USS Anzio (ACV/CVE/CVHE-57), known as USS Coral Sea until September 1944, was the third of fifty s built for the United States Navy during World War II. She was the first U.S. Navy vessel to be named after the Battle of the Coral Sea, a major naval engagement in the Pacific War, as well as the first to be named for the Battle of Anzio, an amphibious landing in the Italian campaign.
In December 1942, she was laid down in Vancouver, Washington, by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company. She was named Alikula Bay in January 1943, renamed Coral Sea in April, launched in May, and commissioned in August. She participated in the Battle of Makin, the Battle of Kwajalein, the Western New Guinea campaign, and the Battle of Saipan. While she was conducting preparatory airstrikes for the Battle of Guam, her engines failed, forcing her to return to the West Coast for repairs. In September 1944, she was renamed Anzio, and took part in the Philippines campaign, the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the Battle of Okinawa. During this period, in December 1944, she weathered Typhoon Cobra and aided in the search for survivors. As Anzio, she operated primarily in an anti-submarine role, contributing to the sinking of five Japanese submarines. After the war, she participated in Operation Magic Carpet, repatriating U.S. servicemen from around the Pacific. She was decommissioned in August 1946 and mothballed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. She was sold for scrap in 1959.
Design and description
Anzio was a Casablanca-class escort carrier, the most numerous type of aircraft carrier ever built. They were intended to be used for anti-submarine warfare, coming into service in late 1943, by which time the U-boats were already in retreat. Some did see service in the Atlantic, but the majority were utilized in the Pacific, ferrying aircraft, providing logistics support, and conducting close air support for the island-hopping campaigns. They were built on the standardized Type S4-S2-BB3 hull, a lengthened variant of the hull, and specifically designed to be mass-produced using welded prefabricated sections. This allowed them to be produced at unprecedented speeds: the final ship of her class, , was delivered to the Navy just 101 days after the laying of her keel.
Anzio was long overall and at the waterline. She had a beam of , and a draft of . She displaced standard, which increased to with a full load. To carry out flight operations, the ship had a hangar deck and a flight deck. Her compact size necessitated the installation of an aircraft catapult, positioned at her bow, and there were two aircraft elevators to facilitate movement of aircraft between the flight and hangar deck: one each fore and aft. She had two Skinner Unaflow reciprocating steam engines delivering to two propellers for a top speed of . Her armament consisted of one /38 caliber dual-purpose gun, eight Bofors guns, and twelve Oerlikon cannons, supported by an SG surface-search radar and an SK air-search radar. By 1945, the standard armament for the Casablanca-class carriers had grown to twenty Oerlikon cannons and sixteen Bofors guns.
Construction Anzio was laid down on 12 December 1942 as MCE hull 1094, the third of fifty Casablanca-class escort carriers. Her initial hull symbol ACV-57 designated her as an auxiliary aircraft carrier. On 22 January 1943, she received her initial name of Alikula Bay, her namesake being a bay on the northwest coast of Coronation Island, Alaska. She was subsequently renamed Coral Sea on 3 April, becoming the first ship to be named after the Battle of the Coral Sea. Her hull was launched on 1 May, sponsored by Martha Richards Fletcher, the wife of Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher. On 15 July, the U.S. Navy revised the classification of its escort carriers to reflect their combatant status, providing Coral Sea with her wartime hull symbol of CVE-57. Problems with her boilers twice delayed her commissioning, but she was transferred to the Navy on 27 August. In total, her construction and outfitting cost $9,627,180 ().
Service history Gilbert and Marshall Islands
Coral Sea spent much of September 1943 being fitted out at U.S. Naval Ship Yard Tongue Point in Astoria, Oregon. She then underwent a shakedown cruise down the West Coast, heading to Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California. En route, gunnery drills, crew training, and lecture classes were conducted. She arrived at San Diego on 8 October, taking on Composite Squadron (VC) 33 for a period of flight training off the California coast. On 25 October, she departed for Pearl Harbor to join Rear Admiral Henry M. Mullinnix's Carrier Division 24, which consisted of Coral Sea along with her sister ships and . The newly formed carrier division participated in training exercises and drills until early November. They were then assigned to support the 27th Infantry Division as it invaded Makin Island, as part of the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign. She sortied from Pearl Harbor for Makin on 10 November.
At 05:00 on 20 November, the bombardment of Makin began, marking the first major U.S. thrust into the central Pacific. Coral Seas aircraft aided the operation, providing close air support and bombing Japanese positions. The inexperience of the aircrews was evident, with little of the air-ground coordination that would become a characteristic in later American amphibious operations. Furthermore, the three escort carriers of Carrier Division 24 were plagued by accidents that killed four airmen and six deck personnel and caused the loss of sixteen aircraft.
With the islands secured, U.S. naval forces began retiring, but Carrier Division 24 stayed behind to suppress pockets of resistance. On 24 November, the Japanese Kaidai-type submarine fired a set of four Type 95 torpedoes towards the side of the unsuspecting task force. Two of the torpedoes narrowly missed Coral Sea, but one torpedo hit Liscome Bay at 05:10, setting off her munitions stores and blowing apart the entire stern of the carrier. The tremendous explosion sent debris hurtling onto the surrounding ships, including Coral Sea, which was off her port beam. Coral Seas navigation officer estimated that debris was shot up to high, while one of her sailors reported being hit by a fire extinguisher originating from Liscome Bay. Twenty-three minutes later, Liscome Bay slipped beneath the waves. Coral Seas War History describes her crew standing in "stunned silence", staring at the empty waters where Carrier Division 24's flagship once was.
On 28 November, Coral Sea left Makin. She reached Pearl Harbor on 5 December, where she took on passengers and aircraft to ferry back to the West Coast. She arrived at Alameda, California, on 14 December, where her aircraft were replenished. Leaving Alameda on 22 December, she entered Pearl Harbor on 28 December, joining Corregidor and , the new flagship of Carrier Division 24. There, she prepared for the impending assault on Kwajalein.
Coral Sea was underway on 3 January 1944, conducting exercises off Hawaii through early January. After a final fitting out, she sailed out on 22 January in Task Group 52.9, arriving off Kwajalein on 31 January, the day of the landings. Her aircraft flew anti-submarine patrols, provided an air screen for the invasion fleet, and launched strikes in support of American forces. On 24 February, Carrier Division 24 set course to support operations on Eniwetok. En route on 25 February, Coral Sea and Corregidor were both recalled to Pearl Harbor.
Solomon Islands and New Guinea After a layover at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea got underway again on 11 March and proceeded to the Solomon Islands. She anchored at Tulagi on 21 March, refueling and resupplying before setting off on 30 March for Emirau Island alongside Corregidor. On 2 April, they relieved Manila Bay and , which had been supporting the 4th Marine Regiment as they landed on Emirau. Her time at Emirau was uneventful, save for a Mitsubishi G4M medium bomber shot down by two of her fighters on 6 April. She concluded her tour at Emirau on 11 April, returning to Tulagi on 15 April and leaving the next day to assist in the Western New Guinea campaign. On 19 April, she joined Task Group 78.2, which was formed to cover the landings at Aitape. Her aircraft commenced strikes on D-Day, 22 April, and found little opposition. Task Group 78.2 then relieved the Fast Carrier Task Force in supporting the landings at Tanahmerah Bay and Humboldt Bay, but they found similarly sparse resistance. With the beachhead secured, Coral Sea entered Seeadler Harbor on 4 May, where her engines were evaluated. She returned to Espiritu Santo on 7 May for extensive repairs to her forward main engine, involving the replacement of several broken piston rings. It was not until 2 June that she was deemed combat-ready again.
Mariana Islands
Following the completion of repairs, Coral Sea arrived on 8 June at Kwajalein, which was serving as the staging point for the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign. The invasion fleet sortied out on 10 June, and on 15 June, she provided air support for the initial landings on Saipan by the 2nd Marine Division. On 16 June, she was briefly dispatched for the planned recapture of Guam. En route, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance indefinitely postponed the landings on Guam after U.S. submarines spotted the 1st Mobile Fleet as it sortied into the Philippine Sea. Coral Sea returned to Saipan on the afternoon of 17 June.
Triggered by the Marianas invasion, Admiral Soemu Toyoda had put into motion Plan A-Go, which had been developed by Admiral Shigetarō Shimada, Chief of the Naval Staff. In accordance with the Imperial Japanese Navy's doctrine of Kantai Kessen, it anticipated a decisive naval action that would destroy the American fleet. To the west of Coral Sea and her fellow escort carriers, Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa's 1st Mobile Fleet would engage Spruance's Fifth Fleet from 19–20 June in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the largest carrier-to-carrier engagement in history. In conjunction with Plan A-Go, Shimada had drawn up Plan To-Go, which directed Vice Admiral Kakuji Kakuta's land-based aircraft of the 1st Air Fleet to destroy at least one-third of the American carriers prior to the decisive battle. Of the approximately 600 planes at hand for To-Go, 172 aircraft were based in the Mariana Islands, with the rest scattered throughout the Carolines–Philippines area, where the Japanese were expecting the next American campaign to take place. Although the 1st Air Fleet was well equipped with first-line aircraft, about half of its pilots were fresh from flight qualification, having had no live-fire aerial gunnery or dogfighting training.
On 17 June, 31 Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters, 17 Yokosuka D4Y Suisei dive bombers, and 2 Yokosuka P1Y Ginga bombers took off from Yap to strike Saipan. The Americans had picked up the raid on radar at 17:35, and the escort carriers scrambled a combined 46 fighters in response. However, the fighter direction was inaccurate, and only 9 managed to intercept. At Saipan, the Japanese attacked ships unloading in Charan Kanoa, but the raid was generally unsuccessful. Turning around, the Japanese raid made contact with the escort carriers at 18:48, around sunset. At 18:51, a Suisei targeted Coral Sea, but its aim was off and the bomb fell to her starboard quarter. Shortly afterwards, the Suisei went into the water behind the carrier. Two minutes later, a torpedo bomber approached from Coral Sea port at an altitude of . Hit by a flak explosion, it broke apart and careened into the water from Coral Sea. After a short lull, a disorganized attack was mounted by several remaining Japanese aircraft. Taken under fire by Coral Seas gunners, another plane was shot down from her port quarter.