CDR Salamander posts an iconic US Navy photo from late 1944, showing the unparalleled naval might of the American efforts against Japan. But, as with Bastiat’s famous economic essay, there are the obvious things we see and the important but unseen things that matter just as much:
Murderers’ Row. Ulithi anchorage, December 8th, 1944. Just three years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
One of the most iconic pictures of WWII.
The carriers are (from front to back): USS Wasp (CV-18), USS Yorktown (CV-10), USS Hornet (CV-12), USS Hancock (CV-19) and USS Ticonderoga (CV-14).
The oldest of those ships, Yorktown, was only 19 months old. The youngest, Hancock, was commissioned only a little under eight months earlier. All were laid down and took from a bit under three to a bit under four years to build.
Just a year prior, the US Navy was so short of aircraft carriers, it had to borrow a carrier from the Royal Navy.
At first glance, it appears to be a flex of American naval power at flood tide — the aircraft carrier’s unassailable invincibility manifest — and it is. However, when you dig deeper, it has a more important story. It gives a warning. It informs us today, if we are willing to listen.
It isn’t about the power of being the world’s greatest shipbuider, that we were. It isn’t about an unequalled ability to project national will across the Pacific like no nation ever has in human history, which it is.
No. That isn’t what it tells us that is most important.
As we have done more than once over the last two decades, we’re taking a holder of a front row seat on the Front Porch and CDR Salamander Plank Owner Sid’s comments, in this case from yesterday, and bringing it to a standalone post.
Most of this post is his. The insight certainly is.
The actual story this picture tells is much more sobering, right there in plain sight, but you can’t see it.
The reality is that on the day this picture was taken, the Fast Carrier Task Force (TF 38/58) was down an entire Task Group from where it started two months earlier.
USS Franklin (CV-13) was severely damaged on 27 OCT by kamikaze and had to return [to] CONUS for repairs.
USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24) was severely damaged in the same attack.
USS Princeton (CVL-23) was sunk on 24 OCT by a Judy dive bomber.
USS Essex (CV-9) had a devastating hit by a kamikaze on 24 NOV followed by a disabling machinery casualty requiring a trip back to CONUS for repairs.
USS Enterprise (CV-6) departed a few days earlier for repairs in Pearl Harbor.
All the carriers in this picture had been damaged to varying degrees. Damage that today would require a trip to the yard to fix, like the absent Enterprise and Essex.
For example Ticonderoga (fourth Essex in the line from the bottom) would take damage to her radar waveguides in January. That could not be repaired forward and she would have to return to Bremerton as well.
