The Bogue class were a class of 45 escort carriers built in the United States for service with the US Navy and the Royal Navy, through the Lend-Lease program, during World War II. Following the war, ten Bogue-class ships were kept in service by the US Navy and were reclassified for helicopter and aircraft transport operations. The first 22 ships of the class were converted from finished, or near finished, Maritime Commission C3-S-A1 and C3-S-A2 ships, with 11 retained by the US Navy, and the other 11 transferring to the Royal Navy, where they were renamed and grouped as the . was the last of the USN ships built and comprised all of the lessons learned in the earlier ships, sometimes it is referred to as its own subclass of the Bogue class. The remaining 23 ships were built from the keel up on C3-class designs and classified as , or the Ameer-class. Following the war, those ships that served with the Royal Navy were returned to the United States and were either scrapped or converted for mercantile use. Construction and design The Bogue-class escort carriers were based on the Maritime Commission's Type C3 cargo ships hull. They all were named for sounds. All of the ships for the US Navy and half of the ships for the Royal Navy were built by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation, some of the early Royal Navy ships were produced by Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Western Pipe and Steel Company of San Francisco, California. Specifications The Bogue class displaced at standard load and at full load. The ships had a waterline length of with an overall length of . Their beam was at the waterline with a maximum beam of . The draft was at full load and at light load. Propulsion and power The previous and s had suffered from reliability issues with their diesel engines so it was decided that the Bogues would use two water-tube boilers, built by Foster-Wheeler, feeding steam to an Allis-Chalmers steam turbine engine connected to a single shaft. This produced , which could propel the ship at . They could sail at . Aircraft facilities The Bogue class had the capacity for up to 24 anti-submarine or fighter aircraft, which could be a mixture of the Grumman Wildcat, Vought F4U Corsair and Grumman Avenger. The exact composition of the embarked squadrons depended upon the mission.