USS Ommaney Bay (CVE–79) was a of the United States Navy, which served during World War II. It was named after Ommaney Bay, located at the south end of Baranof Island, Alaska. Launched in late 1943 and commissioned in early 1944, the ship took part in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign followed by several battles during the Philippines campaign in 1944 and early 1945. She was heavily damaged in a kamikaze attack in action preceding and linked to the launch of the Battle of Luzon and subsequently scuttled on 4 January 1945, with the loss of 95 men, including two men on board the destroyer escort who were killed by flying debris. She earned 2 battle stars whilst in service. In 2023, the Naval History and Heritage Command announced that Ommaney Bays wreck had been identified in the Sulu Sea.
Design and description
Ommaney Bay was a Casablanca-class escort carrier, the most numerous type of aircraft carriers ever built. The escort carrier programs were driven by the U.S. Navy's unpreparedness to meet the U-boat threat when it entered World War II in December 1941. During the first six months of the Second Happy Time, over 2,000,000 tons of shipping were sunk off the Eastern Seaboard by German submarines. The 1942 escort carrier program had already called for the conversion of twenty-four hulls into escort carriers, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that more were needed to stem the loss of shipping. It was against the backdrop of these losses that the industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, assisted by Roosevelt's advisor Thomas G. Corcoran, gave a presentation to the president for a carrier design by Gibbs & Cox that was to be produced at scale at his shipyards. On 8 June 1942, Roosevelt declared that he desired the construction of the Kaiser design, and after some discussion, it was decided that the program was to be overseen by the Maritime Commission, with the hulls built to standard merchant marine practice. Although Kaiser wished to build not less than a hundred of the design, an order of fifty ships was placed.
The Casablanca-class carriers came 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.
Ommaney Bay was long overall ( at the waterline), 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 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 was powered by four Babcock & Wilcox Express D boilers that raised of steam at . The steam generated by these boilers fed two Skinner Unaflow reciprocating steam engines, delivering to two propeller shafts. This allowed her to reach speeds of , with a cruising range of at . For armament, one /38 caliber dual-purpose gun was mounted on the stern. Additional anti-aircraft defense was provided by eight Bofors anti-aircraft guns in four twin mounts and twelve Oerlikon cannons mounted around the perimeter of the deck. By 1945, the standard armament for the Casablanca-class carriers had grown to twenty Oerlikon cannons and sixteen Bofors guns. The sensors onboard consisted of a SG surface-search radar and a SK air-search radar. In action, the Casablanca-class carriers were intended to function with a crew of 860. A typical embarked squadron consisted of sixteen Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters and twelve Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, stored in the hangar deck between the two elevators.
History Ommaney Bay was laid down on 6 October 1943 as MCE hull 1116, the twenty-fifth of fifty Casablanca-class escort carriers. Her hull was launched on 29 December, sponsored by Mrs P.K. Robottom. She was transferred to the Navy and commissioned on 11 February 1944 at 10:00. In total, her construction and outfitting cost $7,339,521 ().
She spent much of February 1944 being fitted out at U.S. Naval Ship Yard Tongue Point in Astoria, Oregon. She conducted sea trials in Puget Sound from 4 to 13 March, before proceeding south on 14 March. She arrived at Naval Air Station Alameda on 17 March, and sailed on 19 March for Brisbane, Australia, carrying passengers, aircraft, and supplies. She arrived in Brisbane on 7 April, left port on 12 April, and arrived in San Diego on 27 April. From 1–10 May, she conducted carrier qualification landings, drills and tests, spending the rest of the month moored for alterations and repairs. She sailed on 10 June, conducting a transport mission to Pearl Harbor. She arrived on 16 June, and until August, she trained air groups and squadrons off the Hawaiian coast. On 12 August, Ommaney Bay joined the escort carrier formation Task Unit 32.4.6, commanded by Rear Admiral William D. Sample. She then sailed to Tulagi, arriving on 24 August, where rehearsals were made for Operation Stalemate II, the invasion of the Palau Islands.
After the rehearsals were completed on 26 August, Ommaney Bay set off for the Palau Islands. From 11 September until 1 October, Ommaney Bay provided air cover for the fleet and close support strikes for the forces ashore. Her aircraft targeted Japanese anti-aircraft and artillery emplacements, strafed troop formations, and destroyed supply depots. In total, they expended 63 GP (general-purpose) bombs, 82 Mk.54 depth charges, 54 GP bombs, 233 GP bombs, 21 incendiary bombs, 149,060 .50 BMG rounds, and 9,000 .30-06 rounds. On 18 September 1944, a TBM-1C from Ommaney Bay, low on fuel, was the first aircraft to land onto Peleliu's airfield.
On 2 October, Ommaney Bay sailed to Manus Island to renew her depleted stock of fuel and ammunition. She departed to support the Battle of Leyte on 14 October, arrived off Leyte on 22 October, and joined Rear Admiral Felix Stump's Taffy 2 (TU 77.4.2). From 22–24 October, her aircraft attacked anti-aircraft emplacements, pillboxes, bridges, and Japanese positions. Over the night of 25 October, the escort carriers had received reports of the Battle of Surigao Strait, occurring about to their southwest. In response, Captain Howard Leyland Young, the commander of Ommaney Bay, had ordered some of her Avengers to be outfitted with torpedoes.
On 25 October, at 01:55, Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid ordered three searches at daybreak. Rear Admiral Stump received this order at 04:30, and at 05:09, he delegated one of the searches to Ommaney Bay. Two searches were planned, one to cover the Camotes Sea, and one to sweep the area from 340° to 033° from Homonhon, to a distance of . Hampered by the darkness and the rain, it was not until 06:58, by which time the first shells were falling around Taffy 3, that a search contingent of five Wildcats and seven Avengers was finally assembled. If launched expeditiously, the patrol would have intercepted Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita's Center Force, providing some advance warning to the American fleet.
Nonetheless, once Ommaney Bays search contingent had been launched, orders were received that canceled the search and vectored them towards the Camotes Sea, where the Japanese had been sighted. Arriving, they found the heavy cruiser , escorted by the destroyer . At 09:02, they set upon Mogami, with her Avengers dropping semi-armor-piercing (SAP) and GP bombs. Three bombs hit Mogami, setting her forward aviation fuel storage for her floatplanes ablaze, and disabling her sole remaining turbine. Dead in the water, and with her forward 8-inch magazines threatening to blow, the order to abandon ship was given, and Mogami was scuttled by Akebono at 12:56.
Word filtered in of the beleaguered Taffy 3 to the north, and at 07:08, Admiral Kinkaid ordered Taffy 2 to divert all of the aircraft towards the defense. At 08:10, four Avengers took off from Ommaney Bay, each armed with a Mark 13 torpedo. Her pilots made a run against a heavy cruiser, possibly , and observed a torpedo hit on the stern of a heavy cruiser, possibly . One of her Avengers, having failed to release its torpedo earlier, dropped it against the battleship , forcing her to make a hard turn away from Taffy 3. At 09:15, she launched one of her Avengers with a Mk.13 torpedo, and at 11:20, another flight of three torpedo-carrying Avengers was dispatched, both returning with inconclusive results.
At 13:15, four Wildcats and six Avengers were launched from Ommaney Bay to pursue Kurita's fleet. They assembled into a formation of eight Wildcats and eleven Avengers, setting off at 13:31. Three of her Avengers were armed with torpedoes, with the other three were each carrying three SAP bombs. At 14:00, one of her Avengers spotted a blip on its radar. Peeling off, the three torpedo-laden Avengers found Chikuma dead in the water, accompanied by the escorting destroyer . Diving down to attack, all three torpedoes were planted into the port of the stationary Chikuma. Within fifteen minutes, Chikuma had capsized. At 15:10, a final strike of two Avengers, each armed with three SAP bombs and six HE rockets, was launched, which attacked a damaged Japanese destroyer, possibly .
Ommaney Bay launched six strikes that day. As part of Taffy 2, she was also obliged to accept aircraft from other task groups, which were damaged or low on fuel from their strikes. She was forced to jettison several aircraft over her deck to preserve the functionality of her flight deck. She remained on station until 30 October, when her task group retired from Leyte Gulf for Manus.
She anchored in Seeadler Harbor on 3 November, beginning a period of availability and replenishment. On 10 November, she witnessed the ammunition ship explode violently from her. Even from her distant vantage point, Ommaney Bay was showered with metal fragments, and hit by a tidal wave. On 26 November, she steamed with Task Unit 77.12.7 for Kossol Roads, arriving on 2 December. There, preparations were made for the impending landings on Mindoro, and the task unit sallied out on the morning of 10 December.
Ommaney Bay entered the Sulu Sea on 13 December, where they were met with Japanese resistance, with a kamikaze damaging the destroyer . Over the next few days, her task unit fought off daily attacks by Japanese aircraft. During this period, Ommaney Bays air contingent busied themselves with combat air patrols and anti-submarine operations in support of the American fleet. On the early morning of 15 December, forty Japanese planes, divided equally between kamikazes and escorts, took off from Clark Field and Davao, bound for the battleships and carriers to the east of Mindoro. The first sightings were reported at 7:00, and for the rest of the morning, kamikaze attacks harried the task force. At 09:40, a group of Japanese planes dove towards the escort carriers. One plane missed with its bomb, while two others were shot down by anti-aircraft fire from and the destroyer escorts. At 09:43, a Yokosuka P1Y dove directly towards Ommaney Bay, approaching from the port-bow side. Engaged by heavy anti-aircraft fire from the entire task force, the plane was set ablaze about away, and passed over the flight deck, crashing into the ocean to her starboard quarter. She concluded operations on 17 December, anchoring at Manus on 23 December. On 27 December, she departed for the Philippines in support of the planned 6th Army landings at Lingayen Gulf. She paused at San Pedro Bay, entering the Sulu Sea on 3 January 1945.