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I notice that only ONE person paid a bit of a tribute to the Corvettes, and NO ONE mentioned the Tribal clsss destroyers, either RN or RCN. With 27 ships in the Tribal class, they were the backbone of the anti-submarine protection forces for the trans Atlantic ship convoys. The Corvettes were the largest single ship clas ever built, with 237 in the RCN alone. The original design was as a long distance whaler, that could steam 12,000 miles from the UK to the antarctic.
As far as I know, there are only two examples of a Corvette and a Tribal still in existance, both in Canada. HMCS Sackvile is a National Historic Site, and she is in Halifax Nova Scotia, while HMCS Haida is in Hamilton , Ontario. Both are operated as tourist sites, by Parks Canada.
The Battle of the North Atlantic was the longest fight of the war, and none of those convoys would have seen the UK without their escorts. The RCN was the main escort force, and they became the premier anti submarine hunters of the period. The RCN came a long way in a short period of time, from 6 ships in 1939 to over 400 ships in 1945. In fact at the end of the war, the Canadian navy was the third largest in the world, after the USN and the RN. But it was a "small ship navy " with no battleships, or cruisers , just the workhorses of the flower and town class corvettes and the "flashy Tribals " who were usually the escort group commander's ship.
HMCS Haida had a lucky war, with lots of action, and she is still an interesting ship to tour. Served from 1943 to 1963 and then was retired to be a historic ship.
Jim Bunting . Toronto.
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