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“Subchasers were the smallest commissioned warships in U.S. service during the two world wars,” said Ted R. Treadwell, who commanded SC 648 in the Pacific during World War II and wrote a book, “The Splinter Fleet,” about the ships.

During the First World War, naval architect Albert Loring Swasey designed a 110-foot wooden-hulled vessel to fight German U-boats. The Navy produced 440 subchasers.

The effectiveness of wooden subchasers during that conflict is in dispute. “No subchaser ever sank a submarine during World War I,” Treadwell said.

But when the Navy found itself fighting German submarines again in World War II, assembling an armada of the wooden warships was a quick countermeasure. With more powerful engines and better weapons than their predecessors, World War II subchasers fought in the Atlantic and Pacific and toted up a superb record in combat — although they’re credited with only one official submarine kill.

The 3-inch or 40mm guns of a subchaser gave it limited capability for battle against a surfaced submarine, but the warships enjoyed greater advantage when using their sonar equipment to detect a submerged U-boat. Stalking the U-boat with depth charges, the subchaser crew could distract a submarine from attacking Allied shipping.

The appearance of a subchaser often deterred a U-boat from attacking a convoy. “Plenty of them made runs on submarines,” Treadwell said.

Subchasers continued in their anti-sub duties long after more effective destroyer escorts, destroyers and other warships became available.

The little ships proved very handy for other duties, particularly as landing control craft in amphibious operations. They performed shallow-water minesweeping, air-sea rescue and harbor patrol duties.

The subchaser SC 669 was the only subchaser in the war to receive credit for sinking an enemy submarine. It happened near the island of Espiritu Santo in the Solomons on May 29, 1943, when Lt. Frederic Gibbs and his crew made two attacks on a suspected target. An oil slick, debris and part of a life jacket bubbled to the surface, the last remains of the Japanese submarine RO-107.

Each ship had a crew of three officers and 25 enlisted men. About 40,000 Americans served aboard subchasers from 1941 to 1945.

Navy careerists sometimes looked with disdain at the irreverent and unkempt subchaser crews. In his book, Treadwell wrote that subchaser sailors were different: The officers and enlisted men were mostly reservists, “lacking the finer points of ship discipline and formality.”

“Men in dirty jeans, cutoffs and skivvy shirts” worked in an environment where “provisions, machinery, ordnance, spare parts, and other gear were stacked at random,” Treadwell wrote; to others in the Navy, these were “bedraggled, disheveled-looking vessels, alive with working men looking not much better than hobos.”

After the war, several subchasers were converted into private yachts. One is displayed at a naval museum in Norway. Some subchaser veterans hope the former SC 1057, in private hands at Crystal River, Fla., may one day be restored to represent these small, hard-working warships.

Details on Treadwell’s book are available at www.usni.org.