Hancock (CV 19) - Naval Cruise Book

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Avengers Off Okinawa Gimto Typical Village On Olciiiafwa

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Exit M it Kamikaze destroyers joined the carriers and battleships in making room for every veteran they could crowd aboard for the trip stateside . During the Magic Carpet runs the Hancock herself lost many of the crew that had been with her through the months of toil, labor and success since commissioning On December lO, l945, Captain Horace B. Butterfield, U.S.N., relieved Captain Gallery and took over the helm as the Hannah's fourth commanding officer. Under his guidance the Hannah completed her cruising career and arrived in Seattle Washington, on May 2, l946, to be inactivated and retired to the l9th Fleet The Hannah has been scraped and painted with special preservatives to pre- vent corrosion and prolong her natural life. She has been towed from the Naval Station at Seattle's Pier 9l to the Everett Pacific Shipyards in Everett Washington, for repairs-to the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton for drydocking and overhaul and finally to a pier at Mukilteo, Washington, for berthing as a unit of the inactive l9th Fleet On July l5th, l946, the U.S.S. Hancock was -officially awarded the Navy Unit Commendation for outstanding heroism in action. Two months later

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Fighter Burns on H0m'rLcih's Deck she was formally inactivated and her personnel reduced to five officers and fifty enlisted men who will tend the hundreds of machines that keep 'her compartments dry and rust-free. Today she is one of many proud ships moored along the thousand-mile shore- line of Puget Sound, a memorial to the men who trod her decks in the hope of providing a just and lasting peace. At dusk as the sun dips behind the snow-capped Olympic Mountains to the westward it sets upon a nation which has yet to know a conqueror's tread. The price of that freedom is so great that if the lowering of colors each eve- ning were a tribute to a single fallen hero of World War ll it would take a year to honor the Hannah's own casualties and more than eight centuries would elapse ere homage were paid in full. May we build no earthly monuments to those who lie beneath the far Pacific, or on some foreign shore, save the monument of a lasting peace for posterity -should we falter in -our course may those ghostly ships, rising and falling on the eternal tide, serve as a reminder of our obligation to them.