Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger
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Warship Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024: Oft Overlooked Essex
U.S. Navy photo 80-G-282724 in the National Archives, Identifier: 276538368
Above we see the brand new Essex-class fleet carrier USS Bennington (CV-20), decked out in Measure 32, Design 17A camouflage, photographed in the busy shipping lanes off New York on 25 September 1944 by Navy Blimp ZP-12 with the troopship SS Nievw Amsterdam in the foreground. She would go on to become one of the last of her class in Navy custody but first had to earn battle stars off Japan and Vietnam as well as pluck a space capsule from the sea.
Meet Bennington
One of eighteen Essex-class carriers completed during World War II, CV-20 was the second U.S. Navy warship named after the little-known 1777 New York battle during the Saratoga campaign that occurred near the Vermont city of Bennington.
The first USS Bennington (Gunboat No. 4) was a hardy little vessel probably best known to history for taking formal possession of Wake Island for the United States in 1899.
(Gunboat # 4) Dressed with flags in a harbor, probably while serving with the Squadron of Evolution, circa 1891-1892. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1969. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 67551
Ordered a week after Pearl Harbor on 15 December 1941, our second USS Bennington was the first of her class built in the Empire State (which makes her name choice logical) and was laid down on 15 December 1942 at the New York (Brooklyn) Navy Yard.
Bennington was also the first American fleet carrier constructed wholly in a dry dock, rather than on a builder’s ways, and at her launching on 26 February 1944, the dock gates were opened to allow the Hudson to flow in. She was sponsored by the wife of eight-time U.S. Rep. Melvin Maas (R-Minn) who, a Great War Marine aviator, was back in uniform as a colonel on MacArthur’s staff.
Bennington being prepared for launching in a building dock at the New York Navy Yard, 23 February 1944. She was christened three days later. Courtesy of Mr. James Russell, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1972. NH 75631
USS Bennington (CV-20) being floated out of drydock at the New York Navy Yard, on 26 February 1944, following her christening. NH 75632
The same yard was soon turning the lessons learned in constructing CV-20 to good use and would build three sisters (Bon Homme Richard, Kearsarge, and Oriskany) while a fourth, USS Reprisal (CV 35) was canceled just after launch.
Bennington was one of the last of the “short bow” designed Essex class carriers completed, with later vessels having a longer clipper bow. Remember this in a minute.
Starting in May 1944, her crew gathered at Naval Training Station Newport and Brooklyn Navy Yard for pre-commissioning training while her inaugural carrier group, the brand new CVG 82, was likewise coming together at the fields around Norfolk.
She was commissioned on 6 August 1944– 80 years ago this week– and her plankowners and baby Airedales boarded her for the first time in front of a crowd of 8,000 people. Her first skipper, T/Capt. James Bennett Sykes (USNA 1919), came from the captain’s cabin of the very successful U-boat-busing USS Card (CVE-11) whose embarked VC-9 squadron bagged an incredible eight boats between August and October 1943.
Her wardroom also included 32-year-old LT John Aloysius “Buddy” Hassett, formerly a first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Bees/Braves, and New York Yankees. He naturally pulled down the collateral duty of Bennington’s athletic and recreation director and coach of the carrier’s baseball team and would remain with the vessel until the end of the war.
Hassett would leave the Navy in November 1945 as an LCDR.
CVG-82 was made up of the “Fighting Fools” of VF-82 (36 F6F-5 Hellcats), VB-82 (15 SB2C-4E Helldivers) and VT-82 (15 TBM-3 Avengers). This would be beefed up by two Marine Corsair squadrons, VMF-112 and VMF-223, with a total of 36 F4U-1Ds and 54 flying leatherneck pilots. Likewise, a night fighter det of six radar-equipped F6F-5N, six pilots, two ground officers, and seven enlisted ground crew joined VF-82 at the same time, landing six of the more standard Hellcats to make room.
Thus equipped, CVG-82 sailed for the Pacific in January 1945 with a very fighter-heavy 73 F models, 15 dive bombers, and 15 torpedo bombers, as opposed to the more traditional “Sunday Punch” of 36-36-36 of each type. This was to counter the onset of the kamikaze waves, which started in October 1944, and the general decline of floating and ashore targets on which to expend torpedoes and bombs.
By this point in the Pacific campaign, close-in air support had largely been passed from fast carriers to the Navy’s growing force of CVEs and CVLs, with the CVs tasked instead with providing a robust fighter umbrella over the fleet.
USS Bennington (CV-20) photographed from a plane that has just taken off from her flight deck, during the ship’s shakedown period, 20 October 1944. 80-G-289645
USS Bennington (CV-20) at anchor in Gravesend Bay, New York, 13 Dec 1944
USS Bennington (CV-20) ferries aircraft to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii while on her maiden voyage to fight in World War II in January 1945
War!
Steaming through the Panama Canal and calling at San Diego and Pearl Harbor on her way to Ulithi Atoll Fleet Anchorage by 7 February 1945, CVG-82 managed to chalk up 3,000 landings along the way, although crack ups were to be expected.
Firefighters battle flames engulfing a Marine F4U Corsair after a crash on the flight deck of the carrier Bennington (CV 20) on 14 February 1945. According to Bennington’s War Diary, the plane was of Marine 38, which crashed into the island and “created a stubborn gasoline fire” until it was jettisoned over the side. Its pilot, 2LT W.M. Browning, USMCR, escaped with “minor lacerations.” NNAM photo.
Underway as part of TG 58.1, Bennington/CVG-82’s baptism of fire came on 16 February when she took part in the first large-scale Navy air raids of the Japanese home islands, sending 130 combat sorties in “two deck load strikes” into the area around Tokyo Bay, flying missions against installations at Mitsune and Mikatagahara Airfields on Hachijo Jima, Nanpo Shoto. During the raid, she was the Westernmost carrier– the one closest to Japan.
At the end of the day, 10 aircrew were listed missing. They would not be the last.
From her War Diary for 16 Feb 1945:
She then pivoted south to support the Iwo Jima landings, plastering Chichi Jima on 18 February (D-1). Then came a four-month cycle that saw Bennington pivoting back and forth between supporting landings and operations on/over Iwo and Okinawa and Home Island raids.
This would include joining in, with air groups from 14 other carriers, on the 7 April hammering of the world’s largest battleship, Yamato (with Admiral Seiichi Itō on board), the light cruiser Yahagi, and four of the Emperor’s destroyers into the East China Sea.
Note Bennington’s hits
U.S. Navy deck crewmen aboard USS Bennington (CV-20) maneuver a Curtiss SB2C-4 Helldiver of bombing squadron VB-82 into position on the carrier’s flight deck. VB-82 operated from Bennington during the period February to June 1945. Note Bennington’s arrowhead geometric air group identification symbol on the SB2C’s wings and tail. U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.357
Bennington launching TBM Avengers from VT-1 during operations in early 1945. USS Harrison (DD-573), a Fletcher-class destroyer that received 11 battle stars for World War II service, steams past in the background. She would later serve in the Mexican Navy as Cuauhtemoc (E-01) until 1982. 80-G-K-5103
Japanese plane being shot down by gunfire on 14 May 1945 while approaching USS Bennington (CV 20). Image taken from USS Hornet (CV 12). The ships were serving as part of Task Force 38 off the Kyushu, Japan area. Sky is decorated with anti-aircraft fire. 80-G-331622
USS Bennington (CV-20) Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat fighters of VF-82 prepare for takeoff, circa May 1945. 80-G-K-4946
This high tempo continued until 5 June 1945 when Connie, a “small and tight typhoon overtook TG 38.1, which passed through the eye of the storm at 0700 that morning,” hitting the group with winds clocked at over 100 knots and seas of up to 50 feet. The storm damaged almost every ship in the TG and wrecked or washed away 76 aircraft from the group’s three assembled carriers.
Bennington got some of the worst of it, having her forecastle deck flooded, leaving living spaces a “shambles,” buckling a 25-foot section of her flight deck, and putting both catapults out of commission. Hornet, operating in TG.38.1 along with Bennington, suffered almost the exact same damage.
Nonetheless, she was still capable of putting up strikes– sending 26 Hellcats and 11 Corsairs to bomb and strafe Japanese airfields on Southern Kyushu on 8 June– and mount a CAP over her task group.
Bennington was forced to retire to Leyte Gulf off Tacloban Field where she underwent 20 days of emergency repairs courtesy of the forward-deployed repair ship USS Ajax (AR-6), which cut away her collapsed flight deck.
Workers from the floating workshop USS Ajax, (AR-6) repaired the bow of the carrier USS Bennington, (CV-20) off Leyte Island in June 1945. Virgil Cowart Collection. UA 539.11
CVG-82 made their 10,744th and final landing on Bennington on 10 June. In their four months in combat on CV-20, they had an impressive tally that included helping to break the back of the Imperial Air Force– claiming 386 Japanese aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground– as well as contributing to ending the last surface threat of the Imperial Navy.
In return, CVG-82 lost an incredible 127 aircraft (remember that they sailed from California in January 1945 with 103!) along with 53 aviators and aircrew, a quarter of their complement, across 7,304 combat sorties.
Bled white in terms of both men and material, CVG-82 was pulled off Bennington on 17 June and sent back to the states on the homeward-bound jeep carrier USS White Plains (CVE-66). They would not be ready to deploy again until October 1946, when they shipped out on a Med cruise aboard Bennington’s sister, USS Randolph (CV-15).
CVG-82s scorecard from their 1945 cruise with Bennington:
Likewise leaving Bennington at this time was Capt. Sykes who was sent to take command of the Naval Ordnance Test Station (later NAWS China Lake) at Inyokern, California. His place was taken by Capt. Boynton Lewis Braun (USNA 1921B), a career naval aviator who earned his wings on the old USS Lexington and had formerly commanded the escort carrier USS Manila Bay (CVE-61).
With CVG-82 gone, Bennington soon picked up the recently reorganized Carrier Air Group One (CVG-1) which, formed in 1938 as the “Ranger Air Group” had a lineage that dated back to the Navy’s first purpose-built flattop. Consisting of VF-1 (Hellcats including photo and night fighter variants), VBF-1 (Corsairs) VB-1 (Helldivers), and VT-1 (Avengers), they arrived in the Philippines in mid-June 1945 on White Plains, the same jeep carrier which would tote CVG-82 home.
CVG-1 stood some 163 pilots and 98 aircraft strong.
Starting flight operations on 1 July, they would soon get a bite at the decaying Japanese apple, striking Tokyo just 10 days later. CVG-1 would spend the next five weeks hammering industrial, military, and naval targets across Honshu in what could really be looked at as mopping up operations.
Nonetheless, this allowed the group, and by extension Bennington, to put the final nails in the Imperial Navy’s coffin, logging hits on the 22,000-ton Unryū-class fleet carriers Amagi and Katsuragi; the hybrid carrier-battleships Hyuga and Ise, and the cherished battlewagon Nagato, among others taking refuge in the mine-blocked Inland Sea.
Salvaging parts of a damaged VBF-1 Corsair Aboard the USS Bennington (CV-20), 4 July 1945. 80-GK-6176
Raids on Japan, 1945. Japanese carrier Amagi under attack at Kure, on 24 July 1945. Photo by USS Bennington (CV-20). 80-G-490165
Raids on Japanese Home Islands, July 30, 1945. Japanese carriers of the Amagi-Katsuragi class hit by bombers at Kure Bay, Japan. Radio photograph. 80-G-490169
One of CVG-1’s most hard-felt losses was that of VB-1’s squadron commander, LCDR Andrew B Hamm (USNA ’39) when his SB2C-4E Helldiver was shot down by anti-aircraft fire over Kure on 28 July. Hamm’s folks in Alabama were given his posthumous Navy Cross, earned on a previous raid when he landed a 1,000-pound armor-piercing bomb on the carrier Amagi. He was one of 26 pilots and aircrewmen listed killed or missing from the group in their short time on Bennington— almost one per day.
A CVG-1 Corsair launches from the deck of the carrier USS Bennington CV-20 on 14 August 1945. Note the battleship on the horizon
When the Emperor threw in the towel on 14 August, Bennington and her air group spent the next two weeks jogging up and down the coast from Northern Honshu to Southern Hokkaido and back, cataloging 11 Allied POW camps around the region, many of which were not previously known.
Captured by one of CVG-1’s F6F-5P recon birds
They dropped 5.5 tons of supplies from TBMs using canopies repurposed from parachute flares with “more than one pilot expressing his deep satisfaction in making a perfect drop to starving prisoners who by their enthusiastic gestures indicated how welcome their packages were to them.”
CVG-1 was able to clean up its planes and put 83 aviators in the air in everything that could get off the deck to spearhead the “show of force” overflight of USS Missouri during the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on 2 September although the carrier was still 100 miles offshore.
Bennington carried on with her role of patrol and mounting photo recon missions along the Japanese Home Islands until 10 September, when she finally steamed into Tokyo Bay and berthed for a weeklong rest.
There, on 13 September 1945, her crew celebrated the ship’s first birthday complete with entertainment and a “grand dinner.” As noted in her War History, “The birthday actually occurred a little more than a month previous of course (6 August but the celebration was necessarily delayed due to combat operations.”
Big Benn remained in the Far East until mid-October and then went back stateside for the first time since January, dropping off her low-mileage air group at Saipan. CVG-1 would later return to be disestablished at Alameda NAS via the east-bound jeep carrier USS Kwajalein (CVE-98). They had been on Bennington for 30,381 steaming miles in just over three months and made 3,323 landings on her decks.
CVG-1s scorecard for July-August 1945:
Entering San Francisco Bay on 7 November sans aircraft, Bennington remained there over the holidays until January 1946 when she set out for Pearl Harbor with a load of planes and a draft of men headed West for occupation duty.
USS Bennington (CV 20) – Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – January 1946
Remaining in the Hawaiian Islands for training for a few months, the carrier was given orders for Norfolk, via the Panama Canal, and arrived there on 22 April.
On 8 November 1946, she was decommissioned and berthed with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet along the James River.
Bennington earned three battle stars for World War II service: 1) Iwo Jima operation, 15 Feb – 4 Mar 1945, 2) Okinawa Gunto Operation, 17 Mar – 11 Jun 1945, 3) Third Fleet operations against Japan 10 Jul – 15 Aug 1945.
Another, Colder, War
Bennington’s mothball slumber lasts just under four years.
Reawakened in October 1950 due to the war in Korea, she was towed to her birthplace at New York Naval Shipyard for an extensive SCB-27A conversion to allow her to handle jets including a pair of new hydraulic Type H Mark 8 (H8) catapults. This upgrade took two grueling years and, once it was finished, she recommissioned on 13 November 1952.
In this, she had been reclassified as an “Attack Aircraft Carrier” to differentiate her from her unconverted sisters and redesignated CVA-20.
Her first jet-and helicopter-equipped air group, CVG-7, composed of VF-71 (F2H Banshee) and VF-72 (F9F Panthers), VF-74 (Corsairs), and VA-75 (AD-4 Skyraiders), along with a det of HUP-2 whirlybirds, arrived on board in February 1953 for Bennington’s Caribbean shakedown cruise and subsequent September 1953- February 1954 Med deployment for NATO exercises.
A F9F-4 Panther from NATC at NAS Patuxent on USS Bennington (CVA 20) 19 April 1954.
It was during this period that she suffered an explosion in her No. 1 fireroom on 27 April 1953 that claimed the lives of 11 men and put her in the yard for two weeks of repair.
She would soon suffer far worse.
Just after returning from the Med, while conducting flight operations off Narragansett Bay with Air Group 181 on 26 May 1954, a series of explosions rocked the carrier after her port catapult accumulator burst and filled the air with vaporized lubricating oil which detonated, immolating the wardroom and crew’s mess which were in the compartments directly above. The fire killed 91 men outright while another 12 succumbed to wounds. Over 200 were injured. twelve would die later from their injuries.
Had it not been for the fact that helicopters and small boats were able to rapidly medevac 82 critically injured sailors ashore to the nearby Naval Hospital in Newport, surely more would have perished.
Sailors injured in the below-deck explosions and fires on board the USS Bennington are carried by elevator to the flight deck for transport to Newport Naval Hospital, 26 May 1954.
The Bennington explosion, almost totally forgotten by the public today, was the second worst U.S. Navy accident during peacetime in terms of lives lost, only surpassed by the 1952 collision between USS Hobson (DD 464) and USS Wasp (CV 18) that left the destroyer cut in half and with 176 men killed or missing.
Her deck bulged in numerous places and with most of the front third of the ship with twisted I beams and blackened compartments, Bennington returned once more to New York Naval Shipyard under her own power on 12 June 1954, where she completed a longer SCB-125 conversion that added an enclosed hurricane bow– to lessen the potential for damage in heavy weather– and of an angled flight deck to improve the efficiency of air operations.
She looked very different upon completion of this, her second major overhaul and conversion in five years.
USS Bennington (CV-20) off Point Loma near the entrance to San Diego Bay in the late 1950s
Bennington emerged from NYNSY on 19 March 1955 and would embark a new air wing, Air Task Group (ATG) 201, that September for an eight-month “around the Horn” West Pac cruise.
Bennington with ATG-201 embarked, in 1956, seen simultaneously landing an AD Skyraider and catapulting an FH Phantom. Note that she has an enclosed bow now but no bridle catchers handing over.
Bennington, as modernized. NH 67558
Then, in rapid succession, came another new group ATG-181 for a 1956-57 West Pac cruise.
F9F-8 Cougar of Fighter Squadron (VF) 174 launches from Bennington (CVA 20) as another squadron aircraft prepares to maneuver onto the catapult during flight operations in 1956. NNAM collection.
A U.S. Navy North American AJ-2 Savage of heavy attack squadron VAH-6 Det. N Fleurs landing on the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVA-20). VAH-6 Det. N was assigned to Air Task Group 181 (ATG-181) for a deployment to the Western Pacific from 15 October 1956 to 22 May 1957. U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.3301
F2H-3 Banshee of Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF) 214 pictured while making touch-and-go approaches on board the carrier Bennington (CVA 20) on 2 November 1956. NNAM collection.
Talk about the recruiting poster! Stern of USS Bennington (CVA-20) at Hong Kong, showing her 3″/50 Mk 33 AAA twin mounts. Bennington, with assigned Air Task Group 181 (ATG-181), was deployed to the Western Pacific from 15 October 1956 to 22 May 1957.
San Francisco Naval Shipyard with USS Hancock (CVA-19), the USS Oriskany (CVA-34), and the USS Bennington (CVA-20), 3 October 1957. K-23227
A U.S. Navy North American FJ-4B Fury (BuNo 143574) from Attack Squadron VA-146 Blacktails after landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVA-20) during carrier qualifications off Southern California (USA) in April 1958. VA-146 was assigned a the time to Carrier Air Group 14 (CVG-14) aboard the much larger supercarrier USS Ranger (CVA-61). NNAM No. 1996.253.7230.017
Fly Navy! FJ3 Fury of VF-173 on board of USS Bennington during the middle of the 50s. (US Navy)
The angled deck USS Bennington (CVA-20) passes the wreck of USS Arizona (BB-39) in Pearl Harbor on Memorial Day, 31 May 1958. Bennington’s crew is in formation on the flight deck, spelling out a tribute to Arizona’s crewmen who were lost in the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. USN 1036055
Her final West Pac cruise as a CVA (August 1958 through January 1959) came with ATG-4 embarked.
USS_Bennington_(CVA-20)_underway_c 1958 with ATG 4
Air Task Group 1 (ATG-1) embarked on USS Bennington (CVA 20) in 1958 off Hawaii. Note how big those Savages look!
On 30 June 1959, Bennington was reclassified as an “Antisubmarine Warfare Support Aircraft Carrier” (CVS), a designation that eight of her sisters (Essex, Yorktown, Hornet, Randolph, Wasp, Intrepid, Kearsarge, and Lake Champlain) would share.
The big change that this meant, besides switching to an air group made up of S-2 Trackers and SH-3 Sea Kings with a few AD-5W (EA-1E) Skyraiders for airborne early warning, was having a bow-mounted SQS-23 sonar installed in a SCB-144 conversion.
Five Essex-class flattops at Long Beach Navy Yard. USS Bennington, Yorktown, and Hornet (angled flight decks; no bridle catchers) are configured as ASW carriers; USS Bon Homme Richard (angled deck; with bridle catchers) is an attack carrier; USS Valley Forge (straight axial flight deck with heli zones marked) is serving as LPH-8
Her go-to anti-submarine air group (CVSG) during the 1960s, with which she made six West Coast deployment cruises, was CVSG-59. It was made up, in general, of the “World Famous and Internationally Traveled Screwbirds” of VS-33 and the “Red Griffins” of VS-38 (Trackers), the “Eightballers” of HS-8 (H-34/HSS-1 Seabat/SH-34G then later Sea Kings), and a det from the “Early Elevens” of VAW-11 (Skyraiders, later replaced with E-1B Tracers after 1965).
Note her red and blue H-34/HSS-1 Seabat/SH-34Gs of HS-8, which deployed on Bennington between October 1960 and August 1963 when the squadron switched to Sea Kings
USS Bennington (CVS-20) and USS Braine (DD-630) during an underway replenishment in the Pacific Ocean, circa in 1960. Note her wing of helos and Trackers
Bennington (CV-20), Benner (DD-807), USS Eversole (DD-789), Alfred A. Cunningham (DD-752), and O’Brien (DD-725), on 25 November 1963 honoring the passing of JFK.
Sent to Vietnam on four of her CVS West Pac cruises (Feb-Sept 1964, March-Oct 1965, Nov. 1966-May 1967, and May-December 1968) Bennington also carried a few A-4 Skyhawks for muscle.
Flight deck personnel stand by to prepare for the next launch as an A-4C Skyhawk of Antisubmarine Fighter (VSF) 1 roars down the catapult during carrier qualification aboard the antisubmarine warfare Bennington (CVS 20) 18 November 1967. NNAM photo.
USS Bennington (CVS-20) underway off the coast of California, 25 November 1967. Photographed by Dolenga. NH 97582
Bennington (CVS-20) in Pearl Harbor 17 May 1968
USS Bennington (CVS-20) at Pearl Harbor, in May 1968 while outbound on her last Vietnam cruise. She has CVSG-59 aboard. USN KN-1702
USS Mauna Kea (AE-22) high lines ammunition to the USS Bennington (CVS-20) in the Gulf of Tonkin, the 10 September 1968. Our carrier has nine S-2E Trackers, two E-1B Tracer “Stoof with a Roof” models, and at least four SH-3A Sea Kings on deck. This would be Bennington’s final deployment and would end on 9 November. USN 1137061
A visiting USAF HH-3 Jolly Green Giant tagged on Bennington’s decks, likely off SE Asia
In between West Pac cruises, Bennington also clocked in in the 1960s for runs along the California coast in which she served as a training carrier for qualifications and handled experimental aircraft.
She served as the floating testbed for the big Ling-Temco-Vought XC-124A, a wild tri-service tilt-wing cargo aircraft that predated the CV-22 by decades.
Able to carry 32 equipped troops or 4 tons of cargo with a 470nm combat range, it had a max T/O weight of 45,000 pounds (about twice that of the C-1 Trader carrier delivery aircraft) and a 67-foot wingspan. While this sounds crazy, the C-2 Greyhound went to 50K pounds and had an 80-foot span, but then again nobody wanted to land a C-2 on an Essex-class carrier anyway.
It was thought that as many as 25 folding-wing navalized XC-124s could be carried on the deck of an 18,000-ton Iwo Jima-class LPH (or on an old Essex class CVA/CVS in a pinch), capable of lifting an 800-man Marine battalion landing team ashore in one go– again, predating the LHD/MV-22 concept by a good bit.
Bennington would host the No. 5 XC-124A airframe for 44 STOL take-offs and landings and 6 full VTOL cycles in wind conditions ranging to 30 knots.
An XC-124A after landing aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVS-20) off San Diego, California (USA), on 18 May 1966. Note the Sikorsky SH-3A Sea King in the background.
She also pitched in with the Apollo program, picking up the first module launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
USS Bennington (CVS 20) Apollo 4 spacecraft November 9th, 1967
The Apollo Four Command Module is hoisted onboard USS Bennington (CVS-20) following splashdown at 3:37 pm., 934 nautical miles northwest of Honolulu. Damage to the heat shield from the extreme heat of reentry is evident. Photograph released November 9, 1967. 428-GX-K-45494
With the Navy looking to pare down its WWII-era carriers, then rapidly pushing through their 20s, in favor of a new (Nimitz) class of CVNs, Bennington was decommissioned on 15 January 1970 and placed in mothballs at Bremerton in Puget Sound.
She had spent 18 years with the fleet and earned three battle stars in WWII and five during Vietnam.
Kept on the bench
The Navy retained four Essex class carriers in reserve on the Naval List through the 1980s: Bennington, Bon Homme Richard, Hornet, and Oriskany.
It was thought, semi-realistically for a while, that they could be a mobilization asset to run S-3 Vikings (if the catapults worked), SH-3/SH-60s, and Marine AV-8 Harriers from them as a “sea control ship” on convoy support in the event of a WWIII Red Storm Rising type of event– given enough lead time.
Plans were even floated in 1981 by SECNAV Lehman to bring back Oriskany to active duty as a “strike carrier” in peacetime, equipped with a wing made up totally of Marine A-4M Skyhawks (2 squadrons= 48 aircraft) and 4-6 SH-3 helicopters, as well as possibly Harriers, ideally to support Marine operations ashore.
The GAO kind of filled that concept full of holes:
With it thought that Oriskany had 10-15 years left in her, the fact that Skyhawks were on their way out (only 118 were on hand in 1981 and the last active Marine A-4 squadron shuttered in 1990), and the 24-month/1.1 million man-hour reactivation overhaul was estimated to cost $500 million in 1981 dollars, the Navy pulled the plug on that concept.
Still, Big Benn and her four sisters languished in the ordinary for two decades.
As Bennington and Hornet were SCB.27A ships, with hydraulic instead of steam catapults, they likely would have been reactivated without their cats, leaving them restricted to Harriers and SH-3/SH-60s, but that still could satisfy as an ASW carrier.
Hornet and Bennington in the 1973 Janes.
She even looked good, despite the fact she was on red lead row.
Four decommissioned aircraft carriers, Naval Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility, Bremerton, Wash. ex-USS Hornet (CVS-12), ex-USS Oriskany (CV-34), ex-USS Bennington (CVS-20), and ex-USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31)
Pacific Reserve Fleet, Bremerton, Washington, July 1974. The major units here are USS Missouri (BB-63), New Jersey (BB-62), Hornet (CVS-12 and Bennington (CVS-20).
Bremerton Washington Mothball Fleet, 1989: USS Hornet, USS Chicago, USS Oriskany, USS Bennington, USS Bon Homme Richard and USS Nimitz in the distance,
USS Bennington (CVS 20) laid up at the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility Jan 25 1990 DN-SC-90-03981
1992: USS Hornet, USS New Jersey, USS Oriskany, USS Bennington, USS Midway. Mothball Fleet, PSNS Bremerton, plus minesweepers and destroyers
However, nothing lasts forever and, with the end of the Cold War, the Navy moved to divest itself of the last of its lingering steam-powered warships from battleships through frigates.
Bennington was stricken on 20 September 1989, just days before the Berlin Wall came down, and sold for scrap in January 1994 to a breaker in India.
Her island and masts were shorn, and armament and sensors removed, then towed to Alang in March 1995 for scrapping by hand.
Bennington became only the second fleet carrier to be sold for scrap outside the United States, following sister USS Shangri-La (CV-38) which had been sent to a yard in Taiwan in 1988. Subsequent flattops disposed of by dismantling including the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk-class supercarriers recycled in the past 20 years have all gone to Texas for breaking.
When Bennington was gone, the Navy only had two other Essex class carriers still in mothballs and one of those, USS Hornet (CV-12) went on to become a museum shortly after while Oriskany (CV-34) was sunk as a reef off Pensacola in 2006. Other sisters preserved include Lexington, Intrepid, and Yorktown— all of which had the same 1950s SCB-125 conversion and subsequent 1960s CVS service as Bennington, so they are all great representations of what the old girl looked like.
Epilogue
Bennington’s WWII War Diaries are in the National Archives as is her War History and those of CVG-82 and CVG-1.
There has not been another naval vessel named Bennington.
Big Ben is remembered fondly by the Bennington Reunion Group, which has a superb online presence that dates back to 1999. Sadly, they do not seem to have held a reunion since 2017, as their members are no doubt dwindling. Keep in mind an 18-year-old bluejacket on her crew list when she was decommissioned for the last time is now pushing age 75.
On 26 May 2004, a bronze plaque was installed at Fort Adams State Park in Rhode Island, near the spot where Bennington had her terrible catapult explosion and fire, to memorialize the event and the crewmembers lost.
Likewise, the city of Bennington has had custody of her bell for the past several decades and includes it in a ceremonial parade and ringing on the town green every Independence Day.
Of Bennington’s historic WWII air groups, CVG-82 was redesignated to CVAG-17 and later CVG-17 before being disestablished in 1968. CVG-1, which earned two Presidential Unit Citations during the war, has served aboard nine different carriers since then and today, as Carrier Air Wing One (CVW-1), is based at NAS Oceana and is assigned to USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).
Her primary CVS air group, CVSG-59, after Bennington was mothballed, went on ship out with sisters Yorktown, Hornet, and Ticonderoga— and took part in the recovery of Apollos 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, and 17– before it was disestablished in June 1973.
Finally, her plankowner skipper, RADM James Bennett Skyes, who earned a Navy Cross while in command of the carrier in 1945, retired from the Navy in 1953. He passed at his Texas home in 1981, aged 86, and was survived by two daughters, four grandsons, and three great-grandsons.
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
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