Essex (CVA 9) - Naval Cruise Book

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DEPARTMENT HEADS CDR P. N. MACDONALD, Engineering

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y . 2. A wooded screw steamer was the next ESSEX. She had a tonnage of 615 and a length of 185 feet. Hers was a relatively quiet life, although there were voyages to Liberia and the Caroline Islands. In the Carolines she investigated the re- ported massacre of Spaniards and gave protection to American missionariesy In 1930 she was sold. 1 The CVA-9, built in Newport News. Virginia, was the first of a class of huge carriers that were to prove surprisingly adaptable to the needs of modern war. Not a single .member of the ESSEX class has even been sunk. Called to the Pacific to participate in the mounting offensive against the Japanese, her air group struck at Marcus Island in the morning darkness of 31 August 1943 and helped inflict complete destruction on the enemy's air facilities and installations. Then followed successful attacks on Wake Island and on the concentration of Japanese ships in Rabaul Harbor. In the Gilberts the ESSEX engaged in her first amphibious support operation, paving the way for Marine landings. But the Japanese were well fortified in their dugouts, and repeated aerial attacks, while destroying surface installations, did little to wipe out the thousands of fanatical defenders who made the island of Tarawa the scene of one of history's bloodiest battles. There followed strikes against Truk and Saipan. In 1944, she hit the Palaus, Nansei Shoto, Formosa, Philippines, and supported the invasion of the Marianas. One day in November of that year an enemy suicide plane plunged down onto the forward port flight deck, bursting into a tremendous gasoline explosion which killed 15 men and destroyed a gun mount. This was her only material casualty of the war. Next year she sent air attacks against China, Hong Kong, the Japanese mainland, and the islands of Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Back in Bremerton, Washington, after the war, the ESSEX was decommissioned. Following two years of rest at Bremerton remodeling began there in '49, then recommissioning in '51 in time to enter the l'Cold War conflict in Korean waters. On her first cruise of the war she made a total of 6,600 sorties against North Korean and Red Chinese forces, destroying not only numerous bridges, buildings, and rail cars but 1,800 Communist troops. This record merely confirmed her title earned years before as the Fightin'est Ship in the Fleet . It was during this period that, for the first time on any carrier, the deadly FZH Banshee twin-jet lighter was launched on combat strikes. In March of '52 she returned to San Diego for three months prior' to the second battle cruise of the war. Back in action, the ESSEX exceeded her previous score of sorties by hurling off her deck a total of 7,606 which spread devastation all the way from the front lines to the Yalu River in Korea. Then, a cease fire was negotiated. The third and fourth Far East cruises since recommissioning took place in '53-'54 and '54-'55. In the last cruise she par- ticipated in the Tachen Islands evacuation. Then, once more to Bremerton for a seven month remodeling that ended in March 1956, after which the ESSEX made visits to Guam and the Phillippines. When her home port became Mayport, Florida, she sailed in the summer of '57 around stormy cape Horn to the Atlantic, making several stops along the way. In the fall of that year came a NATO exercise in the North Atlantic, with visits to the British Isles. February of 1958 saw her off on her first Mediterranean cruise under Captain Thomas A. Christopher, which was to last eight months. In the middle of July the president of Lebanon made an appeal for American military intervention in support of the unstable government, and with characteristic speed the ESSEX pulled up anchor at Athens and steamed down to Beirut to lend aerial support for the Marine Landings. It is to this memorable cruise, with all its associated ports of call and ad- ventures, along with the labor and despair and humor of the shipis three thousand souls, that the present cruise book is dedicated. 4 7

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