Pinned post for Q&A :)

Naval treaties were like the tax code, no sooner were they signed and everyone shook hands, teams of experts were tasked with how to creatively beat their provisions!

"If you would like further ..."  YES

It's fun to know that even back then everyone liked a good cutaway drawing of what goes on inside ships

I love how Drach always includes all the background influences of these ships, such as logistics and geopolitics.

I don't envy those who flew in Swordfish on the arctic routes.

Sad that not a single Escort carrier survived to become a museum

Last time anyone was this early, a Russian Admiral was throwing binoculars at the Kamchatka

20:17: I wish someone in the USN had been holding designers this accountable in the last 15-20 years. "You're not supposed to be building a miniature Arleigh-Burke. You're supposed to be building a cheap-ish frigate."

If you have seen the 1970s Dirty Harry movie "Magnum Force," there is a scene toward the end where Harry Callahan and a rogue police officer are engaged in a chase across the decks of aircraft carriers jumping from ship to ship on motorcycles. They were two Commencement Bay class CVEs, Badoeng Strait (CVE-116) and Rabaul (CVE-121), that had been in the Reserve Fleet and were scrapped not long afterward. A third CVE was visible in the background.

The `Battle Carrier` - `Hey, we`ve got Big Guns AND a Patio!`.

As a young boy, I saw maybe a dozen or more of these carriers strung up together somewhere in the Boston harbor. It must have been in the late 50's. It was an amazing sight.

Fascinating.
Definitely would appreciate an Escort Carrier combat deep dive.

My Father Kenneth McLaughlin served on CVE-73 USS Gambier Bay.

Because of CVEs doing aircraft ferry duty, aircraft repair that had been done aboard the fleet carriers early in the war progressed to damaged planes being repaired on shore bases, from which replacements (that had been repaired or ferried there) came, to simply pushing damaged planes overboard with replacements coming directly from CVEs.

It’s truly is a crying shame that no CVE’s were preserved as museums.

If you ever make it to Portland Oregon I can take you out on my boat and show you what remains of the Kieser shipyard where the CVE were built. The slips are still there. The St. Lo was built in Vancouver Washington and my grandmother's first husband died on the ship when it was sunk. There is also the Blue Back in Portland, USS Dalas from the movie Hunt for Red October.

Those fellows launching from the catapults were quite the madlads.

Famous Test pilot Winkle brown served aboard Audacity, his biography is really well written if you want to learn more about her.

I for one would be very interested in hearing more about the exploits of the various escort carriers.