USS Randolph March 1945

80 years ago, the “long hulled” Essex-class fleet carrier USS Randolph (CV-15) is seen with damage to her aft flight deck as the result of a Japanese Yokosuka P1Y Ginga “Frances” kamikaze attack crashing into her at Ulithi Atoll, 11 March 1945, as photographed from a USS Miami (CL-89) floatplane. The vessel alongside is the “heavy-hulled” Vulcan class repair ship USS Jason (ARH-1), a remarkable class of vessel that kept the fleet in action.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-344531

USS Randolph (CV 15), damage to her after flight deck resulting from a kamikaze hit on 11 March 1945. Note, the burned aircraft. 80-G-274104

If you are curious how big that hole is, it measured 56 feet fore and aft and 58 feet athwartships.

From her 66-page report on the attack and damage, which beyond the structural damage, left 26 killed, 3 missing, and 105 wounded:

Incredibly, between the efforts of Jason’s and Randolph’s crew, the carrier was ready to resume combat operations just 16 days later and on 26 March became the flagship of CarDivFour and by 8 April was sending up combat air patrols from CVG-12 over Tokuna and Kikai Islands off Okinawa, where she would remain well into May before heading to plaster the Japanese Home Islands with CVG-16 for the rest of the war.

USS Randolph (CV-15), a Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat fighter of VF-12 parked on the port catapult, March 1945. Note the plane’s tail markings, unique to this ship. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-K-5339

Randolph earned three battle stars for World War II service and, after reclassifying as CVA-15 (1952), was given first a SCB-27A and then a SCB-125 modernization, then reclassified again as CVS-15 (1959), she served well into the Cold War, recovering Astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Glenn in 1962.

She was inactivated in 1969 to help pay for operations in Vietnam, stricken in 1973, and subsequently scrapped just after the fall of Saigon.

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