Longer, heavier and faster than the preceding Bogue-class, and the basis for the subsequent purpose-built Casablanca-class (which was smaller and lighter, and just 1kt faster), the Sangamons could (and often did) carry 36 planes.

Unlike every other escort carrier class, the four Sangamons were able to embark any carrier plane in the Navy arsenal, save for the Helldiver and the Corsair.  The usual air complement was between 12-18 Wildcats and around the same number of TBF Avengers, though the Sangamon and the Santee occasionally carried the Dauntless dive-bomber.  The Suwannee and the Chenango never did, for one reason or another.

They displaced 24100 tons (full load), as opposed to 16600 tons for the Bogues.  Unsurprisingly considering their tanker origins, they carried nearly three times as much fuel as well, giving them a range of 24000 nautical miles @ 15kts (the Bogues range was just over 10000nm).  They also had a huge bunkerage for airplane fuel.  As a matter of fact, they could carry more fuel than a Yorktown or Lexington-class fleet carrier, and only a bit less than the Essex-class, despite being about 350 feet shorter.  In effect, the Sangamon-class were self-escorting tankers.

All four began their service life in late 1942, covering the North Africa landings of Operation Torch.  Immediately following, they transferred to the Pacific.  Three of the four were hit by kamikaze (the Chenango avoided that fate, but suffered severe damage when a F6F crash-landed on her deck and smashed into planes parked forward).  The class as a whole suffered three kamikaze hits, four bomb strikes, and a submarine torpedo hit, yet all four survived... again, testament to the survivability of their larger-sized tanker origins.

As with all ships in WWII, their AA guns were substantially increased from their starting armament.  Unlike most others classes, however, the Sangamons handled the near-doubling of their guns without any topweight problems, owing to their tanker origins. 

The only thing that separated them from CVL status was their speed.  18kts maximum was pretty good for a transport, and excellent for an escort carrier, but much too slow to operate with the battle fleet, where 25-30kts was considered standard.  That's about the only statistic that the Sangamons were inferior to the Independence-class CVL.

All four ships of the class survived the war, earning 41 battle stars between them.  The Chenango and Santee continued in US Navy service as CVHEs (Carrier, Helicopter, Escort) until the late '50s.  The Suwannee was put into the mothball fleet.  The Sangamon, amusingly, was returned to commercial service in her original tanker configuration after the war, until she was scrapped in 1960.

For ships that were considered 'expendable', not a bad history.

1 The thought of being on a somewhat slow, thin hulled ship filled with AV gas and ordnance tends to make my nether regions pucker, and yet they survived.

2 War ain't safe. No ship in wartime is safe.

3 A friend of mine in Japan told me about her father, who was a doctor, shipping out on a hospital ship. It got torpedoed coming out of the harbor, and he had to swim back to shore...

I saw the Bowfin's battle flag at the memorial in Hawaii, and noticed that it had a bus on it. If they figured out how to torpedo a bus, you can't really be safe on a ship...

4 My memory and Google Fu is weak these days. There is the possibility that the Bowfin got the bus with with her deck gun. However there was an incident in which an American sub fired a torpedo at a small coastal vessel close inshore. The torpedo missed the vessel, ran up a shallow beech, and hit a train engine. I can't find the record though so I'm going to call it legend.

5

There was a case where a sub sent a party ashore in rubber boats at night in Japan, and set an explosive charge on a railroad track and blew up a train. The train ended up on their battle flag.

But they didn't do it with a torpedo.

6 Russians attacked coastal guns with torpedos when retaking Novorossiysk, apparently with some success, although mostly from gun crews being thrown around by the blast rather than destroying actual guns and encampments.

7

It's certainly true that torpedoes have been used for things other than sinking ships.

They were the preferred weapon for destroying dams, for instance. Or would have been except that everyone defended against them with torpedo nets.

But I don't think I've heard of a case where someone deliberately tried to hit something well above water line by shooping a torpedo up to shore and trying to make it jump above water line. They just weren't that kind of projectile, not to mention being too damned expensive for that kind of crap.

If a sub saw a train ashore, it would be more likely to fire on it with the deck gun. I think that story is apocryphal, likely caused by someone seeing the battle flag I talked about and making up their own story about how it happened.

8 Well, OK, maybe the Russians did it. But it's not the kind of thing the Americans did.

9 Ah, found the story on Wikipedia. Evidently the torpedo was a miss, it exploded upon hitting a dock, and the bus was blown into the water. Still counts! ;p