Town-class destroyers - Guide 399
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- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- The Town class destroyers, old Wickes, Clemson and Cadwell class vesseld of the US Navy, transferred to the British Royal Navy and others, are today's subject.
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Pinned post for Q&A :)
How long did it take for them to come into service with the RN, and did they manage to get them all refurbished?
Which major navy was the last to put electromechanical fire control computers into service?
France had before the start of the European theatre of WW2 a massive building program of capital ships. The two Dunkerque-class, the four Richelieu-class, the two planned Alsace- class and the two planned Joffre-classes. But what was the plan if they had built all of them? Where would they be stationed, what ships would they replace if any, and how would friend and foe respond?
@@cmck472 iirc, from "Fifty Ships That Saved The World", it took until spring of 41 to get them into service. Luckily, for the UK, the Germans were critically short of U-Boats over that same period. By the time the U-Boat fleet had been rebuild, the Towns were in service.
during the time period that the US Navy is being strangled by Congress, is there any particular incidents where Congress's attempts at penny-pinching backfire? ie: they end up spending even more on the supposed cheaper option then if they'd just sucked it up and paid for the more expensive option upfront.
A Dinosaur Necromancer…
These bits of gold are Why i love Drach so much😂
Sounds like a new DnD class
HMS Necromancer. That would have been a awesome name.
@@abnurtharn2927 It would have the Rush song Necromancer as its walk-on music.
That was the perfect picture for him too. Looks like he's in the middle of casting an incantation with his magic staff topped by an amber amulet of power.
Did you hear him say ---- A Dinosaur Necromancer…
These bits of gold are Why i love Drach so much
One Man's Rusty Boat, is Another Mans Rusty Convoy Escort
Plus one rusty boat that some mad lad decided to turned it into one giant bomb
A rusty convoy escort is a lot better than a virtual one!
For all the unloving critique the flushdeckers received, people have lost sight of something important. Flushdeckers were there and (more or less) available when other more capable designs were not. They did a lot of ungrateful work. Hats off to their crews for their bravery.
Also, they were already 20+ years old, and by rights the whole lot of them were probably just about ready to be scrapped when WWII began... yet they, as you said, thanklessly held the line until much newer, much more capable ships could take over, at which point they were unceremoniously cast off and thrown away. We should all raise a glass in memory of these plucky little ships!
🍺
“Dinosaur necromancer” well….that’s one way of putting it 🤣
RCN destroyers are traditionally named after rivers. To acknowledge their American heritage, the RCN gave them names of rivers that either both countries share, or of rivers in both countries that shared the same name: HMCS Annapolis, Columbia, Niagara, St. Clair, St. Croix, St. Francis
That's super neat! :O
The British also preferred town names common to the US and UK, like Broadway, Campbelltown, Chesterfield, and Reading
Was it really stingy? Consider the following quote:
_The United States Navy, with characteristic generosity, handed them over well stored, to the pleasure of the British crews:_
_Every square inch of storage space was crammed with a variety of provisions which were now only a memory in England. Accommodations and fittings were also of a nature unknown... There were bunks in the mess decks instead of hammocks; there were typewriters, radios, coffee-making machines._
Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars, 1916-1945 by John Terraine
I think he's quoting in part:
The Far Distant Ships : An Official Account of Canadian Naval Operations in the Second World War by Joseph Schull.
My guess is that the politicians were as stingy as possible when writing up the trade deal, but the US Navy were generous when making the transfer by throwing in a few extras from their regular consumables budget.
One of the best ways to reuse old ships ever
A number of them had half the boiler plant removed and their fuel bunkerage increased to give much longer range and endurance at the expense of top speed, similar to what was done with some of the old RN V and W classes.
"And additionally, various elements of their design, ones that optimized them for high-speed battle line and fast attack rolls...."
I heard "fast attack rolls" and envisioned them doing _Dark Souls_ style rolls for I-frames against incoming fire.
The secret battle tech of the USS Johnston
My father served on one of these in the Pacific. The USS Tracy (DM-19) laid mines, cleared mines and ran drums of avgas to Guadalcanal. Not glamorous stuff but useful, nonetheless.
It's astonishing how incredibly useful those old ships turned out to be - how many different ways they could be used to support the war effort in order to free up newer destroyers for front line combat work.
I find that 'glamour' and 'usefulness' are often diametrically-opposed qualities...
Trade offer: You get 50 old destroyers, I get few Islands and land
Well, given what he says in the video that all the basses were close to us, Britain still came out ahead, since we only used two of the bases past the 80s, and even then they were still used to help the UK anyway.
worth
@@colbypupgaming1962it wasn't about the bases, it was all about making the donation of 50 old ships politically acceptable to a country desperate for virtually anything in a fight against Narional Socialism and Facisism.
In the end, even when the agreement was for giving away things for free to fight Nazis, the US still asked back so much money the UK was bankrupt for decades.
@@rob5944 correct, FDR had to make the deal palatable for Congress, by the US gaining something for the ships. In a transatlantic telephone call, the parties were trying to work out a deal. At one point Churchill said "Empires don't bargain". iirc, it was the US Secretary of State who replied "but republics do". This story was also relayed in "Fifty Ships That Saved The World".
A good war movie about these old American destroyers and their British crews is the 1952 film "The Gift Horse". Extremely well told story.
Last time I was this early, there were no treaty restrictions yet!
USS Ward (DD139), credited with firing the first shot in anger by the USN inWW2 (if you don't count what went on in China) was a Wickes class "thousand tonnner" on patrol outside Pearl Harbor in December '41.
She made a hole in a miniature sub's conning tower that was not part of the IJN's design. IIRC, the Caldwells, Wickes, and Clemsons displaced around 1200 tons. They were somewhat similar in size, speed, and armament to the V and W class destroyers the RN was pulling out of reserve. The four-pipers were less capable than more modern classes, even before the Fletchers came into commission, but the USN found them too good to scrap out of hand. So quite a few were converted into auxiliaries such as fast transports and mine sweepers.
@@petestorz172 The Caine Mutiny anyone?
The deck gun that fired that shot is now displayed on the capital grounds in St. Paul, Minnesota. The crew of the Ward at the time of the attack were mostly made up of Minnesotans.
Also, the remains of USS Corry dd-334 are still visible in a river upstream from Mare Island Navy Yard in CA.
Replacing the 4"/50s and torpedo launchers for Mark 8 torpedoes was not unusual, since those would have been different from standard RN types (though some apparently did retain their Mark 8 launchers, as several hundred Mark 8 torpedoes were included in the transfer; unlike the Mark 15 torpedoes the Mark 8s actually worked).
@@scottgiles7546 Of course.
No views 59 seconds ago
One view now. Always supporting Drach. And the Town Class is interesting.
Good Vid . It's funny, my grandpops retired a Vice Admiral, but only served on a ship once, USS Texas after it's refit (1927-28?). Hated it so much lol he went CEC. He was in command on the SeaBee Brigades on Okinawa, shortly after that he was in command of all Seabees in the Pacific. My Great Granddad was Fred Filbry , Deck Boss on USS Enterprise at the time of Pearl Harbor, He loved being at sea.
"Deadly Seas" (HMCS St. Croix vs. U-305) is a great book for the detail of how the ship's were mothballed with a new technique and how it was good in ways and terrible in others. In fairness to the Americans, they didn't know their state until they were opened and inspected and either way, we (Canadians) needed them badly.
Dinosaur Necromancer is an excellent job description.
Makes me want to play Jurassic Park Evolution 2, it does...
Weren't initially at least the town names selected for the ships towns that existed in both the UK and the USA?
That's what I thought
Yes
The book, The Caine Mutiny describes the USS Caine as a former four-piper converted to a minesweeper.
The Four Pipers had probably one of the most intrusive service lives of a y warship class during the war. From Murmansk to the Java Sea, Pearl Harbor to St Nazire.
Once again an excellent short summary topped with a great laugh with "Dinosaur Necromancer". Thanks Drach for the education and the laugh
The four stackers were a mixed blessing for all that used them. However a warship that floated and moved under its own power and could carry defensive weapons was of value to all concerned in the early years. Their overall survival rate also points out they weren't as much junk as people on both sides of the Atlantic tended to think of them.
13 subs sunk or captured by those ships solo and shared.
HMS Broadway participated in forcing U110 (with Enigma machine) to surface which is why accounts begin with:
U110 captured by HMS Bulldog
Designing 4 stackers be like:
How many guns? Yes. How many torpedoes? Yes. How much speed? Yes. How much range? Yes. And how much tonnage for sensors? Whats that?
The ships actually had an incredibly wide variety of uses. The ones that remained in USN hands would be converted into all manner of useful platforms for all sorts of non-frontline tasks such as high-speed transports, high-speed minesweepers, destroyer minelayers, and seaplane tenders and would serve in useful roles for the duration of the war.
I do believe they were not ideal platforms for North Atlantic work:
_It is an open question whether they [the four stackers] or the corvettes more fully fitted Kipling's generic description of 'that packet of assorted miseries which we call a Ship'._ Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars, 1916-1945 by John Terraine.
🙂
@@bluelemming5296 According to Captain Frederic John Walkers' biography life on a corvette was pretty miserable.
*Apparently, Winston Churchill (then British Prime Minister) described them as "Cheap and nasty"*
The American ambassador stood nearby, so Churchill hastily added:
*_"Cheap for us, nasty for the Nazis"_*
Unlikely. The US Ambassodor to the UK until late October 1940 was Joe Kennedy, and I certainly can't imagine him bad-mouthing the Nazis.
@@notshapedforsportivetricks2912 Even more reason for Churchill to have said it then, as he would have gotten to needle Kennedy twice.
that's hilarious
@@blshouse *Yes, there was no love lost between Churchill and Joe Kennedy*
Joe Kennedy, upon his return after his stint as Ambassador (returning to the US) made sure he told everyone that Churchill would cause Britain to lose, and that any assistance to Britain was a "lost cause"
Later, in the last months of WW2, Churchill pointedly remarked to the US Congress: "It was predicted that Britain, like France, would have it's neck wrung like a chicken within weeks. Some neck, some chicken". *Churchill's remarks were aimed squarely at Joe Kennedy*
My granddad's sister's brother was there at this very meeting cosplaying as a cigar and confirmed it as true in his memoir, "I was a cigar". Incidentally, his late wife, Geraldine, was also there at a game of bridge - she was one of the chairs.
I’m from Ludlow. Never knew we had a warship named after our little market town 😌
CONGRATS ON 400 GUIDES, DRACH! Thank you!!
What a wonderous start to a Saturday morning! Quality stuff as always.
Thanks Drach.
400 guides! Congrats 🎉
I LMAO at the “necromancer“ bit
Not long ago, I reread "Fifty Ships That Saved The World" about the destroyers for bases deal, and service of the ships in the RN.
HMS Ludlow, that Drac mentioned at the end of his piece, had an interesting incident at the start of it's RN service. Ludlow, the former USS Stockton, was one of the earlier Caldwell class ships, significantly shorter ranged than the later classes. She had made it to France in 1917, so she should have been able to make the trip again, if everything went smoothly.
Ludlow, in company with several other destroyers, was making her way to the UK, when radio traffic was picked up from Jervis Bay, which was engaging the Scheer, desperately asking for help. The USN had turned over the ships with full magazines and torpedo tubes. so the destroyers rang up flank speed and rushed to Jervis Bay's assistance.
They arrived at the scene too late to help. But that flank speed run had tossed Ludlow's fuel consumption calculations in the dustbin. According to the book, Ludlow's burners went out, from lack of fuel, just as she dropped anchor in Belfast.
Reports of Jervis Bay's action say that Scheer's reconnaissance plane had spotted the convoy, and reported it as completely unescorted. Can't help but wonder, if the destroyers, iirc, about six, had been steaming from Halifax with the convoy, would Scheer have attacked? If Scheer had attacked, what would the result have been, with six destroyers firing their large loads of torpedoes at Scheer?
Their full load of AMERICAN torpedoes....
@@scottgiles7546If memory serves correctly, the US Navy was soon to find out just how unreliable their torpedoes actually were!😢
@@scottgiles7546 Ah, but these ships were old enough that they had old Mark 8 torpedos that didn't have the 'improved' depth-keeping gear and exploders.
@@rupertboleyn3885 Was just about to say this, but add, those older fish had shorter range.
Wickes class were the short legged ships displacing 1090 tons, Clemson class displaced 1190 tons - most of which was oil.
Hearty congratulations and thanks for 400 guides, plus so many other outstanding videos!
Well done, sir!
I find the development of the Caldwell/Wickes/Clemson class quite interesting, and would be very interested in a more detailed exploration of the subject, should you ever wish to tackle it. You have touched on this in other videos, and guide 055 (USS Clemson) does a great job of covering the final stages of development, but I do not believe you have covered how things began and the lessons learned with the Wickes class (unless I missed something).
Once again, congratulations and thanks!
Fun fact, I was born in Castleton, and grew up in Plymouth, Rutland, Bristol, and Colchester. I had yet to step foot in Britain though, just goes to show how little imagination the colonists had when naming their own towns😂
Just like how I've managed to visit Hyde Park, Lincoln, Elgin, and Dundee, without leaving the State of Illinois.
Supposedly there's been upwards of 30 places called *Bedford* in the USA... as someone from the original British one... I can't imagine why 🤔😆 .
@@jimtaylor294 Might come under the category 'lest we forget' (why we left).
@ThePhoenix198 Maybe... though if so my market town had a vast impact on the US proportionate to her size 😆
Yesterday History of everything and now Drachinifel! Wow story time two days in a row!
Interesting in that I was raised in the town of Ludlow, MA in the US and that HMS Ludlow was used as a target ship towards the end of her career. Informative video.
Thanks drach
Another fine review. Congratulations on number 400!
Very interesting. Thank you. Two minor points: 1. I read somewhere that Roosevelt insisted that the RN call the first destroyer to be handed over "HMS Churchill"; it would be intersting to know more about her war service. Secondly the "Town" names allocated to the destroyers were of places with the same name in both the USA and the UK. A nice touch.
So some poor Sub-Lieutenant RN had to sit down with a map of both countries and find fifty towns sharing the same name? And make sure that they didn't coincide with existing and proposed ship's names.
No googling back then.
I was going to say, a bloody cheek just calling Edinburgh a town, unless they're just referring to the 'Old Town'. It makes sense if they were co-nominal with US towns.
@@iainmc9859 Two points:
1. HMS Edinburgh was one of the 'Town' Cruisers, so the original comment about the destroyer names doesn't apply.
2. It gets weirder. _None_ of the town class cruisers were named after towns, all of their names were taken from cities (Edinburgh, Belfast, Newcastle, etc).
@@hadrenrailway9971 Is there a red wobbly line under your name of the Scottish capital ?
@@iainmc9859 Well spotted.
Glad to see HMS Leamington (Ex USS Twiggs) was one of these towns (I live in Leam’) and was one of those forwarded to the RCN as you say (keeping her name) before then again being moved on to the USSR as the Zguchij (Firebrand), after the war she was returned and went on to be a prop as the pseudo Cambletown for the film ‘gift horse’. Quite a career!
By the way it’s pronounced Lemington despite the A. Strange ship name given the town is about as far from the sea as it’s possible to get in the UK.
Whereas Leamington, Ontario (where they pronounce it with the a) is a port on Lake Erie
Never let it be said that we Brit's don't enjoy a bit of irony 😂
Leaving aside the fifty transferees, four of the Town class light cruisers (HMS Birmingham, HMS Gloucester, HMS Sheffield and HMS Manchester) were named for towns/cities a significant distance from the sea.
@ThePhoenix198 Kind of. Manchester does have the largest Shipping Canal in the UK.
I remembe reading about this deal in Junior High School.
Thanks for the great video.
The Saturday night double! Drydock and 5 Minute Guide!!
Have you ever heard of the Yard Patrol boats?
The US Naval Academy still uses them today. I often see them patrolling the Chesapeake Bay.
#400. Wow that’s a lot of ships.
It sure looks like they were put good use.
Waiting for my dose of history today
Great vid drach
These are great. I think a video comparison of sloops, cutters, frigates, destroyers, destroyer escorts and such might be helpful for some folks
Might be a little confusing since every USCG ship is a "cutter".
Dare we call them Jurrasic destroyers? Also note that their British town names also had an American counterpart.
new subscriber here! thank you for talking about the ARA La Argentina in one of your videos, as an argentine i can say that i appreciate that
"Dinosaur necromancer"!!! YES!!!
HAHAHA!! 😅😂
Gift Horse the film is enjoying a resurgence in interest among younger people as they discover Operation Chariot
Thanks to Clarkson
What are the plans , 15yrs or so hence, when Britain reacquires the leased bases? What are their names and locations?
Great video mate, keep them coming!
Thanks❤
G'day Drachinifel,
While a late comment & will probably not be seen as is the case in all videos, It would've been comical had a Town class 1940 & 1936 somehow rocked up alongside the last serving Town class 1910 during WWII as seen by HMAS Adelaide & wowee that would be confusing had any required taking on stores.
I'm not sure if you've made a video on the Adelaide, but it might be a good video to do (unless I've forgotten).
Ahh glorious Gifthorse, "This ship is worth its weight in gold" although strangely the hull number was GH-19 in the film.
I'm not sure if GH meant anything via pennant numbers or was just a jab at the film GH Gifthorse or was if it was the RN designation for the ship while the being lent to the film.
Including HMS Burnham - there is a plaque on the seafront of her service in the Royal Navy !
Twiggs was the Last one to be scrapped.
First time i saw these through a periscope in the Uboat game I thought it was a cruiser, the depth charges she threw at me later proved me wrong lol
In WW2 you had only two Porter Class destroyers, one was the USS Balch 363 , would love to see you research the history of this ship .
Have you done a video on the 5 stacker the Japanese reportedly captured?
I never knew the Brit Town Class destroyers were the 'four pipers" from the USA!
The parliamentary term "tabled" for the commonwealth is the opposite of meaning in the USA, by the way. In case any Americans were a bit confused at that turn of phrase.
From sub-optimal to sub optimal in one bound.
wow 400 well done
The USN used some old destroyers as seaplane-tenders. Subject for a future video?
Their names were of towns that were in both the US and the UK.
Probably RNVR! More likely to have been bookish!
Holy crap...I just realized I have 399 more guides to watch through now...
Coaling was nasty business where everyone had to get down and dirty. Did that improve over time until the introduction of oil?
Hey Drach could you possibly cover U234? It's pretty interesting.
you had me at escorts...
Guide 400, by Jove 😮
How about a video on the USS Norton Sound?
I just watched *Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.* At one point, one of the characters spots a ship on the horizon and identifies it as a British destroyer, only for what rocks up to look more like a Town-class Light Cruiser a la HMS Belfast. I wonder if this is what we were *supposed* to be seeing.
Given that show's attention to accuracy, it's probably supposed to be the Bismarck.
My father served on HMS Charlestown, one of these ex-American destroyers. He and the rest of the crew thought it was an awful little vessel. It felt very unstable in anything resembling rough weather, its old 4in guns were museum pieces. In the machinery spaces you could watch the very thin plating on the ship's side rippling in any sort of sea. When it was warm enough crew members would sleep on deck as they believed, with some justification, that if she was torpedoed anybody below decks would have no hope as these ships disintegrated and sank like stones. He was mightily happy when he transferred to one of the RN's newer destroyers. The four-stackers were better than nothing and served a purpose no doubt, but they weren't remotely comparable to British contemporaries like the V and W classes of the late World War I period.
Same ships and same remarks about their USN counterparts, but they held the line until new construction could replace them. For the UK that would be the Captain class DE's--which the RN also complained about--and the Colonies, based on the River class frigates.
_It is an open question whether they [the four stackers] or the corvettes more fully fitted Kipling's generic description of 'that packet of assorted miseries which we call a Ship'._ Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars, 1916-1945 by John Terraine.
Ship suggestion Soviet K class submarines.
"Dinosaur Necromancer" - better band name, song title, or D&D class?
Miss the old intro music. Much more majestic.
400 good go
Did the British Commandos use as APD? I know the Marines did. And they became a purpose built class, not old repurposed vessels.
I know one of those who have my surname which is HMS Montgomery (G-95).
Dinosaur Necromancer!!! 🤣
They were named after towns that were in the UK and the US.
Huh, I always thought the carcass of the destroyer in California was the last remains of a four stacker this side of Davy Jones' locker, but now I find that another lonely sister still sits across the pond.
400!❤
Why would the "islands in close proximity to the US" have fallen into German hands, as the French islands in the Carribean were NOT occupied by the Germans (although they would have been perfect resupply points for the U-boats), or England cound have simply transferred "ownership" of these islands to Canada, or one of its "commonwealth partners".
Honestly, I do not know what strategic value Trinidad and Tobago had, unless it was a stopping point for American aircraft being flown to North Africa.
Hell, the British did NOT even attempt to retain possession of the Channel Islands. (I believe they, the British, slipped out in the middle of the night, WITHOUT even putting up ANY resistance.
It was presumed that Britain would fall entirely as opposed to France which retained the Vichy government.
could you make a video on what if the the Bismarck made it TO France day 12
I sometimes wonder why the cruisers were known as the "Town" class when all are patently cities. And what did the citizens of Bath and Leeds think of their fair cities being lumped in with the towns?
Here, take my crap. Pretty sweet deal.
50 million 1919 usd of destroyers for non-existent bases.
Honestly a reminder that current deals aren't That much different to deals made before America joined in WW2
Doe sanyone know how many convoys the 4 stackers escorted and how many subs they sank?
13 subs sunk or captured (including U110) solo and shared per u boat net
Real estate in the Carribean: sweet. Also, United Fruit was a huge protagonist for American intervention in Central and South American countries in lobbying the Congress, so throwing them a bone was also a boon for US Western Hemisphere foreign policy. A win-win on all sides, plus vacation spots for Pan Am to service in the post-war airline boom was also a win for American tourists as well and American fresh produce consumers.
All of the bases south of Bermuda had been abandoned by 1951.
Bermuda, owing to its close proximity to Washinton, was the last base turned over, in 1995.
An open bridge in the North Atlantic. Brrrrrrrr!
IIRC, the RN had open bridges on all their ships back then.
Take a look at the ships Drach visited in Canada. Open bridges on both of them - the destroyer and the corvette, both (mostly) British designs. That's how the RCN/RN/RAN/RNZN did things with smaller ships. It was a tradition that went back millennia.
Under the bridge is a closed structure called the 'wheelhouse' - it's staffed by somebody on the wheel (the senior NCO aka coxwain in critical situations, or a quartermaster) and some enlisted sailors. It's a pretty small space, not much room for a lot of people. The officers in charge are not in the wheelhouse, they are on the open bridge, connected via voice-pipe to the wheelhouse. There's usually a bunch of other people on the open bridge as well as the officers, such as lookouts, signalmen, etc ...
They liked the open bridge most of the time because it gave unparalleled visibility. Watch the movie Greyhound to see how limited the visibility could be on a closed bridge.
Some ships (like at least one class of US destroyer escorts) had both an open bridge and a closed bridge.
Big 400 is crazy
I'm sure this has been done, but Leamington is pronounced "lemmington" (and usually "it's ROYAL Leamington Spa if you don't mind" in a posh Brummie accent. But that's quite hard to put on the side of a ship). Great Britain, confusing people with place name pronunciation since 1066...
🦖💀 Dinosaur necromancer. 🤣
Litteral Townships
⚓
They were piles of junk, but they did a job when nothing else was available.
Wet, poor range and lousy turning circle (tapered stern which dug in and, if I recall, their propellers turned the same way, meaning they turned one way faster than the other). They rolled like dogs at convoy speeds, even on a flat calm.
Primarily designed to be a coastal escort, the Corvettes ended up shouldering the brunt of the escorting of Trans-Atlantic convoys. They were very wet ships to begin with, due to the short fo'c's'les that ended just short of the bridge, although the later ships were finished with an extended fo'c's'le and the original ships were mostly refitted as such (shown above). They were also extremely 'lively' ships in a heavy sea, and would "roll on wet grass". As small as they were, they were able to negotiate the waterways leading to the Great Lakes, and many were built there.
When built, they were fitted with magnetic compasses, and did not have an electrical system capable of supporting gyro compasses, which were much more reliable when the ship was being thrown about either due to wave action or the ship's own depth charges. These were later fitted to most ships.
FLOWER Class - Haze Gray
@@nickdanger3802 The Flower class were a desperate answer to an emergency, and did a sterling job despite their deficiencies. Their low speed meant that they could barely catch up with a convoy if they had to pick up survivors or hunt a U boat astern of it. They struggled to finish off a surfaced U boat due to having only one 4 inch gun and their AA armament was totally inadequate if there was any threat of air attack..
The book 3 corvettes by Nicholas Montserrat is a wonderful insight into what it was like to serve in these ships.
But they could be built quickly in all the small construction yards around the UK and numbers were more important than individual quality.
But they bought time to build superior ships like the superb Black Swan class sloops and to acquire US ships like the Captain class frigates.
A key insight here is that sinking subs was luxury in the early years of the war, and required quite a lot of luck. They didn't have enough escorts, or the right equipment and training and tactics to be efficient at sinking subs. The job of the escorts was not to sink subs, it was to get the convoy through.
In practice, this meant driving the sub under and keeping it there for long enough that it would have trouble catching up with the convoy before daylight or air cover arrived.
The four stackers were not great ASW platforms. No surprise given their WW1 heritage and their large torpedo armament: these were ships designed to be organized into large flotillas to attack enemy surface vessels en masse with huge torpedo volleys, and ASW work was definitely secondary or even tertiary.
But no sub was going to stay on the surface with a destroyer coming towards them. This made the four stackers superb for the job of driving the subs down. They could loiter for a bit - and then easily rejoin the convoy with their high speed, something that corvettes struggled to do because they were so slow.
Hence, early war, a four stacker was actually more useful than a corvette, provided the weather wasn't too bad, while 1943 or later the corvette became the more useful asset because it was actually a lot better at the job of sinking submarines, and at that point in the war was when they could really focus on sinking the subs - they finally had enough escorts, the right equipment, training, and tactics.
It should be no surprise most four stackers in US service ended up - over the long term - being converted to other roles than ASW, such as seaplane tenders, mine sweeping, mine laying, fast transport, and so forth - and thus proved to be incredibly useful ships.