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George Toriello note: USS Franklin lived a short but eventful life, joining the Pacific Fleet in mid-1944. Franklin was the first fleet carrier to absorb a direct strike from a Japanese kamikaze, in the aftermath of the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. But, the flattop was to endure its worst trial in March 1945, while operating with Task Force 58 off the Japanese seacoast. On the morning of **March 19, 1945, a “Judy” dive bomber eluded the fleet’s air defenses, dumping two bombs on a Franklin whose decks were crowded with fully armed, fully fueled aircraft preparing to raid sites on Kyushu. Armor plating shielded the carrier’s innards—in particular the engineering plant—from destruction. The crew eventually managed to restart propulsion, and Franklin made the fleet anchorage at Ulithi Atoll under her own power. In the interim, however, dozens of secondary explosions spanning five hours transformed the flight and hangar decks into something out of Dante. It was a charnel house. The blasts killed the damage-control team while disabling firefighting equipment on the hangar deck. Ammunition “cooked off,” amplifying the destruction. Aircraft fuselages melted. Rivers of burning fuel sluiced into the hangar deck and beneath from fractured pipes. Over 800 perished out of a crew of around 3,400 sailors and aviators. |