USS Fanshaw Bay

Also known as: CVE-70 · CVHE-70 · USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70) · Fanshaw Bay

Definition

USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70) was a Casablanca-class escort carrier of the United States Navy — one of fifty mass-produced “jeep carriers” built by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company at Vancouver, Washington — laid down on May 18, 1943, launched on November 1, 1943, and commissioned on December 9, 1943 at Astoria, Oregon, with Captain Douglass P. Johnson in command. Embarking Composite Squadron VC-68 (16 FM-2 Wildcats and 10–12 TBM Avengers), she joined the escort carriers covering the liberation of the Philippines and served as the flagship of Taffy 3 (Task Unit 77.4.3) — Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. Sprague, Commander Carrier Division 25, flying his flag in her — at the Battle off Samar on October 25, 1944, where she was hit by Japanese cruiser fire, lost four men killed and four wounded, and survived. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — Casablanca-class escort carrier)

Her war continued far past Samar: after battle-damage repairs at San Diego she returned to the Pacific as flagship of Carrier Division 26 — Sprague again embarked — for the Okinawa operation from March 1945, flying 2,089 sorties in 69 consecutive days on the line, covering East China Sea minesweeping in July, joining the occupation of Hokkaido in September, and carrying troops home in Operation Magic Carpet. She earned five battle stars and, with Taffy 3, the Presidential Unit Citation for Samar, was decommissioned on August 14, 1946, redesignated CVHE-70 in 1955, stricken in 1959, and sold for scrap that August — broken up in Portland, Oregon. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	USS Fanshaw Bay	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Fanshaw_Bay
Wikidata	USS Fanshaw Bay (Q7869320)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7869320
DBpedia	USS_Fanshaw_Bay	https://dbpedia.org/page/USS_Fanshaw_Bay
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A	N/A
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	USS Fanshaw Bay CVE-70 Taffy 3 Clifton Sprague Battle off Samar escort carrier Okinawa	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Fanshaw+Bay%22+Samar
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

CVE-70
CVHE-70
USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70)
Fanshaw Bay

Examples and Analogies

The admiral’s flagship was a jeep carrier: the command ship of the unit that faced Kurita’s battleships made 19 knots, carried one 5-inch gun, and had a merchant-style welded hull — the flag of Taffy 3 flew from the same thin-skinned production carrier as the rest of the flock, so the flagship shared every danger she directed. (Wikipedia — Casablanca-class escort carrier, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Shells through thin plating: at Samar a large-caliber shell passed through her thin plating without exploding, and others tore up her flight deck and flag office — the Casablanca class’s lack of armor recorded in the holes the shells left rather than the explosions they did not make. (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Four of six: Taffy 3 took six Casablanca-class carriers into the Samar action and lost two — Gambier Bay to gunfire, St. Lo to a kamikaze — so Fanshaw Bay stands in the record with White Plains, Kalinin Bay, and Kitkun Bay as one of the four that fought the morning through and survived it. (Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
The same admiral, the same ship, a different sea: in March 1945, four months after Samar, she sortied from Ulithi for Okinawa with Rear Admiral Sprague embarked again — now Commander Carrier Division 26 — so the flagship of Taffy 3’s last stand became the flagship of the escort-carrier effort at the war’s last great amphibious battle. (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Verified data (ship’s register):
Builder: Kaiser Shipbuilding Company, Vancouver, Washington; Maritime Commission hull 1107 (S4-S2-BB3) (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Keel / launched / commissioned: May 18, 1943 / November 1, 1943 / December 9, 1943, at Astoria, Oregon, Capt. Douglass P. Johnson commanding (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Samar damage: 8-inch cruiser shellfire; 4 killed and 4 wounded; four Wildcats and one Avenger lost (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Okinawa record: 2,089 sorties in 69 continuous days on station; five Japanese aircraft claimed (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Disposal: decommissioned August 14, 1946; stricken March 1, 1959; sold August 29, 1959 to Hyman-Michaels Co. and scrapped in Portland, Oregon (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)

Usage Scenarios

1. Naval-Historical Research on Taffy 3 and the Leyte Campaign

Historians of the liberation of the Philippines use Fanshaw Bay as the organizational anchor of Taffy 3 — the ship from which Sprague commanded the unit on October 25, 1944 — cross-referencing this wiki’s Taffy 3, Battle off Samar, and Clifton Sprague entries for the tactical narrative this entry deliberately does not re-tell. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)

2. Studying Escort-Carrier Operations at Okinawa

Researchers of the 1945 Okinawa operation cite her record as flagship of Carrier Division 26: 69 consecutive days on the line, 2,089 sorties flown by Composite Spotting Squadron VOC-2, five Japanese aircraft claimed, and operations amid the roughly 1,465 kamikazes engaged in the campaign. (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)

3. Documenting Postwar Occupation and Repatriation Logistics

The ship’s last commissions are used in studies of the war’s endgame: the occupation landings in Hokkaido (August 31–September 9, 1945), leading escort carriers through Tsugaru Strait on September 7, and Magic Carpet duty that steamed more than 23,500 miles with an average of 1,400 passengers per voyage. (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)

4. Tracing the Casablanca-Class Production Record

Ship historians use her keel-to-commission arc — laid May 18, launched November 1, commissioned December 9, 1943 — as a specimen of the Kaiser yard’s prefabricated assembly-line output, the fifty-ship building program this wiki’s Casablanca-class escort carrier entry documents. (Wikipedia — Casablanca-class escort carrier)

Strategies

Study the flagship from her own deck: the Samar narrative belongs to this wiki’s Battle off Samar and Taffy 3 entries; what belongs here is the flagship’s own register — Sprague flying his flag aboard, the shellfire she absorbed, her casualties by name and rate, and her aircraft’s strikes, including her planes’ two 100-pound bomb hits on the cruiser Haguro. (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
Anchor damage claims to the ship’s own record: the DANFS account documents four men killed at Samar — Lieutenant Leonard D. Peterson among them — and four wounded, three of them sent ashore; where the general battle account and the ship’s account differ in hit counts, cite the difference rather than smoothing it. (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
Keep the two campaigns distinct: her record divides at the San Diego repairs — the Leyte record of October–November 1944 and the Okinawa-East China Sea record of March–August 1945 are separate deployments with separate air groups (VC-68 at Leyte, VOC-2 at Okinawa). (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Use the awards as documents: the Presidential Unit Citation shared with Taffy 3 and the five battle stars are the Navy’s official ledger of the ship’s engagements and the soundest summary of her standing. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)

Security and Safety Measures

Damage control on a thin-skinned carrier: her survival at Samar — four fires extinguished, minor flooding controlled, fighting continued after repeated 8-inch hits — is part of the documented case record of damage-control practice on lightly built escort carriers. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Anti-kamikaze defense: the ship’s account records two kamikaze attacks repelled that morning — one shot down by her single 5-inch gun though its bomb burst about 15 feet from the hull, the second downed at safe range — the class’s marginal defenses stretched to their documented limit. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Casualty accountability: the killed and wounded of October 25, 1944 are preserved by name and rank rate in the ship’s official history — the register against which folk narratives of the battle should be checked. (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)
Archival verification over retelling: popular accounts of Samar abound; the ship’s own DANFS history and her article’s cited record remain the reference standard for her movements, repairs, and disposal. (DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)

Historical Context

Fanshaw Bay was a product of the emergency shipbuilding that made escort carriers a commodity: the Kaiser yard’s fifty Casablanca-class ships, the most numerous carrier class ever built, were welded from prefabricated sections in months, and hers took under seven months from keel to commissioning. After workups she reached the Pacific in 1944 for the escort-carrier war — ground support and anti-submarine work over the beachheads — and by October she was Sprague’s flagship in Task Unit 77.4.3 off Leyte. On the morning of October 25, 1944, when Kurita’s Center Force fell upon Taffy 3 at dawn, Japanese cruisers opened on her at about 06:58 from roughly 29,200 yards; through the morning she was straddled and hit repeatedly — four 8-inch hits in her own account, additional hits in the general battle account — yet kept launching, her gun landed at least five hits on a cruiser’s superstructure, and her aircraft struck Haguro with two 100-pound bombs that exploded inside a turret magazine. She lost four men killed and four wounded, replenished at Manus on November 1–7, and sailed via Pearl Harbor to San Diego for repairs. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

Her second war was the longest single deployment of her career: from Ulithi on March 21, 1945 to the East China Sea in August, flagship of Carrier Division 26 with VOC-2 embarked, 2,089 sorties over 69 continuous days off Okinawa — her pilots averaging 91 combat hours a month — then minesweeping coverage from July 5 in the East China Sea, where the force cleared 404 mines over nearly 7,300 square miles without losing a ship, and strikes near the Yangtze on July 28. After the surrender she covered the Hokkaido occupation, led escort carriers through Tsugaru Strait on September 7, and turned to Magic Carpet runs. Decommissioned into the Pacific Reserve Fleet at Tacoma on August 14, 1946, redesignated helicopter escort carrier CVHE-70 on June 12, 1955, she was stricken on March 1, 1959 and sold on August 29, 1959 to the Hyman-Michaels Company of Chicago, to be broken up in Portland, Oregon — the flagship of Taffy 3 preserved in the record, and in this wiki’s Battle off Samar, Taffy 3, and Clifton Sprague entries, but not in steel. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)

Challenges and Controversies

Conflicting Damage Accounts for Samar

The ship’s own article records four 8-inch shell hits at about 07:50; the general Battle off Samar article distributes her hits differently — a pair from the cruiser Haguro early in the action, then one hit from Tone and three from Haguro near 08:55 — while DANFS records repeated straddles from about 07:59 without a consolidated count. The casualty figures (four killed, four wounded) are consistent across the records; the hit counts are not, and citations should say so. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar, DANFS — USS Fanshaw Bay)

The Flagship in Popular Memory

Retellings of Samar concentrate on the sinking Gambier Bay, the first kamikaze victim St. Lo, and the charging destroyers — with the result that the unit’s flagship, which fought the same morning under the same fire and survived, is often lost in the narrative; the ship’s own record supplies the correction. (Wikipedia — Battle off Samar, Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)

A Common Confusion with Later Kamikaze Victims

Escort carriers were hit by kamikazes at Lingayen in January 1945 — Ommaney Bay sunk, others damaged — but Fanshaw Bay was then under repair at San Diego from her Samar damage; accounts that place her at Lingayen in January 1945 confuse her with the ships actually engaged, and the ship’s own chronology rules it out. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay, Wikipedia — Casablanca-class escort carrier)

No Preservation

Decommissioned in 1946 and scrapped in 1959, she survives only in records, photographs, and the Presidential Unit Citation she shares with her unit — one of the war’s most decorated ships-of-the-line that no museum keel preserved. (Wikipedia — USS Fanshaw Bay)