Qualla: HMS Chaser

HMS Chaser: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oulds, D C (Lt) Royal Navy official photographer; The original uploader was Jim Sweeney at English Wikipedia.. Later version(s) were uploaded by Beao at en.wikipedia. (3 October 2010 (first version); 25 October 2010 (last version)), Public domain. On 4 March 1944, somewhere in the Arctic Ocean northwest of Hammerfest, Norway, a Fairey Swordfish biplane -- an aircraft that looked obsolete before the war even started -- caught a German submarine on the surface. U-472's anti-aircraft guns were iced solid, useless. The Swordfish attacked with bombs and rockets, crippled the submarine, then called in a destroyer to finish the job. Over the next two days, aircraft from the same carrier would sink two more U-boats. That carrier was HMS Chaser, a small, unglamorous escort carrier built in Mississippi, and her Arctic patrol in early 1944 would prove one of the most effective anti-submarine operations of the war.

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Image: Oulds, D C (Lt) Royal Navy official photographer; The original uploader was Jim Sweeney at English Wikipedia.. Later version(s) were uploaded by Beao at en.wikipedia. (3 October 2010 (first version); 25 October 2010 (last version)) | Public domain

HMS Chaser: Mississippi to Murmansk

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy official photographer, Public domain. Chaser began life as Mormacgulf, a merchant hull laid down at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on 28 June 1941. Renamed Mormacdove, then acquired by the US Navy and redesignated Breton (CVE-10), she was transferred to the Royal Navy under the Lend-Lease program on...

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