Destroyer escort - Definition and Overview

A Destroyer Escort (DE) is a small, fast warship designed to be used to escort convoys of merchant marine ships. It is employed in anti-submarine warfare in this application.

Full size destroyers must be able to keep up with and exceed the speed of fast capital ships, typically needing better than 35 knot speeds and carrying torpedoes to use against enemy ships, as well as anti-submarine detection equipment and weapons.

A destroyer escort need only be able to maneuver relative to a slow convoy, which in World War II would travel at 10 to 12 knots, to defend itself against aircraft, and to detect, chase down and attack a submerged or surfaced submarine. These lower requirements greatly reduce the size, cost and crew required for the destroyer escort.

Like their larger sister ships, destroyer escorts have almost no armor.

Destroyer escorts are also useful for coastal anti-submarine and radar picket ship duty.

After World War II, United States Navy destroyer escorts evolved into ocean escorts, but retained the hull classification symbol DE. The 1975 ship reclassification changed ocean escorts to frigates (FF) to bring the USN's nomenclature into line with the rest of the world.

See also

• Modern Naval tactics.
• Frigate
• Destroyer
• Lists
  • List of destroyer escorts of the United States Navy
    • List of frigates of the United States Navy subset of above with hull numbers DE/FF 1037 and higher plus all DEG/FFGs because of the United States Navy 1975 ship reclassification
  • List of frigates
    • List of current frigates has template "This article should be merged with List of frigates"

References

• For an excellent book on the subject of a particular example of this type of ship (USS Abercrombie (DE-343)) in World War II see Little Ship, Big War: The Saga of DE-343 by Edward Peary Stafford. Naval Institute Press, 2000 ISBN 1557508909