Hancock (CV 19) - Naval Cruise Book

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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,

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Stacked Deck Within a few short weeks, the Hannah was formally accepted into the United States Navy by Rear Admiral R. A. Theobald, U.S.N., Commandant of the First Naval District. The ceremony took place on the hangar deck at l745 on April l5, l944, less than fifteen months after the keel was laid. Hon. Leverett Saltonstall, Governor of Massachusetts, was present and addressed the guests and crew. Following the playing of the national anthem Admiral Theobald turned the ship over to Captain Fred C. Dickey, U.S.N., her first commanding officer. Carriers and planes were not strangers to Captain Dickey who began his flying career as a Naval aviator during World War l. From l9l8 to the Second World War, Captain Dickey 'has flown almost every type of naval plane from the early DeHaviland lDHl observation planes to the clumsy, slow biplanes aboard the cruiser Marblehead in the second Nicaraguan Campaign and in l93l he was ordered to the new cruiser Chicago as Senior Aviator. After several years with shore based patrol planes and various