.PNG)
Captain Class Destroyer Escorts.
With the signing of the Lend/Lease documents, Britain went shopping for its most
needed ships. Convoy escorts. The US yards had several designs that would
satisfy the RN's needs, but they were armed with US pattern weapons that would
have been incompatible with current RN munitions stocks. So the favourite design
was altered to include RN weaponry. The original 1940 design as ordered had two
single 4" DP mountings forward, one twin 4" DP mounting aft, one quad 2pd pom
pom, and six single 20mm AA guns. A set of twin 21" torpedo tubes gave the ships
some teeth against larger enemies. The armament was a blend of the Hunt class
and River class escorts. The speed was kept to 24 knots as being fast enough to
catch up with U-boats and also fast enough to allow the ships to be able to hunt
a submerged U-boat and then be able to rejoin the convoy it was escorting.
The armament was altered in 1942 as the first ships were due for completion. The advent of the Hedgehog spigot mortar was a step forward in anti-submarine warfare weapons and one was mounted forward replacing the 'A' 4" mounting. While this reduced the 4" to 3 guns, it was felt that the single gun forward would be enough to handle any surfaced U-Boat.