Casablanca Class Escort Carrier

Casablanca Class Escort Carrier

The Casablanca class escort aircraft carriers are the most numerous class of aircraft carriers ever built. Fifty were laid down, launched and commissioned within the space of less than two years - 3 November 1942 through to 8 July 1944. These were nearly one third of the 151 carriers built in the United States during the war. Despite their numbers, and the preservation of more famous and larger carriers as museums, none of these modest ships survived until today. Five were lost to enemy action during World War II and the remainder were scrapped.

The first class to be designed from keel up as an escort carrier, the Casablanca class had a larger and more useful hangar deck than previous conversions. It also had a larger flight deck than the Bogue class. Unlike larger carriers which had extensive armor, protection was limited to splinter plating.

Casablanca class carriers were built by Kaiser Company, Inc.'s Shipbuilding Division, Vancouver Yard on the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington. The Vancouver yard was expressly built in 1942 to construct Liberty Ships, but exigencies of war soon saw the yard building LST landing craft and then Escort Aircraft Carriers all before the end of the yard's first year in operation. The yard had twelve building ways and an enormous 3,000 foot outfitting dock along with a unique additional building slip originally intended to add prefabricated superstructures to Liberty ships. Their small size made them useful for transporting assembled aircraft of various sizes, but combat fighters were usually smaller and lighter models such as the Wildcat. The hull numbers were assigned consecutively, from CVE-55 (Casablanca) to CVE-104 (Munda).