On March 19, 1945, the
aircraft carrier USS Franklin,
after enduring a fierce Japanese
assault, was a smoldering wreck.
The ship’s captain, a fierce
disciplinarian hated by many
of his men, studied
the damage done only
miles away from the
Japanese mainland.
Her flight deck, once
bustling with aircraft, lay
in ruins, consumed by
fires and explosions. The
hangar bays were now
eerie chambers of charred
ruins, and gaping
holes marred her sides.
Amidst this
devastation, the ship's
survival seemed an
impossible miracle.
With the large majority
of her crewmembers
gone, it was up to a
small group of men to
steer their beloved
aircraft carrier home
more than 12,000 miles
under her own power.
From the Caroline Islands, then
across the Pacific to Pearl Harbor,
and then all the way to
the Brooklyn Navy Yard,
USS Franklin became
the ship that wouldn’t sink.
First Section
On December 7, 1942, the
first anniversary of Pearl Harbor,
the aircraft carrier USS
Franklin was laid down.
Named in honor of the
American founding father,
Benjamin Franklin, the
ship was constructed to
the Essex-class standard,
weighing 27,100 tons
under standard load
and over 800 feet long,
and hosted a complement
of 3,448 personnel.
By June 1944,
following shakedown and
training exercises,
Franklin was on
her way to Enewetak
Atoll, where she was thrust
straight into action,
performing sorties on the
Bonin islands. Following
this, she and her crew
supported the assault
on the Mariana Islands,
a crucial Pacific
campaign where U.S. forces
significantly diminished
Japanese defenses.
As the Allies got
closer and closer
to the mainland,
Franklin‘s aircraft,
a blend of fighters,
torpedo bombers, and dive
bombers, operated over
Iwo Jima, Chichi Jima,
and Haha Jima,
working to neutralize
the islands’ military
infrastructure.
In July, as the sun
blazed over the Pacific,
USS Franklin unleashed
a fury of air strikes
against Guam's
defenses, softening the
ground for the
impending US assault.
Her aircraft then
provided fire support to the
troops and was crucial
in getting a foothold.
With Guam under
control, she set her sights
on the Palau Islands,
orchestrating air
strikes and capturing
the enemy's hideouts
through the eyes of
aerial reconnaissance.
All this was achieved in the
carrier’s first month of combat.
In August, following
maintenance, Franklin
resumed operations
around the Bonin Islands,
with her aircraft
targeting airfields, vessels,
and enemy planes,
also conducting aerial
reconnaissance. By
September, after resupplying
in Saipan, she supported
the Peleliu invasion.
After a stop at Manus
Island for supplies,
Franklin, now the flagship
of Task Group 38.4,
returned to the
Palau area, continuing
patrols and launching
night fighters.
Second Section
Following Peleliu, the USS Franklin
made her way to the Philippines,
where she helped
soften enemy positions
during the iconic
battle of Leyte Gulf.
During this crucial
battle, her deck
edge elevator was hit by a bomb,
injuring 22 crew members and
taking the lives of three more.
Much of the Philippines was
covered with Japanese airbases,
a serious threat to
any land invasion.
While combating
this threat, Franklin
and the other vessels
in her task force often
came under heavy attack
from kamikaze aircraft.
In mid-October 1944,
a wounded Japanese
Mitsubishi G4M bomber
went down fighting
when it turned toward Franklin in a
kamikaze attempt. Reacting quickly,
it veered into the
flight deck but only
skimmed it and caused
minimal damage.
During the actual invasion of the
Philippines, Franklin downed over
10 Japanese planes.
By then, the carrier was
known affectionately
to her men as “Big Ben.”
Her most significant
contribution came
on October 24, when
her aircraft attacked
the Japanese First
Raiding Force, helping sink
the destroyer Wakaba,
then as part of the team
that brought down the
Yamato-class Musashi, the
heaviest and most
powerful battleship ever built.
A few days later,
Franklin and three other
carriers became the
focus of a Japanese
kamikaze attack.
While most of the aircraft
were shot down, a
Japanese aircraft slammed
through the flight deck
and crashed through
to the galley deck,
taking down 56 men.
While Big Ben had
already seen a lot
of action in only a
couple of months,
her biggest trial
was still to come.
Third Section
On the heels of the
attack, Franklin and her men
traveled to Ulithi Atoll
for some light repairs.
At Ulithi, Captain Leslie
E. Gehres assumed
command as the carrier's
commanding officer.
A World War 1 veteran
and a naval aviator since
the 1920s, Gehres was
known as a disciplinarian.
According to Historian
Joseph Springer, one of
the foremost experts
on this ship’s exploits,
when the new skipper
introduced himself to the
crew during the
change-of-command ceremony,
Gehres chastized his men for
the kamikaze attack: [QUOTE]
“‘It was your fault
because you didn’t shoot
[the kamikaze] down.
You didn’t do your duty;
you’re incompetent,
lazy, and careless.
Evidently you don’t
know your jobs,
and I’m going to do my
best to shape up this crew”.
The men, many of whom
had lost comrades during
the tragic incident, were
incensed that their new
commanding officer’s
first words to them were
insults. According to
some accounts, hundreds
of sailors jumped ship
in Washington when the
carrier made port there
for more shipyard repairs.
While some left
because they believed
Big Ben was jinxed
following the strike,
others escaped Captian
Gehre’s rumored toxicity.
On February 2,
1945, back in service,
Franklin joined a
powerful naval force
gathering for an attack
on the Japanese homeland.
A month later, she was
finally off the Japanese
coast and ready to
strike against Okinawa.
Fourth Section
After three years
of war, the Imperial
Japanese Navy had
become a shadow of
its former strength.
Naval Intelligence
estimated that the
Japanese were down
to 2,000 to 3,000 combat aircraft
and even fewer qualified pilots.
But the Allies were wrong.
The Japanese, realizing
that an invasion was
inevitable, had secretly
amassed nearly 6,000
bombers, fighters,
and torpedo bombers
and dispersed
around the countryside,
out of sight and
out of action, waiting
for the perfect moment to strike.
On March 19,
1945, a small flight of
carrier bombers
dashed out to show the
overconfident Americans that Japan
wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
In the earliest hours of that
morning, USS Franklin and her
battle group began
attacks on the Japanese
home islands to knock
out enemy air power.
By dawn, she had become
the United States aircraft
carrier closest to the
Japanese mainland during
the war, coming within
50 miles of shore. As
such, this left her in
a dangerous position.
While the carrier
had been called to
battle stations 12
times in only six
hours between midnight and dawn,
by 7:00am, as the sun slowly rose,
all except for the gun crews
were allowed to step down.
Not even five minutes
later, aircraft carrier
USS Hancock spotted
an aircraft approaching
the group and quickly broadcast
the sighting to the other ships.
But it was too late,
and the aircraft, likely
a Yokosuka D4Y Judy
dive bomber or an Aichi D3A
Val dive bomber,
broke through the clouds
and made a low-level
run on the Franklin,
dropping two 550-pound
bombs just before
it was shot down by
an American aircraft.
Fifth Section
The first 500-pound
armor-piercing bomb
struck the tightly
packed flight deck,
filled with fully armed
and fueled strike
aircraft. The second
went through the flight
deck and down into the
hangar bay, where even
more planes were waiting
for an elevator trip up,
The resulting conflagration
led to more than eight
hours of explosions
and fire all over the ship.
The explosions severed
many of the water
lines that were
needed for firefighting
and also took the
lives of the majority
of the damage control
team. The sheer
heat melted electric
wires, knocked out
all the ship’s
communication network,
and ruptured fuel lines, causing
gasoline to spray onto the fires.
More than 800 of
the carrier’s brave
sailors became one
with the tortured ship,
while hundreds
jumped into the sea to
cool themselves
down, trying to swim in
the frigid waters into
other vessels who’d
come to help the
obviously doomed ship.
But in the midst of
chaos, many of USS
Franklin’s men would
rise to the challenge.
Upon discovering 300
of his fellow Americans
trapped below deck,
Lieutenant Donald A. Gray,
a bright engineer who trusted his
knowledge of the
ship’s layout bravely
made his way through
dark, debris-filled
corridors until he
found an escape route,
and made three trips back
and forth to the trapped men.
According to Gray’s Medal
of Honor citation: [QUOTE]
“Despite menacing
flames, flooding water,
and the ominous threat
of sudden additional
explosions, on each
occasion calmly leading
his men through
the blanketing pall of
smoke until the last
one had been saved.”
Sixth Section
As the efforts to battle
the fires and sort out
the chaos continued, at
about 7:30am, Rear Admiral
Ralph Davison, the
commander of Franklin’s
task group, told Captain
Gehres: [QUOTE]
“Captain, I think there’s no hope
[..]I think you should consider
abandoning ship—those
fires seem to be out of control.”
Gehres nodded but
remained silent and stoic,
and Admiral Davison was transferred
to the destroyer Miller.
Two hours later, a light cruiser
approached the wounded ship,
spraying water on
the carrier, and began
to take in as many
Frankliners as possible.
Suddenly, the
ammunition for Franklin’s
five-inch antiaircraft
guns exploded.
With more fires than ever, the men
still in the engine and steering
rooms finally decided to
flee the unbearable heat.
Only 52 miles from
the Japanese shores,
USS Franklin, dead
in the water with a
13-degree starboard
list, had become the
most heavily damaged
carrier of the war.
But while the Japanese had sent
more bombers out to finish the job,
each was shot down or
chased away by other ships.
In a couple of hours, only
a few hundred uninjured
men could still do damage
control, rescue trapped
shipmates, and
counteract the ship’s list out
of a crew and air group
of nearly 4,000 men.
Seventh Section
Despite the losses,
damage and Admiral
Davison’s suggestion
to abandon the ship,
Captain Gehres refused to give up.
When heavy cruiser
Pittsburgh arrived,
her men were able
to attach a tow line
to Franklin. The cruiser
then worked the carrier
around and headed with
her in tow toward Ulithi.
Just then, the ship’s heart
started to beat once again.
As the sun set on that
terrible day, the fires
aboard Big Ben had been
beaten back enough, and
the heat had decreased
to the point that men could
finally get through to
one of the ship’s boilers.
By 10:00pm, that boiler
was lit and running.
Franklin’s engines
began slowly turning, and,
to the surprise of
many, the tow speed
increased to six
knots. When additional
boilers were brought
into operation, and at
noon the next day, the
tow line was dropped.
Franklin was now progressing
under her own power.
During the night, the
Franklin increased her
speed to 18 knots.
While fires still burned
on the gallery deck and in Captain
Gehres’s cabin, the gyrocompasses,
search radar, phones,
and even some of the
carrier’s guns were
working once again.
As the night went
on, brave individuals
rescued suffocating
crew members from
smoky, hot compartments. Engineers
reignited a boiler,
restoring power.
Despite enemy pursuit,
USS Franklin reached Ulithi,
leaving a haunting impression
on nearby American ships.
Official casualty figures set her
losses at 724 men and 265 wounded,
second only to that
of the battleship USS
Arizona, sunk in the 1941
attack on Pearl Harbor.
Final section
When Big Ben miraculously arrived
at Ulithi for emergency repairs,
she was ordered to
steam for Pearl Harbor
and then to make the
12,000-mile trip back
to America’s Brooklyn
Navy Yard, where Navy
planners, mostly in
an act of defiance,
ordered that she be repaired and
returned to duty
as soon as possible.
Throughout the saga
of the ship, Captain
Gehres continued
to complain loudly
about those crewmen
who had jumped ship
during the disaster.
During this time,
he created what he
called the 704 Club, a
group made up of the
men who stayed with the
ship and him, and he
refused to recommend
anyone not in the
club for a citation.
The Essex-class carrier arrived
in Brooklyn on April 28, 1945,
where repairs began
almost immediately.
According to some
workers in the navy
yard, often, there
were sounds while
aboard the carrier
without a source. These
would range from men
talking and laughing,
horsing around like
guys do, as their spirits
had remained on
their beloved Big Ben.
The war ended before
the repairs were completed,
and Franklin was decommissioned
in 1947 and scrapped years later.
Despite his toxic
leadership, Leslie Gehres
received the Navy
Cross, the branch’s most
important award
for martial valor, and
he received a
promotion to rear admiral.
In addition to the two
Medals of Honor that
were awarded, 17 other
men were awarded the
Navy Cross. Other
decorations for these
brave sailors included
22 Silver Stars,
115 Bronze Stars, 234 letters of
commendation, and
1,110 Purple Hearts.
In the end, USS
Franklin’s men became the
most decorated crew
in United States Naval
history. Yet the
March 19, 1945 attack
was far from the
navy’s finest hour.