laststandonzombieisland

Here we see the Kaiser-built Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Windham Bay (CVE-92) looking worse for wear in Guam in June 1945 after a brush with the same typhoon off Okinawa that Indiana was shown inside yesterday.

“Taken at Guam about 11th of June, 1945, after going through typhoon of off Okinawa, June 5th 1945” Bruce A. Blegen Collection Photo # UA 460.16.01 via NHHC.

As detailed by DANFS:

On 4-5 June 1945, while steaming with the logistics group in support of TF 38 and the strikes on Okinawa, Windham Bay encountered a typhoon. The heavy storm damage included the collapse of 20 feet of flight deck onto the foc’sle, a warped and ruptured catapult, as well as lost and damaged planes. On 16 June, she cleared the Marianas en route to Oahu. The warship reached Pearl Harbor on the 25th but departed again two days later. She entered port at San Diego on 11 July and immediately began repairs to correct the typhoon damage she had suffered earlier in the month. Those repairs lasted through late August, so that she missed the final weeks of the war.

Still, she earned three battle stars for her yeoman service in hauling Marine and Navy carrier aircraft (as many as 76 at a time) and squadrons across the Pacific for 12 solid months between June 1944 and June 1945.

Post-war, she conducted “Magic Carpet” rides bringing troops home from overseas and was placed in the Reserve Fleet out of commission on 23 August 1946.

When Korea broke out in 1950, she was dusted off for assignment to the Military Sea Transportation Service and, with a civil crew, served as an aircraft ferry (T-CVE-92, later T-CVU-92) for the next eight years shelping tactical aircraft to Japan from the West Coast along with loads of F8F Bearcats to the French in Indochina.

USS Windham Bay (T-CVU-92) passes under the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California, with a cargo of aircraft on her flight deck, 1958. Planes visible are mainly U.S. Air Force F-86D fighters, with a few U.S. Navy F9F and F2H fighters parked near and forward of the ship’s island. Courtesy of Robert M. Cieri, 1982. NH 94307

Decommissioned in January 1959, she was sold to the Hugo Neu Steel Products Corp and scrapped, ironically, in Japan in February 1961.