![]() With the end of that war, the experiments stopped, but the concepts lingered on, as is very well set out in “The Emergence of the Escort Carriers” by Scot MacDonald from the December 1962 issue of Naval Aviation News (available in pdf format here). Even then, the idea of smaller aircraft carriers had been kicked around by the Brits at the end of WWI with experiments involving converting light cruisers into aircraft carriers. ![]() Following up on a previous post in the Sunday Ship History series that looked at merchant ships that served as mini-aircraft carriers (while retaining their ability to carry cargo), it's time to look at those merchant hulls that were completely converted into pure aircraft carriers.albeit small, slow carriers, sometimes referred to as “jeep” carriers or “escort aircraft carriers.”Ĭontrary to history as dramatically in the movie “The Wings of Eagles,” the concept of escort carriers was not created by Frank “Spig” Wead (though he was an advocate of them)– but began with the British Navy capture of a German merchant vessel in the early days of World War II and the conversion of that ship into the escort carrier HMS Audacity.
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