Escort Group (naval)

An Escort Group consisted of several small warships organized and trained to operate together providing protection for trade convoys. Escort groups were a World War II tactical innovation in anti-submarine warfare by the Royal Navy to combat the threat of the Kriegsmarine's "wolfpack" tactics. Early escort groups often contained destroyers, sloops, naval trawlers and, later, corvettes of differing specifications lacking the ability to maneuver together as a flotilla of similar warships, but rigorously trained in anti-submarine tactics to use teamwork emphasizing the unique sensors, weapons, speed and turning radius of each ship. The development of these 'escort groups' proved an effective means of defending shipping convoys through the Battle of the Atlantic.

On the basis of experience during World War I, the Admiralty instituted trade convoys in United Kingdom coastal waters from September 1939. During the first year of the Battle of the Atlantic British convoy protection was the responsibility of the Western Approaches Command (WAC), based first in Plymouth, then, as the focus of the campaign moved after the 1940 Fall of France, in Liverpool. The newest and most capable destroyers were assigned to screen capital ships of the Home Fleet; so, to augment the inadequate number of purpose-designed sloops, WAC was allocated a leftover array of limited production prototypes, ships built to foreign specifications, minesweepers, militarized yachts and fishing trawlers, and survivors of elderly destroyer classes no longer considered suitable for operation with the Home Fleet. These escorts were not numerous enough or sufficiently long ranged to accompany convoys across the Atlantic, but would screen convoys to and from meeting points thought to be beyond U-boat range defining the edge of the Western Approaches.

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