Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Three United States Navy escort aircraft carriers, two commissioned and one Lend-Lease, have been named USS Block Island, after Block Island Sound, which is off the south coast of the state of Rhode Island, between it and Block Island. Block Island (CVE-8) was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp., Pascagoula, Mississippi, transferred to the United Kingdom under Lend-Lease on 9 January 1943 and commissioned the following day as HMS Hunter. The vessel was returned to US custody 29 December 1945 and sold 17 January 1947. The first commissioned Block Island (CVE-21) went into service in March 1943, sinking U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic until herself sunk by U-549 in May 1944. The second Block Island (CVE-106) was commissioned in December 1944 and active in the closing months of the Pacific War, and periodically in use until 1954. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.