USS Sitkoh 1945

This story may be interesting to people even if they have never seen an escort carrier or a modern day carrier. This little story is about the USS Sitkoh Bay cve-86 a small escort carrier in WWII. Escort Carriers were one third the size (weight) of fleet carriers and half as long. They only had 40 planes while the bigger fleet carriers held 90. They were mainly used to transport planes to the battle areas and then provide close air support for ground troops during invasions. They were slow and had minimal side armor, so they were easy targets for Japanese submarines and Kamikaze pilots late in the war. Most, if not all had wooden decks, which when bombed were severe fire hazards.

The Sitkoh was built late in the war and had just 18 months of service, but made many trips from San Diego and San Francisco to ferry planes to the pacific islands and provide air support in the forward areas and the battle of Okinawa, (the worst of the Kamikaze attacks) 1465 Kamikaze planes were lost by the Japanese during that campaign when 368 navy ships were damaged and 36 completely sunk, killing 4907 sailors and 4874 more were wounded. It was the most horrific naval losses in the war. But the navy persisted and helped win the battle.

Here are some pictures of the Sitkoh.

This is the V-1 division on Sitkoh. These men handle aircraft from the hanger bay and up on the flight deck they had a dangerous job and look closely at the faces on these guys. They are nearly all less than 21 years old.

Air operations on Sitkoh. Note the picture of the man with the paddles. This was the landing and signal officer. His job is to guide planes from the air onto the flight deck for landing. He is on the side of the deck when planes are landing just a few feet away. On these carriers there was no net for him to dive into in case a plane was out of control and aimed right at him. Modern carriers have a steel net for LSO’s to dive into when needed. This guy had to just duck and pray or go completely overboard.

The picture on the left was the combat information center keeping track of all planes in the area, very primitive compared to modern day. The right was taken on a trip ferrying planes most likely to Iwo Jima. They are P-51 fighters to escort B-29 bombers over Japan. They are jammed into the hangar bay, so closely it is hard to imagine how they did it. These are not navy planes and do not have a tail hook for landing on a carrier.

These pictures show what happens when planes have accidents on carriers. Had there been a belly gunner in the right picture, he would have been crushed and the rear gunner would have soiled his pants, but the plane only had the pilot inside and he was okay. Lucky for all, there was no fire!

The pictures here came from a cruise book for the Sitkoh as did some of the information along with other references and some was just things I have read about before.