vessels. We start with a look at the types of Asdic installed, the standard British depth charge and the Hedgehog, which was carried on the friages but not the destroyers.
Life on Board brings us to the daily live of the sailors on these ships. Here the age of the Town class destroyers really shows, with them being largely hated by their crews, and suffering from endless mechanical and electrical problems, and with their design meaning they were very ‘wet’ boats. Twenty years of design improvements, combined with their new construction, made the Captain class frigates very popular with their crews. Accomodation on the Town class destroyers was far worse than on contemporary RN destroyers, but that on the Captain class was superior to it. We thus see how the use of bunk beds instead of hammocks, cafeteria style messing and even ice-cream makers, made daily life on these frigates far more comfortable than on the older destroyers (and massively better than on the small corvettes produced in large numbers in Britain).
The Escorts in Action chapter picks two of these ships – the Town class destroyer HMS Stanley and the Captain class frigate HMS Bentinck. We follow the Stanley during her final convoy battle in December 1941, where she helped sink U-131, but was soon afterwards sunk herself, with the loss of all but 25 of her crew. This shows that these elderly destroyers could still be a dangerous weapon. The Bentinck’s example combat came in very different circumstances in January 1945, but also ended with a U-1051 being sunk. In both cases we see these ships operating as part of larger escort groups, making the point that submarine hunting was often a team effort.
We finish with the technical materials, starting with tables showing all of these ships, their construction details, when they were commissioned into the Royal Naval and their eventual fate. This shows how dangerous their role was, with a surprising number of the frigates lost in action.
This is a useful overview of these two types of warships, showing just how more effective the modern frigates were than the two decade old destroyers, and making it clear that this was as much because of the better design of the frigates as their age.
Chapters
Introduction
Design and Development
Royal Navy Employment
Capabilities
Life on Board
Escorts in Action
The Ships
Specifications
Author: Angus Konstam
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 50
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2024