BRIEF HISTORY of the JOHN C. BUTLER Destroyer Escort Class

                           IN PROGRESS

     The American Destroyer Escort was conceived ...
like the British (HUNT class) escort destroyer ...
as a quickly and simply constructed escort vessel,
carrying the full gamut of destroyer weapons:  guns,
antiaircraft guns, torpedoes, and depth charges.

     Like their BUCKLEY class predecessors, the BUTLERs
were 306 feet long.  However, they were armed with two 5"/127mm
dual-purpose -- antiaircraft and antiship -- guns, four to six
40mm Bofors automatic antiaircraft guns, ten 20mm Oerlikon
antiaircraft guns, three 21-inch/533mm torpedo tubes,
many depth charge racks and throwers, and the highly effective
forward-firing "Hedgehog" antisubmarine rocket mortars.
Their maximum speed was slower than that of the 28-knot HUNTs:
only 24 knots.

     Probably the most famous ship of this class is the
                      SAMUEL B. ROBERTS,
 which was sacrificed attacking and beating off the main
Japanese battleline -- including the Japanese superbattleship
YAMATO, sporting nine 18-inch/450mm guns! -- in the
Battle off Samar, October 25, 1944.  Along with the pilots of the
American aircraft attacking the Japanese juggernaut,
these little ships saved most of the "baby flattop" escort carriers
they were protecting ... as well as General Douglas MacArthur's
invasion fleet in Leyte Gulf and our Liberation of our allies,
the Filipino people.  (Aggressive U.S. Admiral "Bull" Halsey
had fallen for the cunning Japanese "Sho" plan and had taken
his first-line American battle fleet off to the north to attack the
Japanese' decoy aircraft carriers -- leaving the way open to the
American transports and freighters.)

(4Apr97)