By the time Japan surrendered unconditionally at Tokyo Bay, her navy had been swept from the seas. But it should. Kaiser was the Henry Ford of shipbuilding. He revolutionized the building of ships by establishing an assembly line technique in his shipyards.
When the US amassed nearly seven million men under arms during the war, the enormous military needed to be resupplied, and it was a huge undertaking. Kaiser built Liberty and Victory-class merchant ships. Kaiser cut the construction time from months to just days. Overall, 2, Liberty ships were built during the war years. While an Essex-class carrier took about 20 months to build. Which itself was a fantastic manufacturing feat. Kaiser could build a Casablanca-class escort carrier in three months.
The mass production methods of Kaiser proved invaluable, and the sheer numbers of the Casablanca carriers eased the heavy load of the Essex class carriers.
Leighton prepared a paper analyzing the problem. But it never went anywhere. After Pearl Harbor, much of that thinking changed. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a fan of the idea, and the escort carrier was born. Initially designed for convoy escort duty, the Casablanca class accompanied the larger fleets on island-hopping campaigns, with just a small number designated for convoy duty in the Atlantic for ASW anti-submarine warfare duty.
This left the tiny task force, call sign Taffy 3, alone to protect the invasion beaches. Taffy 3 consisted of six escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts, Taffy 3 was intended to provide shore support and anti-submarine patrols and did not have guns capable of penetrating the Japanese armor of their battleships and heavy cruisers.
