USS Liscome Bay

The Vessel

USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56) was a Casablanca-class escort aircraft carrier of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company's Vancouver, Washington yard on 7 August 1943. She was 156 metres long, 7,800 tons standard displacement, capable of carrying 24 aircraft, and designed for 19 knots on two reciprocating steam engines. The Casablanca-class was the most numerous American carrier class of the Second World War: 50 ships commissioned between 1943 and 1944, built in series production to a standardised design that could be launched at approximately one per week from the Kaiser yards.

The Casablanca-class had been designed specifically for the American amphibious campaign. Their role was close air support for the Marine Corps and Army landings across the Pacific: anti-submarine patrol, fighter cover, strike aircraft on shore targets. They were not fleet carriers and did not operate with the fast carrier task forces. Their armament was minimal (one 5-inch gun, 16 anti-aircraft guns) and their armour was non-existent. They relied on destroyer screens and on geographic separation from enemy threats for protection.

Her commanding officer was Captain Irving D. Wiltsie, 41, a career naval officer. Her senior embarked officer was Rear-Admiral Henry M. Mullinnix, commanding Carrier Division 24, the escort carrier force supporting the Gilberts landings of November 1943. Mullinnix had flown his flag in Liscome Bay from the Casablanca-class's first operational deployment.

The Voyage

On 20 November 1943 the United States began the amphibious assault on Tarawa and Makin Atolls, the opening American central-Pacific offensive of the war. Liscome Bay was one of three escort carriers of Carrier Division 24 supporting the Makin landing, operating approximately 25 kilometres offshore at a position designated Carrier Group Tare. Her air group had been flying anti-submarine patrols and strike missions against Japanese positions on Makin through 20-23 November 1943.

On the morning of 24 November 1943, Liscome Bay was operating in the Carrier Group Tare patrol area east of Butaritari Atoll (the Makin anchor position) with USS Coral Sea (CVE-57) and USS Corregidor (CVE-58) in company. The three escort carriers were screened by the destroyers Hull, Franks, and Morris. The weather was clear; wind from the north-northeast at 10 knots; the sea state was moderate.

The Japanese fleet submarine I-175, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Sunao Tabata, had been operating in the same area since the 20 November American landings. I-175 had been vectored to the American carrier group by radio intelligence from Japanese shore stations. Tabata located Liscome Bay through his periscope at 04:50 on 24 November 1943 at a range of approximately 1,200 metres. He fired a single Type 95 torpedo from his forward tubes at 05:10.

The Disaster

The torpedo struck USS Liscome Bay on her starboard side at 05:13 on 24 November 1943. The impact point was abaft her after elevator, at the exact location of her after aircraft bomb magazine. The bomb magazine contained, at the moment of the strike, approximately 200 tons of aerial bombs awaiting distribution to the aircraft on her deck for the day's strike missions.

The magazine detonated. Liscome Bay disintegrated in a single explosion. The rising fireball was observed by the other American ships in the task force at distances of up to 30 kilometres; the debris fall from the explosion was reported to have extended 700 metres from her position. Her flight deck, aircraft, island superstructure, and crew on the upper decks were destroyed in the first 0.5 seconds of the detonation.

The ship sank at 05:36 on 24 November 1943, approximately 23 minutes after the torpedo strike. Rear-Admiral Mullinnix was killed on the flag bridge in the initial detonation; Captain Wiltsie was also killed. Of her 916 crew, 644 died in the explosion, in the burning water, or in the 30 minutes between the sinking and the arrival of rescue destroyers. 272 survived.

The loss of 644 men in a single 23-minute sinking made the Liscome Bay the deadliest American aircraft carrier loss of the Pacific War, despite the Casablanca-class's small size relative to the fleet carriers. She was one of six American escort carriers lost to enemy action in the war; her casualty count exceeded those of the other five combined.

The Legacy

The loss of USS Liscome Bay was the largest single-ship casualty event of the Gilbert Islands campaign and the largest American aircraft carrier loss of any class during the war. The specific mechanism of her destruction, the torpedo-initiated magazine detonation, was a failure mode that the original Casablanca-class design had not fully anticipated. The Casablanca's after-deck bomb-handling arrangement had placed large numbers of fused bombs in a compartment whose armour could not absorb a torpedo hit.

The immediate operational response was a revised bomb-handling doctrine for all Casablanca-class carriers: bombs were no longer stored in the after magazine in quantities larger than the immediate daily operational requirement, and fused bombs were to be held in secondary storage away from the primary magazine. The revised protocols, implemented in December 1943, were credited by post-war American naval historians with preventing further analogous losses.

Among the 644 dead of Liscome Bay was Doris Miller, the African-American Pearl Harbor hero. Miller had been the first African-American awarded the Navy Cross (for his actions at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, when he had manned an anti-aircraft gun on USS West Virginia despite having no gunnery training). He was transferred from West Virginia to Liscome Bay in mid-1943 and died at her sinking. Miller's name became, in the subsequent decades, the focus of the campaign for broader African-American recognition in the U.S. Navy; he is honoured in the naming of the frigate USS Miller (FF-1091) and the future aircraft carrier USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), scheduled for commissioning in the mid-2030s.

The wreck of USS Liscome Bay was located in the 2010s by Paul Allen's Petrel expedition at a depth of 1,460 metres in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 65 kilometres east of Makin Atoll. She lies in fragmented condition at the bottom, consistent with the magazine detonation that destroyed her; her identification was confirmed through the Petrel survey cameras' reading of her hull number on a large surviving piece of her forward section.

Her 644 dead are commemorated on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery, at the USS Liscome Bay Memorial at the United States Naval Academy, and, for Doris Miller specifically, at the Doris Miller Memorial in Waco, Texas. She was the heaviest American aircraft carrier casualty of the Pacific War; her sinking is studied in every American naval damage-control training programme as the textbook example of the inadequately-protected magazine. The Casablanca-class as a whole served with distinction through the remainder of the war, but USS Liscome Bay remains the reference point for what could go wrong when a light-armoured escort carrier encountered a single submarine torpedo at an unfortunate angle and position.