This is a list of frigates of World War II. The list includes frigate-class ships, such as US Navy "destroyer escorts", and British "escort destroyers" and sloops but US Navy "escort destroyers", are destroyer-class vessels and found in that list. For the Royal Navy, the distinction between frigate and destroyer was whether the vessel carried torpedo tubes. The Type III Hunt-class destroyers were equipped with torpedo tubes; all Hunt-class were capable of 27 knots compared to the 20 knots of the River-class frigates