Canadian Navy

From the Washington Naval Treaty to the end of the Second World War.
User avatar
rclark
Member
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:23 am
Location: Halifax, N.S., Canada

Canadian Navy

Post by rclark »

Hi All,
So what is your attitude towards the Canadian Navy during WW2, we lost some good ships like the Athabasca even though we didn't have mighty warships like the British and Germans, americans, Italians, Japanese, we might have been equal to Russia.
Ron Clark
Tiornu
Supporter
Posts: 1222
Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:13 am
Location: Ex Utero

Re: Canadian Navy

Post by Tiornu »

The RCN doesn't get much respect. The RN turned up its collective nose at the performance of Canadian anti-submarine units, and efforts beyond that scope are often ignored, as apparent in the title of a master's thesis I was just looking at: The “Other” Navy at War: The RCN’s Tribal Class Destroyers, 1939-1944.
User avatar
Gary
Senior Member
Posts: 706
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2006 3:37 pm
Location: Northumberland

Post by Gary »

I'm cheating here but the RCN did have an aircraft carrier completed just after WW2

http://www.voodoo.cz/ww2car/can.html
God created the world in 6 days.........and on the 7th day he built the Scharnhorst
User avatar
rclark
Member
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:23 am
Location: Halifax, N.S., Canada

Canadian Navy

Post by rclark »

We never built an aircraft carrir, we bought one off the British, renamed it from the Magnicent to the Bonaventure and eventually it landed in a Japanese scrap yard. We don't have any now
Ron Clark
Jack B.
Member
Posts: 41
Joined: Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:13 pm
Location: Saskatchewan

Post by Jack B. »

Canada had 2 carriers

CVL21 Maggy
CVL22 Bonnie
Bgile
Senior Member
Posts: 3658
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2005 7:33 pm
Location: Portland, OR, USA

Post by Bgile »

I think Canada contributed to the WWII effort in proportion to her capabilities. Canadians did the best they could considering their limited population and economic capability. I doubt there are many people who question their contribution.
User avatar
José M. Rico
Administrator
Posts: 1008
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:23 am
Location: Madrid, Spain
Contact:

Post by José M. Rico »

Canadians certainly contributed to the war effort.
They were there in the beaches of Dieppe and later in Normandy.
User avatar
Karl Heidenreich
Senior Member
Posts: 4808
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2006 3:19 pm
Location: San José, Costa Rica

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Canadians did more for the war effort than many other countries which much more publicity. As far as I know during June 6th, 1944 the blood in the Normandy beaches was from Americans, British, Canadians and Germans.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
User avatar
Terje Langoy
Supporter
Posts: 435
Joined: Wed Aug 09, 2006 4:15 pm
Location: Bergen, Norway

Post by Terje Langoy »

The battle of the Atlantic was won by the destroyers, the Canadians just as much as the British. Although they didn't have a large navy, their ships were as valuable to the allied victory as the merchants they protected.
User avatar
Gary
Senior Member
Posts: 706
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2006 3:37 pm
Location: Northumberland

Post by Gary »

Many merchant ships sailed from Canada bound for Britain packed with vital supplies.
Many brave Canadian sailors, soldiers and Airmen fought and died in WW2.
We British would have found it very tough going without our Canadian pals
God created the world in 6 days.........and on the 7th day he built the Scharnhorst
User avatar
aurora
Senior Member
Posts: 696
Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2012 2:31 pm
Location: YORKSHIRE

Re: Canadian Navy

Post by aurora »

The Canadian fleet was continuously and heavily engaged in Canadian and Newfoundland home waters, as well as in protecting the by-then enormous transatlantic convoys that fed supplies to the Allied armies in Europe. This was an essential military contribution to the Allied cause. Moreover, the navy maintained its commitments in British and European coastal waters and also escorted convoys to the Soviet Union along the treacherous and unforgiving Arctic route.Despite the turn of the tide, the German submarine fleet continued to strike effectively. Indeed, during 1944 and 1945, the Canadian fleet took its heaviest losses in action against submarines using sophisticated evasion tactics and armed with powerful new types of torpedoes.

Among the ships destroyed by snorkel-equipped U-boats were the corvette HMCS Shawinigan, which was lost with no survivors among its crew of 91, close off Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland on the night of 24 November 1944, the Bangor minesweeper HMCS Claycquot, in the near approaches to Halifax on Christmas Eve 1944, and HMCS Esquimalt another Bangor lost off Halifax, on 16 April 1945, only three weeks before Germany surrendered. Both Bangors sank with heavy loss of life, many of the sailors falling victim to the lethally cold waters off Nova Scotia.

By the last months of the war the RCN had grown to a strength of over 95,000 personnel, 6,000 of them members of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service, and the fleet committed to the Battle of the Atlantic included some 270 ocean escort warships. Canada possessed the third-largest navy in the world after the fleets of the United States and Britain. The most important measure of its success was the safe passage during the war of over 25,000 merchant ships under Canadian escort. These cargo vessels delivered nearly 165 million tons of supplies to Britain and to the Allied forces that liberated Europe.

In the course of these operations the RCN sank, or shared in the destruction, of 31 enemy submarines. For its part, the RCN lost 14 warships to U-boat attacks and another eight ships to collisions and other accidents in the north Atlantic. Most of the 2000 members of the Royal Canadian Navy who lost their lives died in combat in the Atlantic. Proportionally, Canadian merchant seamen suffered much more heavily, losing one in ten killed among the 12,000 who served in Canadian and Allied merchant vessels.
Quo Fata Vocant-Whither the Fates call

Jim
Post Reply