Beside the lordly first-line carriers of the Essex class they look like tugboats with a flight deck. They carry only a score or so of aircraft. They are called CVEs, nicknamed "baby flattops" and they are designed for dirty, routine jobs—transporting planes, providing air cover for plodding convoys. But they have become the pets of the Navy Department, which this week gave them a big share of the credit for speeding up the Pacific war.
They were not always pets. They were born in days of desperation, when the U.S. needed many more...
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