Hancock (CV 19) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 16 text:

H elldiver Comes to an Embarrassing Stop fit vastly different requirements. Our first lessons were learned from the ex-collier Jupiter which became the U.S.S. Langley CV-l. From experiments with her the big Saratoga and Lexington conversions were 'made easier. The former, with her l80,000 horsepower electric drive, was the forerunner of a proud fleet of fast fleet carriers. The pace was set by the early Marshall and Gilbert raids in February of i942 when Admiral Halsey took the Enterprise and Yorktown on fast hit-and-run strikes against a numerically superior enemy fleet with its network of man- dated islands. ln laying down our strategy for the early months of the war our naval leaders had chosen t-he weapon which could best retard the Japanese line of aggression until such a time as our crippled fleet could be repaired and augmented by new units. As a result of this decision the Navy Department, on January l0, l942, ordered work halted on the cruiser Amsterdam and her conversion to a new class of carrier, the CVL, or light fleet carrier. Within a few months eight more cruisers in various stages of construction were added to the list of CVL's under construction. The carrier had become a top weapon of defense, as well as offense, receiving top priority in our shipbuilding program. For nearly a year workmen labored, riveting and welding reverse-frame bars

Page 15 text:

for whom the original Hancock, one of thirteen frigates authorized by the Continental Congress on December 13, 1775, was named. Her namesake, John Hancock, was chairman of the committee which authorized our first Naval vessels in October of the same year. On January 26, 1943, the keel was laid for the U.S.S. Hancock CV-19, eleventh in the proud line of carriers which made their debut with the commissioning of the U.S.S. Essex CV-9 on December 31, 1942. The new Hancock was originally laid down as the U.S.S. Ticonderoga while the Ticonderoga was laid down as the Hancock. A prominelnt insurance company is understood to have offered to sell enough War Bonds to pay for the entire cost of the ship if it were built in Quincy, Massachusetts, instead of Newport News, Virginia. As a consequence the names of the two sister ships were exchanged while agents of the insurance company com- menced a highly successful War Bond drive. As a result of this drive the total reached was sufficient not only to cover the building costs, but to pay opera- tion costs for the first year of service. The Essex-class carriers were designed from keel up as flat tops , combining many superior features of compartmentation and plane-handling facilities which were too expensive or too difficult to alter in the earlier converted cruisers and battle-cruisers. ln our previous carrier building programs naval architects had been forced to redesign partially completed cruiser hulls to Fzfrst Landing, May 27, 19.44. TBM Avenger Piloted by Coindn W. S. Butts, U SN

Page 17 text:

Too Low and T00 Fast Often Ends Like This and main frame bars to the keel, fitting the sheer strokes and garboard strokes and enclosing the whole in a steel envelope of shell plating. Com- partment after compartment, deck after deck, the carrier began to take shape. Week after week and month after month went by-tall, spider-like cranes carried heavy machinery to engineering spaces, huge precision-built steel sections were lowered into place to form traverse bulkheads, dividing the 855-foot hull into thousands of cellular compartments. Miles of electrical wiring were installed, connecting intricate mechanisms of gunnery, engi- neering and navigation to their components in far-removed areas. On the 24th of January, l944, Mrs. DeWitt Clinton Ramsey, wife of Admiral Ramsey, U.S.N., Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, christened l-lull Number l5l l, the U.S.S. Hancock, as the big flat t-op slid ponderously down the ways into the cold waters of the Fore River. From ships at sea, the farms of Iowa, factories and offices, men arrived to man this new ship. The pre-commissioning detail of the Hannah settled down to the tremendous job of organization and familiarization necessary before this vessel could become a workable unit of the Pacific Fleet. With a sprinkling of Regular Navy personnel to season the overwhelming majority of Reserves , many of whom had never been to sea, the task began. Y ,ll ',: gms f -tl' 1 fi,