USS St. Lo

Also known as: USS Chapin Bay · USS Midway (CVE-63) · CVE-63 · St. Lo (CVE-63)

Definition

USS St. Lo (CVE-63) was a Casablanca-class escort carrier of the United States Navy, built by the Kaiser shipyard at Vancouver, Washington, laid down on January 23, 1943 under the name Chapin Bay, renamed Midway on April 3, 1943, launched August 17, 1943, and commissioned October 23, 1943. On October 10, 1944 — two weeks before her loss — she was renamed St. Lo, commemorating the July 1944 Allied capture of Saint-Lô in Normandy and freeing the name Midway for a new large carrier. A mass-produced “jeep carrier” of 8,188 long tons mounting a single 5-inch gun and embarking Composite Squadron VC-65 with about 27 aircraft, she joined Taffy 3 (Task Unit 77.4.3) for the Leyte operation and fought in the Battle off Samar on October 25, 1944, the center engagement of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

That afternoon St. Lo entered naval history from the losing side of a new weapon: at 10:51, minutes after the gun battle had ended, a Mitsubishi A6M Zero — perhaps flown by Lieutenant Yukio Seki — crashed her flight deck, and the bomb it carried detonated on the hangar deck among fueled and rearmed aircraft. Gasoline fires and magazine explosions destroyed the ship about half an hour later, making her the first major warship sunk by a kamikaze attack: 113 of her 889 men were killed or missing, with about 30 more dying of wounds. Stricken from the register on November 27, 1944, she rests upright at 4,736 meters east of Samar, located by the research vessel RV Petrel in 2019. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar, Wikipedia — Battle of Leyte Gulf)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	USS St. Lo	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_St._Lo
Wikidata	USS St. Lo (Q1365876)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1365876
DBpedia	USS_St._Lo	https://dbpedia.org/page/USS_St._Lo
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 St. Lo CVE-63 kamikaze Taffy 3 Battle off Samar October 25 1944	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22USS+St.+Lo%22+kamikaze
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

USS Chapin Bay
USS Midway (CVE-63)
CVE-63
St. Lo (CVE-63)

Examples and Analogies

A ship with three names in twenty-one months: laid down as Chapin Bay, renamed Midway before launch, and renamed again to St. Lo fifteen days before her death — the escort carrier’s names track the war’s own pivot from the Pacific program that built her to the Normandy victory that re-named her, and the final renaming makes her record easy to lose under her more famous former name. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)
The shepherd that named a weapon’s era: like her five sister carriers of Taffy 3, St. Lo was built to shepherd troops ashore and hunt submarines — and the kamikaze that sank her, diverted from USS White Plains after the gun battle was already over, made the support ship the first major warship destroyed by the suicide weapon, the sinking this wiki’s Kamikaze entry records as the tactic’s entry into the war. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
One gun against a fleet: her share of the Samar morning was fought with a single 5-inch gun — firing from about 08:00 and claiming three hits on a Tone-class cruiser — and with aircraft dropping depth charges that, as the standard account records of the escort carriers’ improvised attacks, “just bounced off the bow of a cruiser.” (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

Usage Scenarios

1. Studying the Battle off Samar and Taffy 3

St. Lo supplies the Samar action’s opening contact: at 06:47 her Avenger pilot Ensign William C. Brooks reported the Japanese force — “I can see pagoda masts. I see the biggest meatball flag on the biggest battleship I ever saw!” — the first confirmation that Kurita’s Center Force had reached Taffy 3, thirteen minutes before the Japanese opened fire at 06:58. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

2. Researching the Origins of the Kamikaze

The ship is the reference point for the suicide weapon’s first documented success against major tonnage — struck at 10:51 on October 25, 1944 and destroyed by internal explosions within about half an hour — the sinking this wiki’s Kamikaze and Battle off Samar entries treat as the boundary between conventional air attack and the special attack campaign of 1944–45. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle of Leyte Gulf)

3. Escort-Carrier Design and Mass Production

Naval historians use the ship as a specimen of the Casablanca class — fifty escort carriers built on merchant-style S4-S2-BB3 hulls by Kaiser’s Vancouver yard — with St. Lo’s own figures (8,188 long tons standard, 19 knots, one 5-inch gun, about 27 aircraft of VC-65, a crew of roughly 860 plus squadron personnel) showing what the program delivered to the Leyte beachhead. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)

4. Deep-Wreck Documentation

Within the Taffy 3 battlefield of the Philippine deep, St. Lo is one of the located wrecks: found by RV Petrel on May 14, 2019, sitting upright at 4,736 meters near 11°01′N 126°02′E on the edge of the Philippine Trench — a documented contrast with USS Gambier Bay, this unit’s other carrier loss, whose hulk has no documented discovery. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)

Strategies

Anchor the morning by clock times: Brooks’s 06:47 sighting, Japanese fire from 06:58, St. Lo’s own gun in action about 08:00, Kurita’s withdrawal, and the kamikaze strike at 10:51 followed by loss about half an hour later — the documented sequence that separates the ship’s record from legend. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
Carry the first-kamikaze claim in its narrow form: the settled statement is that St. Lo was the first major warship sunk by kamikaze attack — not that hers was “the first kamikaze attack,” since the day’s first organized strikes hit Taffy 1 at 07:40 and an earlier crash had bloodied HMAS Australia on October 21; this wiki’s Kamikaze entry documents the distinction. (Wikipedia — Battle off Samar, Wikipedia — Battle of Leyte Gulf)
Keep the renaming dates straight: she was Midway throughout her commissioning and all her operations until October 10, 1944, and St. Lo for exactly fifteen days of service — accounts that place “USS Midway” at Samar, or that confuse her with the large carrier USS Midway (CV-41), conflate two ships. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)
Keep the casualty ledgers separate: St. Lo lost 113 killed and missing of 889 aboard (with about 30 later dying of wounds); Taffy 3 as a whole lost 1,161 killed and missing; the whole Battle of Leyte Gulf roughly 3,000 Allied dead — three different ledgers that must not be merged. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle of Leyte Gulf)

Security and Safety Measures

Hangar-deck discipline: St. Lo was lost because the strike found fueled and rearmed aircraft below decks, and the gasoline fires detonated the torpedo and bomb magazine — the failure sequence that made fueling and rearming cycles a life-or-death timing doctrine for every carrier afterward. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)
Rescue and survival drill: more than three-quarters of her crew survived, pulled from the water within the hour by consorts — Heermann, John C. Butler, and Raymond, with Dennis taking 434 men — the rescue discipline this wiki’s Taffy 3 entry records across the unit. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)
Respect for a war grave: she rests with at least some of her dead at 4,736 meters east of Samar; the no-salvage, document-only convention applied to the Samar wrecks governs hers, as this wiki’s Battle off Samar entry records for the battlefield as a whole. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)
Source discipline on the pilot’s identity: even the standard account states only that the aircraft was “perhaps” flown by Lieutenant Yukio Seki — claims naming him definitively outrun the record, as this wiki’s Kamikaze entry also cautions. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)

Historical Context

Built under Maritime Commission contract at Vancouver — laid down January 23, 1943, launched August 17, 1943, commissioned October 23, 1943 — the carrier worked up through ferry runs to Pearl Harbor and Australia before joining Rear Admiral Gerald F. Bogan’s Carrier Support Group 1 in June 1944 with VC-65 (FM-2 Wildcats and TBF Avengers) embarked. She supported the Saipan operation from June 1944 — her squadron claiming four Japanese aircraft shot down — then Tinian from July 23, the Morotai landing of September 15–22, and the Palaus, before arriving off the Leyte beachhead on October 18, 1944 as part of Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague’s Taffy 3. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)

Her day of destiny opened with the sighting by her own aviator, Ensign Brooks, at 06:47 on October 25; the Battle off Samar followed, the stand this wiki’s Taffy 3 and Battle off Samar entries document in full. St. Lo fought the morning with her one gun and her planes — one of her Avenger pilots, Lieutenant (junior grade) Tex Waldrop, strafed two Japanese torpedoes out of the water in Kalinin Bay’s wake. After Kurita’s withdrawal, the Zeros came: at 10:51 one that had been diving at White Plains banked into St. Lo, striking the flight deck at the number 5 wire; its bomb exploded on the hangar deck, fires reached the magazines, and a series of explosions — the fifth listed her to port — sent her down about half an hour later with 113 of her 889 men killed or missing. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo, Wikipedia — Battle off Samar)

Her register closed quickly — struck from the Navy list on November 27, 1944, five weeks after her loss — while her distinctions accumulated: the Presidential Unit Citation shared with Taffy 3, four battle stars, and the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation. In 2019 the RV Petrel expedition located her upright hulk at 4,736 meters on the edge of the Philippine Trench, giving the first kamikaze-sunk carrier a surveyed grave in the waters where she died. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)

Challenges and Controversies

The First-Kamikaze Framing

Popular accounts often call St. Lo’s sinking “the first kamikaze attack”; the documented claim is narrower — the first major warship sunk as the result of one — since the day’s first organized strikes had hit Taffy 1 at 07:40, before the gun battle off Samar had even begun, and an earlier crash on HMAS Australia (October 21, 1944) may have been unorganized. Precise writers, as this wiki’s Battle off Samar and Kamikaze entries both counsel, carry the narrower claim. (Wikipedia — Battle off Samar, Wikipedia — Battle of Leyte Gulf)

Three Names, One Record

The double renaming invites error: works that list her as “USS Midway (CVE-63)” and works that list “USS St. Lo” describe the same hull, and the fifteen-day gap between the final renaming and her loss means even some contemporaneous documents disagree on her name. The renaming rationale — commemorating the Normandy battle of Saint-Lô while freeing Midway for CV-41 — is the standard account’s own explanation. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)

The Wreck Record and Its Gaps

The 2019 discovery of St. Lo, documented by the RV Petrel survey, stands against the undocumented wreck of her squadron-mate Gambier Bay — an unevenness this wiki’s USS Gambier Bay entry records — and any future claims to have located Samar wrecks should be checked against expedition records rather than accepted from promotion copy. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)

The Human Ledger

The standard figures — 113 killed or missing of 889 aboard — sit beside the less-often-cited toll of about 30 more who died of wounds, a reminder that the celebrated “first” of her sinking was, first, a mass-casualty event whose totals belong to her ship’s own ledger and not the battle’s. (Wikipedia — USS St. Lo)