A Brief History
On May 11, 1945, the Essex Class U.S. aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill was struck by two Japanese Kamikaze (suicide) aircraft during the battle for Okinawa. In spite of severe damage and 346 fatalities, the Bunker Hill was not lost as were none of the 24 Essex Class carriers built during World War II.
Digging Deeper
It became apparent early in the Pacific theater of the war that the battleship no longer reigned supreme, and it was the aircraft carrier that would take up the mantle as a navy’s capital ship.
Seeing an extreme need for many carrier groups, the United States went on an aircraft-carrier building binge, ordering 32 ships of the Essex Class. These large “fleet” carriers came in 2 varieties, the long (888 feet OA length) and the short (870 feet OA length). As the war began to wind down, 6 of the ships ordered were cancelled, and the construction of 2 others was stopped.
Only 93 feet wide, these ships lacked the characteristic angled flight deck seen on modern aircraft carriers, a concession necessary so that they would be able to fit through the locks of the Panama Canal, an important consideration for the United States Navy since this was the way it shuttled ships back and forth between the 2 oceans. Still, the ships were fast (32.7 kts) and had an astounding 20,000 nautical mile (NM) range. With a crew of about 3,000 sailors and airmen, the capacity to carry 90 to 100 aircraft, and bristling with massive anti-aircraft armaments (12 x 5” guns, 32 to 72 x 40mm cannons and 55 to 76 x 20mm cannons), these leviathans could take the fight to any enemy in the world and defend themselves as well. A normal 90-aircraft load would consist of 36 Grumman Hellcat fighters, 36 Curtiss Helldiver dive bombers and 18 Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers. (Some ships later carried F4U Corsair fighters.)
Displacing only about 36,000 tons when loaded, the Essex Class lacked the heavy armor of a battleship as this protection had been traded for speed, range and capacity. Although the lack of armor resulted in heavy damage at times, the fact that every Essex Class ship survived every battle vindicates the designers’ compromises.
After World War II, the remaining Essex Class ships were modernized with angled flight decks and apparatus for launching and recovering jet aircraft. The Boxer, the Princeton and the Valley Forge were left unconverted, retaining their straight flight decks and instead modified for use as helicopter amphibious assault ships and for carrying U.S. Marines. These served until 1970 when they were replaced by purpose-built amphibious helicopter carriers. 11 Essex Class ships served in the Korean War and 13 in the Viet Nam War. Some of them even served as recovery vessels for early space flights. Certainly the most prolific class of capital ships ever built, the last Essex Class carrier stayed in service until 1991, well into the “modern” era of nuclear-powered, gigantic, angled-deck carriers.
Today 4 of the old girls remain as museum ships, the Lexington (in Corpus Christi), the Intrepid (in New York City), the Hornet (in Alameda) and the Yorktown (in Mount Pleasant, SC).
It is hard to imagine anyone proposing another class of capital ships as “History’s Greatest,” but someone likely will. Question for students (and subscribers): Please feel free to nominate a class of ships you think are “greater” or more important to history than the Essex Class in the comments section below this article. We will stick with these classics.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Backer, Steve. Shipcraft 12 – Essex Class Aircraft Carriers of the Second World War. Seaforth Publishing / Classic Warships Publishing, 2015.
The featured image in this article, official U.S. Navy photograph 80-G-323712 from U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command of USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) hit by two Kamikazes in 30 seconds on 11 May 1945 off Kyushu, is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain in the United States.
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