The effectiveness of Canada's navy on escort duty

This paper examines the relative effectiveness of different vessels used as convoy escorts in the North Atlantic by the Allied navies during the Second World War. A data set is created that matches convoy movements to German U-boat locations in order to examine the escort composition and the number...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Karl Skogstad
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hew015
id ftrepec:oai:RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:21:y:2017:i:1:p:104-132.
record_format openpolar
spelling ftrepec:oai:RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:21:y:2017:i:1:p:104-132. 2024-04-14T08:15:47+00:00 The effectiveness of Canada's navy on escort duty Karl Skogstad http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hew015 unknown http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hew015 article ftrepec 2024-03-19T10:27:23Z This paper examines the relative effectiveness of different vessels used as convoy escorts in the North Atlantic by the Allied navies during the Second World War. A data set is created that matches convoy movements to German U-boat locations in order to examine the escort composition and the number of merchant ships lost when an engagement occurred. I find that larger escort vessels, such as destroyers and frigates, were between 1.4 and 2.25 more effective than smaller escort vessels, such as corvettes, at preventing the loss of a merchant ship. As an application of these results, I examine the cost faced by the Allies from Canada failing to develop domestic naval manufacturing capabilities prior to World War II. By constructing a counterfactual scenario, I find that developing a Canadian domestic shipbuilding industry would have given the Allies a net benefit of 23.2 million 1940 Canadian dollars. Article in Journal/Newspaper North Atlantic RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) Canada
institution Open Polar
collection RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
op_collection_id ftrepec
language unknown
description This paper examines the relative effectiveness of different vessels used as convoy escorts in the North Atlantic by the Allied navies during the Second World War. A data set is created that matches convoy movements to German U-boat locations in order to examine the escort composition and the number of merchant ships lost when an engagement occurred. I find that larger escort vessels, such as destroyers and frigates, were between 1.4 and 2.25 more effective than smaller escort vessels, such as corvettes, at preventing the loss of a merchant ship. As an application of these results, I examine the cost faced by the Allies from Canada failing to develop domestic naval manufacturing capabilities prior to World War II. By constructing a counterfactual scenario, I find that developing a Canadian domestic shipbuilding industry would have given the Allies a net benefit of 23.2 million 1940 Canadian dollars.
format Article in Journal/Newspaper
author Karl Skogstad
spellingShingle Karl Skogstad
The effectiveness of Canada's navy on escort duty
author_facet Karl Skogstad
author_sort Karl Skogstad
title The effectiveness of Canada's navy on escort duty
title_short The effectiveness of Canada's navy on escort duty
title_full The effectiveness of Canada's navy on escort duty
title_fullStr The effectiveness of Canada's navy on escort duty
title_full_unstemmed The effectiveness of Canada's navy on escort duty
title_sort effectiveness of canada's navy on escort duty
url http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hew015
geographic Canada
geographic_facet Canada
genre North Atlantic
genre_facet North Atlantic
op_relation http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hew015
_version_ 1796314224511680512