These 201 ft Eagle boats were commissioned by the US government during WW1, intended as quick and easy to build coastal submarine hunters. The nation's shipyards were busy building destroyers and larger naval ships, so the Ford Motor Company was commissioned to apply their production line techniques to the job, one of the cost cutting techniques was to use flat metal sheets for the hull, resulting in a boat that did not behave properly in heavy seas.
The program ended due to the end of the war and I see two stories, either about 60 were built and they were used for training and coastal patrols during the interwar period. or only eight were constructed in total. Wikipedia records the lives of 60 boats, we'll go with that.
Whatever the actual numbers, by WW2 eight were still in use and these did see antisubmarine patrol service.
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| USNI.org |
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