I see this is getting a little spirited; I hope there aren't any hard feelings guys...
"Normally they did not have such a high death rate. Yes, you showed examples of all hands being lost, but there are many more examples of a low death rate."
Is this the case? I was under the impression that escorts were very dangerous in the event of a torpedoing (this is an admittedly non-expert opinion) and had a high death rate.
Many DD's, corvettes, frigates, & sloops were basically unarmored tubes crammed with men - sometimes nearly 300 crewmembers. This meant that a torpedo that struck at any point on the hull could wreak havoc with the structure and kill quite a few people instantly.
On any good sized merchant vessel, the cargo holds (usually empty of men) ran the length of the ship and would absorb much of the blast. As long as you weren't loaded with ammo etc that would be fortuitous. In fact, certain cargoes like rubber could absorb the blast and reduce structural damage.
I acknowledge that a loss of an escort with all hands was rare in WWII. The only examples I can think of in the USN and RN are "HMS Exmouth" and "USS Jarvis". Still, there were lots of incidents where casualties were very heavy (most or nearly all of the crew):
-HMS Somali
-HMS Cossack
-USS Reuben James
-USS Jacob Jones
-HMS Lapwing
-HMS Bluebell
And that's off the top of my head. Come to think of it, researching casualty rates for Allied escorts would be an interesting project.
Fire away.
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