The term "escort" applies to all kinds of vessels, and mention should be made of the contribution of "minesweeping sloops" and "half-coastal, half-ocean minesweepers", two types of vessels which made themselves very useful in both roles. The situation was a little confused, because there were still in service twenty-six Hunts, twin propeller boats built between 1917 and 1919, which ran on coal and whose nautical qualities suffered from a lack of forecastle. before. The 1930s saw the appearance of the Grimsby class (with dredging capability but more of a sloop class) and the important Halcyon class (ocean minesweepers with the speed and firepower of corvettes , but considered expensive). When war broke out, the decision to reduce the size of the Halcyons to meet the demands of mass production gave rise to the Bangor class. These brave little 650 t ships were terribly short of space, their dimensions having been calculated above all according to the needs of the crew; they were powered by diesel engines, steam turbines or reciprocating steam engines. One hundred and thirteen units were built in total, in Great Britain, Canada and even Hong Kong. HMS Bengal, an Indian ship of the latter group, was escorting the Dutch tanker Ondina in the Indian Ocean in November 1942 when it was attacked by two Japanese surface ships. The Allied ships deployed between them only a "12" piece and a 101.6 mm gun, and yet they succeeded not only in repelling their opponents, who had 152.4 mm guns, but also in sinking one of them, the Hokoku Maru.
Magnetic minesweeping, which involved the installation of large generators and electrical cable devices on the Bangors that were already enough to encumber the dredgers classics, led to the production of an improved variant of the Halcyon, the Algerine class.
Features
Algerine class (in minesweeper configuration)
Displacement :850 t standard, 970 t fully loaded.
Dimensions:
length , 70.10 m;
width , 10.80 m;
draft , 2.90 m.
Engine apparatus :2 geared steam turbines or 2 triple expansion steam engines developing 2,000 hp and driving 2 shafts.
Speed :16.5 knots.
Equipment :1 mixed gun of 101.6 mm, between 4 and 8 AA guns of 20 mm and more than 90 ASM grenades.
Crew :105 officers and sailors.