Shangri La (CV 38) - Naval Cruise Book

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he has served aboard all of the original IEIVG carriers in the United States Navy, Langley, Wrz'ghlt, Lexington, Ranger and Saratoga, commencing World War Il as Executive Officer of the latter. The Shangrz'-La proceeded to the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington, for drydocking and availability during Christmas of 1945. Many of her personnel enjoyed week-end trips to the nearby Cascade Mountains for skiing trips, while others scoured the beaches of Puget Sound for clams and oysters. The Shangrz'-La spent New Year's Eve steaming south along the Oregon coastline en route to Panama and carrier-pilot qualilication trials off Norfolk. Once again new Tigercats landed aboard her broad decks but trials were cut short by orders to proceed to the West Coast for a new duty, the atomic bomb tests at Bikini. Returning to San Diego via Panama Canal, she spent April and May of l946 practicing with radio-controlled drones, launched from the Shangrz'-La flight deck and maneuvered by mother planes in rehearsals for Operations Cross- roads. On May Zlst, she departed from San Diego with a deckload of drones, en route to Roi Island, Kwajalein Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, main base for the Bikini tests. Dick Haymes Broadcast - Navy Day, 1945.

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'i x S 2 K fx E F -4 4, Mount Rainier -- Recreation Trip - December, 1945. OPERATION CROSSROADS After a War in which sea and air power Were the controlling factors in the success of any operation, it Was inevitable that the question of fleet vulnerability to the atomic bomb should be settled before disarmament was completed. The Joint Chiefs of Staf directed Admiral W. H. P. Blandy to form Joint Task Force One, composed of Army, Navy, and civilian scientists, for the pur- pose of testing the atomic bomb against naval vessels and military ground equip- ment. Admiral Blandy is the Navy's foremost expert on ordnance, having served as Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, which provides the Navy with guns and mounts, armor, projectiles, bombs, fire control and optical equipment, torpedoes, mines, depth charges, etc. Admiral Blandy named the project Operation Crossroads, because it was apparent that Warfare, perhaps civilization itself, had been brought to a turning point by this revolutionary Weapon. The theory of atomic energy dates back to Antoine Henri Bequerel's dis-