Stopgap Measures: The Corvette Priorto the beginning of World War II , the Royal Navy rea li zed the inadequacy of their anti-submarine convoy escort force. With all of their large yards committed to rebu il ding their fl eet, they settled on a design based on a whalecatcher which co uld be built quickly in many of the sma ll com mercial shipyard s around the country. Designated Flower Class corvettes, each vesse l carri ed a flower name which was unique to Roya l Navy ships and avo ided confusion or mi sidentification . The first 26 were ordered in Jul y 1939. Three weeks after war broke out, the order was up to 86. By April of 1940, 136 had been ordered. Canada began building another 130 corvettes as we ll . HMS Gladiolus was the first Flower comp leted in April 1940 and the first to sink a U-boat, U-26, just three months later. When the US entered the war it did not possess anything like the Flower class corvette. Sixteen British corvettes were transferred to the US to help out. Shown in the picture at left is the Canadian built HMCS Snowherry, whi ch sank U-536 in November 1943. The problem with corvettes was that their top speed of 16 knots was slower than a surfaced U-boat at 18 to 2 1 knots. Despite their handicaps, Flower Class corvettes sank more than 50 U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Responding to the Peril Soon after the outbreak of war in 1939, the Royal Navy found that more drastic meas ures were needed to provide additional anti-submarine ships to escort the convoys. As a result, almost all of Britain 's First World War destroyers were converted to long-range or short-range escorts. The photograph at ri ght shows one of the most ex pedient conv ersion types, HMS Wolverine, converted to a short-range escort by the remova l of some of her main armament and the addition of improved ASW weapons. Wolverine sank a U-boat while escorting a Gibraltar convoy in August 1942. As the tem po of the sea war escalated, the loss of British destroyers and escorts increased. So desperate was the situation that 50 old US World War I destroyers were traded to Britain for a number of valuable bases in the Western hemisphere. Shown in thi s picture is HMS Roxhorough, formerly USS Foote , repainted into Royal Navy camou fl age scheme and with three of her fo ur main gun s removed.
Sailboats Against Submarines One of the oddest examples of the inadeq uate state of America's an ti -submarine preparedness, as Uboats began to attack our shores in early 1942, was the formation of the Coastal Pi cket Patrol. Thousands of civi li an powerboats were manned by members of the Coast Guard's Temporary Rese rve and used to patrol in shore waters. An offshore patrol was fo rmed using wooden sailing vesse ls painted grey and armed with li ght machine gun s. These vesse ls were sent out on two week patrols up to 200 miles offshore. Since U-boats had to run their engines on the surface for at least seven hours a ni ght to recharge their batteries, it was believed that sa ilboats could silentl y look and li sten fo r the intruders and rad io their pos itions into Eastern Sea Frontier Command so that air attacks co uld be carri ed out and convoys diverted. These seaworthy little boats were often donated by their owners and crewed by a motley co llection of hearty yachtsmen, blue water adventurers and Coast Guard volunteers. One U-boat actuall y turned back from the American coastline without ever firing a torpedo after finding hi s position constantl y comprom ised by this unlikely adversary. Fortunately for the pi cket crews, the U-boats did not fee l that the destruction of wooden sailing vessels was worth wasting a torpedo.
SEA HI STORY 66, SUMMER 1993