New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

[Colin Parkinson]

I am not convinced the battleships production was halted because they wanted to build more frigates and destroyers, but more because they realized almost right away that battleships were not the top dog anymore and rather just big targets with no benefits. They did continue and increased the production of aircraft carriers, for instance.

BTW, the corvettes developed the tactics for convoy escort function (raspberry and half-raspberry), but none related to the work of hunter-killer groups. Those came mostly from the brilliant mind of Capt Johnny Walker, a RN long serving regular.

They were halted because it was clear they would not be ready in time to take part in hostilities, with delays in every aspect, because all the sub contractors making ship components were carrying full order books. They would have very much liked to have another 4 modern Battleships (Which would also allow them to layup the remaining Revenge class that were obsolete at the beginning of WWII. You note that Vanguard carried older turrets and guns to speed up commissioning.

 

[oldcpu]

Possibly this 'trip down memory lane' on the shipbuilding of the DDH-280s has been posted before? ... I don't know. I just stumbled across it today and found it most interesting. A lot of what was being done at the time (gas turbine engines, two helicopter hanger with RAST (bear trap)) were all pretty innovative, compared to what other navies had.

But if not read before - it could be of interest - especially some of the deliberations and how the design changed ...

The article starts on page-6 of this June-1998 Maritime Engineering Journal.

https://www.cntha.ca/static/documents/mej/mej-44.pdf