Flower Class Corvette

The Flower Class was one of Canada's greatest warships, and was vital in the success of the allied victory in the longest battle of the Second World War

[californiadreamin]

My interest in Corvettes is 3 fold. The film “The Cruel Sea” and the “Compass Rose” captured my imagination. The discovery that they were based upon a Whaling Hull which proved successful in the Arctic seas, designed and built by the Smiths Dock Company in Haverton Hill, opposite Middlesbrough in NE England, and not far from what was RAF Middleton St George which was the most northerly airfield in Bomber Command, and operated by Canadian Squadrons during WW2.
To the memory of Abb Denis from North Bay, Lancaster rear gunner at Middleton St George, who I had the pleasure of flying back to Heathrow on the jump seat of the DC9 I commanded, following a visit to commemorate a memorial at Croft, a satellite of Middleton St George.
A fourth reason, my Grandfather was a riveter in the shipyards here in Teesside.

[kevin_]

A frigate is between a corvette and a destroyer in size.

[ollieahokas]

Flowers were a makeshift ships as RN had way too few destroyers capable to escort convoys and the Black Swans were ideal but too complicate to build in numbers and fast and RN had other sloops suitable but built in very small numbers. There were another class of corvettes, Kingfishers which were visually looking like a sized down Hunt class destroyer escorts but also built in small numbers and too complicated to build in non naval ship yards. That is why the hull was taken from a whale catcher and mocked up as a war ship. The ships were able to build in fast numbers and in some cases armed adequately, this ment an old main 4 inch gun on the fosc'le, and mostly a single pompom on the super structure in aft, as pompoms were not available, some ships got different armament for AA. The first ships had a short foscle, which was found in adequate for housing the crew so it was later extended. The bridge arrangement was changed during the class was built as well and many of the original ships were rebuilt but not all. They were slow and they had a reputation of rolling a lot on seas. Which ment using its guns was pretty hard. They were slow and while fireing depth charges, they had to run o their maximum speed. They were equipped with both sonar and radar from the beginning and these were modified during the war. The AA arrangement was added with 20 mm Oerlikons and they also got Hedgehogs to able to fire on a sub so they would not have to attack them with depth charges from their aft. More modifications were that they got raised platform for the main gun and some ships were equipped with mine sweeping gear. One way to spot a Canadian built ships in later batched is that they had a straight funnel. Later at war, they were superseded by Castle class corvettes and various frigates, like the River class, The US built Buckleys (in RN named as Captain class) and later by the Loch and Bay classes. They were phased out quickly and as aresult when The Cruel Sea was filmed, the crew had hard time to find on back in the early 1950.s and HMS Coreopsis (K32) was found in Malta filled in as Compass Rose as she was one of the last seaworthy armed ships of its class . The Sackville survived as it was converted to weather research vessel in RCN and later as privately owned ship and later converted back to as a corvette .

[ransom]

God speed Sackville — she’s one fine ship.

[markoneill]

A great convoy ship,
Sonar was next to useless when close to a large convoy, so a u-boat was needed to use the periscope, in a rough sea the corvette was so small that the sub couldn't see them, they were not worth wasting a precious torpedo on but armed enough to make a surface encounter too risky, she should manoeuvre and fast enough to be a viable threat.
A bloody horrible thing to serve on.

[lazerhog]

This is very intersting story. Thank you

[haggis]

Royal Canadian Navy... 😎😎 Hearts of Oak.

[SVTCobra]

Let's get that surviving 'vette and remake the movie The Cruel Sea!!!!

[johnburton]

Does anyone know the name of the corvette sunk by enemy action in the gulf of St Lawrence in WWII. I had a cousin on her (this is if it was only one.

[haigjansz]

Why is the commentary volume so low. It had to turned up 3 times my normal volume.

[TheDonij]

This was not a Canadian ship. Canada produced some of them, but this was a British ship.

[Luigi-mcnb]

At minute 1:36 = NOT 60 Knots BUT 16 Knots! :-)