Things were looking bleak for Britain in early 1942 when the American Lease Lend arrangement saw the construction of a new kind of ship in the yards of the USA to augment the British Fleet. Basically, this new ship, the Escort Carrier, was simply a converted C3 type freighter with a flight deck put on top to turn it into a small Aircraft Carrier. Many of these carriers were built in the Kaiser Shipyard in Vancouver, Washington and the first was launched in April, 1942, by Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. In some cases, the hulls of the ships were taken from Vancouver and other Pacific shipyards down to Portland for conversion to aircraft carriers.

In Portland, Oregon, two yards, the Williamette  Iron & Steel Co., and the Commercial Ironworks Ltd carried out the conversions. Each hull was built up to enable a flight deck the size of a small football field to be fitted and below this the ship had a huge hanger deck capable of housing a squadron of 24 planes. There were two hydraulic lifts forward and aft on which the planes could be taken from the hangar deck to the flight deck. Set forward on the port side was a catapult mechanism which enabled fast take off  for the aircraft, the full length of the flight deck being only 500 ft, which was hardly sufficient distance for modern aircraft to get airborne. Around the outside of the ship were, blisters or sponsons which housed Oerlikon AA guns and lifeboats and rafts.

Read more about HMS Slinger on the HMS Slinger website.

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