text: In all, 130 Allied escort carriers were launched or converted during the war. Of these, six were British conversions of merchant ships: , , , ,  and . The remaining escort carriers were U.S.-built. Like the British, the first U.S. escort carriers were converted merchant vessels (or in the , converted military oilers). The Bogue-class carriers were based on the hull of the Type C3 cargo ship. The last 69 escort carriers of the  and Commencement Bay classes were purpose-designed and purpose-built carriers drawing on the experience gained with the previous classes.
  Royal Navy
  Originally developed at the behest of the United Kingdom to operate as part of a North Atlantic convoy escort, rather than as part of a naval strike force, many of the  escort carriers produced were assigned to the Royal Navy for the duration of the war under the Lend-Lease act. They supplemented and then replaced the converted merchant aircraft carriers that were put into service by the British and Dutch as an emergency measure until dedicated escort carriers became available. As convoy escorts, they were used by the Royal Navy to provide air scouting, to ward off enemy long-range scouting aircraft and, increasingly, to spot and hunt submarines. Often additional escort carriers joined convoys, not as fighting ships but as transporters, ferrying aircraft from the U.S. to Britain; twice as many aircraft could be carried by storing aircraft on the flight deck as well as in the hangar.