The destroyer escort (DE) was one of the most important warships produced by American industry during World War II. Smaller and cheaper to build than fleet destroyers, destroyer escorts were designed specifically for convoy protection against the U-boat threat that was sinking Allied merchant ships at an alarming rate through 1942 and into 1943. Armed with hedgehog ahead-thrown weapons, depth charges, and sonar, they were exactly the tools needed to hunt submarines protecting the supply lines that kept Britain and the Soviet Union in the fight. The May 1943 Bureau of Naval Personnel Information Bulletin — the publication later renamed All Hands — announced the ambitious plan to construct 800 destroyer escorts, a figure that reflected both the scale of the threat and the extraordinary capacity of American wartime shipbuilding.
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