XBradTC

The US Navy has always had a bias against small combatant ships. The long distances of the Atlantic, and especially the vastness of the Pacific meant US ships tended to be larger than those of, say, the Royal Navy, or the Imperial Japanese Navy for a given class. Larger ships tend to have greater endurance.

With the advent of World War II, Congress passed the Two Ocean Navy Act of 1940, authorizing an immense budget for an incredible number of new warships. Battleships, carriers, cruisers, and of course, destroyers, were order by the dozens, and even hundreds.

Well aware of the threat of German U-Boats to the trans-Atlantic shipping routes, the US Navy planned carefully to work with their British and Canadian naval counterparts to join in the convoy work to get materiel and commodities to England.

But the disastrous entry of the US into World War II found the US Navy facing another problem, one it was not well equipped to address.

The Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy, with some help from the USN, had the U-Boat situation in the North Atlantic reasonably well in hand. The battle was not won, not by a long shot, but losses, while high, were sustainable, particularly with new US shipping, such as the Liberty ships, beginning to become available.

But the eastern seaboard of the United States was wholly unprotected, and the enormous volume of shipping up and down the coast, and to the Caribbean, was soon the target of large numbers of German U-Boats. The slaughter of Allied shipping in those waters was so bad, the German sailors called it “The Happy Time” where targets were plentiful, and the threat to themselves virtually non-existent.

The US Navy simply didn’t have enough destroyers to escort convoys along the seaboard. And there were finite limits to how many destroyers the Navy could build. And what destroyers were being built were badly needed in both the North Atlantic, and in the Pacific fleet.

Eventually the Destroyer Escort program would build hundreds of capable, seagoing long range escorts, and be a key to winning the Battle of the Atlantic. But that was a long way off. The DE program wouldn’t really hit its stride until the end of 1943. The US couldn’t afford to wait two years for the DEs.

And so, the Navy was forced to turn to alternatives. First, expedient methods were used. Yachts, fishing vessels, tugboats and virtually anything that could float were pressed into service as patrol craft.

Secondly, the Navy began a building program of two small classes of combatants that were known as Subchasers. The first was a virtual repeat of a 110’ design from World War I.  Known as the SC, these ships were wooden hulled, diesel powered, quite slow with a maximum speed of around 15 knots, and lightly armed. The main battery was the ancient and not very effective 3”/23 gun.  A couple of 20mm anti-aircraft cannon were also mounted.  Depth charges were mounted on rails on the fantail.  Forward, the ships were fitted with four rails for “Mousetrap” a rocket fired version of the Hedgehog anti-submarine weapon projector. The ships were fitted with the reasonably effective (for its day) AF sonar system. A crew of three officers and 27 enlisted sailors manned each ship. Endurance was about 1500 nautical miles at 12 knots cruising speed.

Since the ships were small, and didn’t use much in the way of strategic materials like steel, they could be built in dozens of smaller yards that would be unsuitable for larger combatants.  Contracts were quickly in place, and eventually over 400 of the SC-497 class would be built between 1941 and 1944.

By mid-1942, hundreds of SCs were in service, and most were upgraded by replacing the 3”/23 gun with a single unpowered (Army style) 40mm mount, and adding a third 20mm gun, radar, and updating the depth charges and adding a K-gun depth charge thrower on each side.

The other small combatant the Navy bought, also a subchaser, and with hull numbers in the same sequence, was the larger, faster, 173’ PC-461 class.

The PC-461s were steel hulled, with twin diesel engines, and a top speed of roughly 20 knots. Armament originally consisted of two 3”/50 guns, Mousetrap, 2-4 20mm mounts, and depth charges. They were similarly equipped with sonar and radar. Over the course of the war, many PCs swapped one or both 3”/50 for a 40mm mount. Crew was 5 officers, and 60 enlisted sailors.  The twin 2000hp diesels gave an endurance of about 3000nm at 12 knots. Again, because of their relatively small size, the ships could be built in yards not suitable for larger combatants, and during the war some 343 would be delivered.

The PCs and SCs were effective little escorts. While not terribly comfortable in any but the most benign weather, they were quite seaworthy ships. And they provided invaluable escort services along the eastern seaboard, and throughout the Caribbean.

In  fact, they would go on to serve in every theater and virtually every major campaign throughout the war. They were especially handy as escorts for the  huge fleets of small amphibious craft such as LCIs, LCTs, and LSTs. Their shallow draft and good maneuverability saw them used extensively as control boats during amphibious assaults. Some were converted to this specific mission, though many did the mission with little or no modification. Other PCs were converted to gunboats to interdict Japanese supply barges in the Southwest Pacific region.

Virtually all the officers, and most of the enlisted crews, were from the Volunteer Reserves, and had little or no experience with the sea prior to joining the Navy after Pearl Harbor. A training center at Miami took men from Boot Camp and gave them an intense 2 month course of instruction and practical exercises, and sent them to the fleet.

Probably the best description of the contribution these small ships made was “Subchaser” by noted author Edward P. Stafford, better known for his history of the USS Enterprise (CV-6).

Interestingly, for all the combat these hardy little ships saw, what the subchasers didn’t do in any great numbers was sink submarines. Only one PC was credited with sinking a U-Boat, and no SCs scored a confirmed kill.

As the war went on, and the US Navy finally began to have sufficient escorts on hand, many of the SCs and PCs were transferred to friendly navies, such as France, Brazil, Russia, and Norway.

After the war, most were very quickly disposed of, and either scrapped, or transferred to other nations.

Incredibly, one of the SCs transferred to Norway during the war is still in service as a museum ship, and regularly conducts port visits throughout Norway during the summer months.