Ruler-class escort carrier
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English
Template:Infobox ship imageTemplate:Infobox ship class overviewTemplate:Infobox ship characteristicsThe Ruler class of escort aircraft carriers served with the Royal Navy during the Second World War. All twenty-three ships were built by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation in the United States as Template:Sclass escort carriers, supplied under Lend-Lease to the United Kingdom.[1] They were the most numerous single class of aircraft carriers in service with the Royal Navy.[2]
As built they were intended for three types of operations, "Assault" or strike, convoy escort, or aircraft ferry.[3]
After the Second World War some of the escort carriers were scrapped, while others had their flight decks removed and were converted to merchant ships (and all eventually scrapped by the 1970s).
Design and description
These ships were all larger and had greater aircraft capacity than all preceding American built escort carriers. They were laid down as escort carriers and were not converted merchant ships.[4] All the ships had a complement of 646 men and an overall length of Template:Convert, a beam of Template:Convert and a draught of Template:Convert.[4] Propulsion was provided by one shaft, two boilers and a steam turbine giving Template:Convert, which could propel the ship at Template:Convert.[5]
Aircraft facilities were a small combined bridge–flight control on the starboard side, two aircraft Template:Convert lifts, one aircraft catapult and nine arrestor wires.[4] Aircraft could be housed in the Template:Convert hangar below the flight deck.[4] Armament comprised: two [[4"/50 caliber gun|Template:Convert/50-calibre]] dual purpose guns in single mounts, sixteen [[Bofors 40 mm Automatic Gun L/60|Template:Cvt Bofors]] anti-aircraft guns in twin mounts and twenty [[Oerlikon 20 mm cannon|Template:Cvt Oerlikon]] anti-aircraft cannon in single mounts.[4] They had a maximum capacity for twenty-four carrier-based aircraft which could be a mixture of Grumman Martlet, an American carrier-based fighter aircraft, or Vought F4U Corsair, another type of American carrier-based fighter aircraft, or Hawker Sea Hurricane fighter aircraft (a navalised Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft), and Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber, or Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber / anti-submarine aircraft.[4]
Ships
First group
- Template:HMS
- Template:HMS (crewed by the Royal Canadian Navy)
- Template:HMS
- Template:HMS
- Template:HMS X
- Template:HMS XX
- Template:HMS
- Template:HMS X
Second group
- Template:HMS
- Template:HMS XX
- Template:HMS X
- Template:HMS X
- Template:HMS XX
- Template:HMS
- Template:HMS X
- Template:HMS X (crewed by the Royal Canadian Navy) (torpedoed 22 August 1944, by U-354 west of the North Cape)[6][7]
- Template:HMS X
- Template:HMS X
- Template:HMS
- Template:HMS
- Template:HMS XX
- Template:HMS X
- Template:HMS (torpedoed 15 January 1945, by U-1172 in the Clyde estuary).[6][8]
- X = Fitted for anti-submarine warfare.[4]
- XX = Fitted for strike-operations.[4]
- All the others were mainly used for aircraft transport with an added strike capability.[4]
Notes
Bibliography
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