cruisers, while blimps were used to search for attack submarines. Experience showed that there was a need for widespread use of aircraft which could not be met quickly enough by building new fleet aircraft carriers. This was particularly true in the North Atlantic, where convoys were highly vulnerable to U-boat attack. The British authorities used unorthodox, temporary, but effective means of giving air protection such as CAM ships and merchant aircraft carriers, merchant ships modified to carry a small number of aircraft. The solution to the problem were large numbers of mass-produced merchant hulls converted into escort aircraft carriers (also known as "jeep carriers"). These basic vessels, unsuited to fleet action by their capacity, speed and vulnerability, nevertheless provided air cover where it was needed. The Royal Navy had observed the impact of naval aviation and, obliged to prioritise their use of resources, abandoned battleships as the mainstay of the fleet. was therefore the last British battleship and her sisters were cancelled. The United States had already instigated a large construction programme (which was also cut short) but these large ships were mainly used as anti-aircraft batteries or for shore bombardment. Other actions involving naval aviation included: Battle of the Atlantic, aircraft carried by low-cost escort carriers were used for antisubmarine patrol, defense, and attack. At the start of the Pacific War in 1941, Japanese carrier-based aircraft sank many US warships during the attack on Pearl Harbor and land-based aircraft sank two large British warships. Engagements between Japanese and American naval fleets were then conducted largely or entirely by aircraft - examples include the battles of Coral Sea, Midway, Bismarck Sea and Philippine Sea. Battle of Leyte Gulf, with the first appearance of kamikazes, perhaps the largest naval battle in history. Japan's last carriers and pilots are deliberately sacrificed, a battleship is sunk by aircraft. Operation Ten-Go demonstrated U.S. air supremacy in the Pacific theater by this stage in the war and the vulnerability of surface ships without air cover to aerial attack. Post-war developments Jet aircraft were used on aircraft carriers after the War. The first jet landing on a carrier was made by Lt Cdr Eric "Winkle" Brown who landed on in the specially modified de Havilland Vampire LZ551/G on 3 December 1945. Following the introduction of angled flight decks, jets were regularly operating from carriers by the mid-1950s. An important development of the early 1950s was the