[norwaypinesavage]

According to my FIL, Henry Kiser was summoned to the DOD several days after Pearl Harbor. He left the same day with a purchase order for 50 aircraft carriers to be made by modifying Kiser Liberty ships already being constructed. He was to produce the first one in 60 days. He was forgiven after it took 90 days.

My FIL’s day job was an aircraft mechanic on the hangar deck. One day shortly after disembarking from Pearl Harbor, he noticed a number of navy ‘brass’ gathering around the hangar deck with measuring tapes. After several hours, they made a door sized mark on one of the hangar walls. An acetylene torch was brought in to cut along the lines. After a bit, a door sized panel was removed. Inside was a fully equipped machine shop, with mills, lathes, and associated equipment. It was assumed that in the haste to build the ship, some workers propped a steel panel along the wall. The next crew came along and welded it in place.

[SunkenCiv]

I think the rate of production for Liberty ships was one every six days. If the war had gone on a few more years, the resulting ship production could have been tied end to end and the cargo walked across the Atlantic. /jk

[BroJoeK]

norwaypinesavage: "According to my FIL, Henry Kiser was summoned to the DOD several days after Pearl Harbor.
He left the same day with a purchase order for 50 aircraft carriers to be made by modifying Kiser Liberty ships already being constructed.
He was to produce the first one in 60 days.
He was forgiven after it took 90 days."

The US will not be building 50 jeep carriers to fight the CCP over Taiwan.
The US can no longer quickly build 50 of any ship, much less a "light" or "escort" carrier.

But the idea of a light carrier based on a civilian hull to support amphibious operations is not entirely dead.
It lives on today in the Puller Class ESBs.
These have large flight decks for helicopters and tiltrotors for air support, but, like the old CVEs, are not built for high intensity naval warfare.

Curiously, in 1943, USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56) cost around $10 million to build.
In today's money, that's around $500 million, which is roughly the price of the civilian-hull-based Puller Class ESBs.

Could we build 50 of those in a pinch?
No, but we might build 2 per year and, over time, that could be enough, given that ESBs will not do convoy escort duties like the old WWII CVEs.
Convoy escort duties now fall to destroyers, or better yet, to frigates like the USS Constellation (ooops!), which are purpose-designed to deal with wartime threats to civilian convoys and similar.

Point is: the old concept of a civilian based "escort carrier" is not dead, it lives on in today's ESBs, though the mission has changed and our ability to produce them is drastically reduced from WWII levels.

USS Liscomb Bay CVE-56:

[Pilsner]

An acetylene torch was brought in to cut along the lines. After a bit, a door sized panel was removed. Inside was a fully equipped machine shop

Heard a similar story about a home builder famous for slapping together tract houses in a hurry. Family bought a 4 bedroom, two bath, home, but when they moved in, only three bedrooms. They could look through the window and see the fourth, but the doorway was sheetrocked over.