Atlantic Escorts: Ships, Weapons & Tactics in World War II by David Brown

Author:David Brown [Brown, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781783469017
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Published: 2007-11-15T08:00:00+00:00

Black Swan with pom-pom on the quarterdeck.

Sloop design was now in the hands of some outstanding constructors, led by Victor Shepheard (later Sir, DNC), with Ivor King (Director of Dockyards), followed by Rowland Baker (Sir, Dreadnought Project Team) as assistants. With Grimsby, the weight and stability problems of the early classes were finally overcome and the weighed weights of Enchantress were ‘fantastically accurate (for which I take all credit.)’.2

Fin stabilisers were a personal enthusiasm of the new DNC, Stanley Goodall, who was to tell the RAN that they were wasting their money if they built an unstabilised sloop.3 Control theory was in its infancy and it was easy for the fins to make things worse; there are delightful stories of Bittern rolling heavily in a calm sea. When they were set up by experts for a trial, the results were favourable but in less skilled hands they helped little and many thought that the space they occupied would be more use as fuel tanks.

Bittern was followed by three ships of the Egret class with four twin 4in AA, although with only one HA director control tower (DCT) they could only engage a single target.4 The first two ships of the Black Swan class were ordered under the 1937 programme and two more under the 1939 programme (with four for India). Initially, these two ships were fitted for wire minesweeping (Black Swan was fitted for minelaying). Another four were ordered under the 1940 programme, including Whimbrel, the last of these classes to survive, as the Egyptian Tariq. They were a little bigger than the Egrets, differing mainly in that the quarterdeck twin 4in gun was replaced by a four-barrel pom-pom. Some Black Swans were fitted with Hedgehog by October 1945.5

Later ships had the beam increased to 38ft 6in and other changes, becoming the Modified Black Swan class. Further ships were ordered: fourteen under the 1940 Supplementary Estimates, eleven under 1941 (two cancelled) and three in 1944 (39ft 6in beam – all cancelled). The original design had a close-range AA armament of a four-barrel pom-pom on the quarterdeck and quadruple 0.5in machine guns sited abaft the funnel. These were replaced by single Oerlikons, fitted on build in later ships. Single Oerlikons were fitted in the bridge wings in all ships as they became available, and replaced at the end of the war by single Bofors. When the first ships of the ‘Modified’ class completed, light AA guns were still scarce and they received what was available. At least three ships had four-barrel pom-poms sited amidships, while others had twin power-operated Oerlikons. Eventually, most had two twin Bofors amidships, two twin Oerlikons on the quarterdeck and single Oerlikons on the bridge wings.

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