USS Shangri-La (CV-38)

This article explains the Shangri-La aircraft carrier; for further meanings see Shangri-La (disambiguation) .

The Shangri-La in the Pacific, 1946
Overview
Shipyard	Norfolk Navy Yard
Keel laying	January 15, 1943
Launch	February 24, 1944
1. Period of service
period of service	Sep 15 1944 - Nov. 7, 1947 May 10, 1951 - July 30, 1971
Whereabouts	scrapped
Technical specifications
displacement	27,100 ts (1944) 33,000 ts (after conversion)
length	270.8 m (1944) 272.6 m (after conversion)
width	45 m (1944) 58.5 m (after conversion)
Draft	8.8 m (1944) 9.4 m (after conversion)
crew	3448 men
drive	150,000 hp
speed	33 knots
Range	16,900 nm at 15 kn
Planes	80-100
Radio call sign	November - Tango - India - Foxtrot

The USS Shangri-La (CV-38) (later CVA-38 and CVS-38 ) was an aircraft carrier of the Essex class of the United States Navy . The ship, named after the legendary Shangri-La in the Himalayas , served in the US Navy from 1944 to 1947 and from 1951 to 1971.

technology

For detailed technical information, see the class article under Essex class

The Shangri-La belonged to the Ticonderoga sub-class, the so-called "long hull" ships. With a length of 270.8 meters, her hull was about three and a half meters longer than the hull of a "short hull" ship. The length in the construction waterline was 250.1 meters, the width 28.4 meters. With an empty displacement of 27,100 ts and an operational displacement of 33,000 ts, the draft was between 7.0 and 8.7 meters. The flight deck originally had a width of 45.0 meters. During the renovation from 1951 to 1955, the ship was lengthened to 272.6 meters, the flight deck was widened to 58.5 meters and equipped with an angled runway. To increase stability, the hull was widened to 30.8 meters at the waterline. The displacement rose to 32,800 ts empty or 44,700 ts loaded, the draft to 9.4 meters. The armor on the waterline was 102 mm thick, this was removed during the conversion, on the flight deck the armor plates were 38 mm thick and on the hangar deck 76 mm.

Shangri-La after the conversion, on decks Vought F-8, Douglas F4D and Douglas A-1

The steam for the four geared turbines that drove the four propellers was generated in eight boilers with a steam temperature of 454 ° C and a pressure of 39 bar. The total power of the drive was 150,000 hp , the maximum speed of the Shangri-La was 33 knots , the range with the 6331 tons of fuel on board was between 4100 nautical miles at maximum speed and 16,900 nautical miles at 15 knots.

Between 80 and 100 aircraft could be carried on board the carrier. In November 1944, the Carrier Air Wing consisted of Grumman F6F and - Vought F4U Corsair - fighters and Curtiss SB2C - dive bombers . In 1947 Carrier Air Wing 5 was stationed on board, the air group consisted of Grumman F8F fighters and SB2C dive bombers. After the return to service in 1955, the first jet-powered aircraft were used on board, such as the Grumman F9F , the Grumman F11F and the McDonnell F3H . But propeller-driven aircraft continued to be used, such as the Douglas A-1 . At the end of the fifties the Douglas A-4 and the Douglas F4D came on board, the Vought F-8 was used as a fighter from the beginning of the sixties , this was supplemented by Vought A-7 fighter-bombers from 1969 .

The carrier was equipped with twelve 127-mm guns when it was commissioned, eight of which were in four Mark 32 twin towers on the island, the rest in single mounts below the flight deck on the port side. In addition, 67 40 mm Bofors guns were housed in quadruple mounts and 57 light 20 mm Oerlikon automatic cannons . After the Second World War, the barrel armament was greatly reduced, in 1957 the Shangri-La still had eight 127 mm single guns and six 76 mm quadruple guns, which had replaced the 40 mm guns after the war. The 76mm guns were removed the following year, the number of 127mm guns reduced to four by 1969.

Surname

The Shangri-La got her unusual name in honor of the USS Hornet , which entered service as the third Yorktown- class ship in 1941 and sank off the Santa Cruz Islands in 1942 . After the Doolittle Raid in April 1942, the planes of which had taken off from the Hornet , President Roosevelt was asked by representatives of the press where the planes that attacked Tokyo had come from. However, since the operation was still subject to secrecy, he only replied "from Shangri-La". After her sister ship Hornet from 1943, the Shangri-La was the second aircraft carrier to be named in honor of the old Hornet , also known as the "Blue Ghost" .

history

Ship christening of the Shangri-La by Josephine Doolittle

Construction and commissioning

The Shangri-La was laid down on January 15, 1943 at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth , Virginia . It was christened and launched on February 24, 1944 by Josephine Doolittle, wife of James Doolittle , commander of the Doolittle Raid. After further equipment work on the pier, the carrier was put into service on September 15, 1944 under the command of Captain James D. Barner.

The construction costs of the Shangri-La , the exact amount of which the US government has not disclosed, but estimated to be between 68 and 76 million US dollars, were covered entirely by war bonds and special stamps .

The first test drives took the carrier to the Caribbean from September until just before Christmas 1944 . On January 17, 1945 he ran together with the heavy cruiser Guam and the destroyer Harry E. Hubbard from the naval base in Norfolk in the direction of the Panama Canal . The canal was crossed a week later, after which the ships continued their voyage to San Diego , where they arrived on February 4th.

1945-1947

The Shangri-La took passengers, cargo and additional aircraft on board in San Diego to take them to Hawaii, where they left on February 7th. After arriving at Pearl Harbor on February 15, the carrier operated off the Hawaiian coast as a training ship for naval aviators for the next two months. On April 10th, the Shang , as the ship was called by the crew, set sail for Ulithi Atoll , where she arrived ten days later. Already one day after arrival she left again, this time to join the Fast Carrier Task Force under the command of Admiral Marc Mitscher . On April 24, the carrier was assigned to Task Group 58.4, and the following day the carrier aircraft started their first air strikes. The destination was the Daitō Islands, a group of islands several hundred nautical miles southeast of Okinawa . After the attacks on the archipelago, the association ran to Okinawa, where the carrier aircraft provided air support for US forces during the Battle of Okinawa .

John S. McCain (left) with the later Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan on board the Shangri-La

On May 14, the Shangri-La returned to Ulithi Atoll, where she became the flagship of the Second Carrier Task Force under Vice Admiral John S. McCain . On May 26, 1945, the combat group left the atoll, two days later Admiral Mitscher again took over command of the task force on board the Shangri-La . On June 2nd and 3rd, the carrier's aircraft started air raids on the Japanese mainland, targeting the southernmost of the islands, Kyūshū . Due to the strong Japanese resistance, there were high losses among the aircraft of the Shangri-La . In the following two days, the carrier had to avoid a typhoon to the northwest, and on June 6th, the Shang machines again flew air support for the US troops on Okinawa. On June 8, the planes attacked Kyushu again, and Okinawa again the following day. On June 10th, the porter set off for Leyte , where he arrived three days later.

The Shangri-La did not sail again until July 1 , after its crews were allowed to relax on Leyte and the ship had been serviced. On July 10, the Shang carrier aircraft began again with air raids on the Japanese mainland. After attacks on Tokyo on the first day, air raids on Honshū followed on July 14th and Hokkaidō on the 15th . On July 18, the Shangri-La carrier aircraft bombed the battleship Nagato , which was anchored in Yokosuka . From July 20 to 22, the porter bunkered fuel and ammunition with the supply association, and on July 24 and 25, the aircraft attacked the sea routes around Kure. In the following two days, supplies were bunkered again, on July 28, the carrier aircraft damaged the cruiser Ōyodo and the battleship Haruna , the latter so badly that it had to be abandoned later. On July 30, Tokyo was again the target of the air strikes, and supplies were again bunkered in the following two days. The Shangri-La had to avoid a typhoon until August 6, and on August 9, the porter squadrons began again with the air raids on Japan, this time the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido were the target. The Tokyo area was the target of attacks the following day, and further attacks followed after the Shang dodged another tropical storm on August 11 and 12. The air strikes continued until the morning of August 15, when news of the Japanese surrender reached the fleet.

Shangri-La comes to the Replenishment At Sea alongside the Attu

In the following week, the carrier association patrolled the Japanese coast, on August 23, the planes began to drop relief supplies over prison camps with Allied prisoners of war. This action lasted until September 16, when the Shangri-La entered Tokyo Bay , where she was anchored until October 1. The porter left Japan in early October and drove via Okinawa to Long Beach , where he arrived on October 21. At the beginning of November it was relocated to San Diego, at the end of November the Shangri-La left for Bremerton , where it went to the dock for overhaul from December 9th to 30th. In early January 1946, she returned to San Diego and operated as a training provider off the California coast. In May, the Shang left for Bikini Atoll in the western Pacific ; it was part of Joint Task Force One , which carried out the first post-war nuclear weapons tests during Operation Crossroads . The Shangri-La was the mother ship for the drones that took air samples and photographed the explosions during the nuclear test . After returning to the US west coast, a short training voyage to Hawaii followed, and the porter spent the winter again in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard . In March 1947 he left for a visit to Hawaii and Australia , after a visit to the port in Sydney , the Shang returned to the States, where she was decommissioned on November 7th and assigned to the reserve fleet in San Francisco Bay .

Reactivation and remodeling

With the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 it became clear to the command of the US Navy that more aircraft carriers were needed, the re-commissioning of the Shangri-La was prepared immediately and took place on May 10, 1951. In the following years it was mainly used as a training carrier the US east coast. In the summer of 1951 she was reclassified as an attack vehicle (CVA). In the fall of 1952, the Shang ran again into the Puget Sound, where it was decommissioned on November 14th, this time to be fundamentally overhauled. In the following 26 months, the aircraft carrier was completely modernized, it received an angled flight deck , new, more powerful catapults , the elevators and the safety cable system were renewed. The total cost of the upgrade was $ 7 million. On January 10, 1955, the Shangri-La was put back into service.

1955-1971

Shangri-La in January 1956

The remainder of 1955 spent the Shangri-La with exercises off the US coast, on January 5, 1956, it ran out for the first mission in the Western Pacific. On May 13, 1960, she left San Diego for Mayport , Florida . On the way to her new home port, the Shangri-La visited Chile, Peru and Trinidad. After six weeks of training in the Caribbean, the first operation in the Atlantic followed, a NATO exercise off the English coast. After returning from the exercise, the porter was ordered to the southern Caribbean, where riots had broken out in Guatemala and Nicaragua . On November 25, 1960, the porter returned to his home port, where he stayed for two months.

On February 2, 1961, the Shangri-La left her home port for the Mediterranean for her first mission with the 6th US fleet. On June 1, she was ordered off the coast of the Dominican Republic with her sister ships Intrepid and Randolph after President Rafael Trujillo was assassinated. In the fall, the porter docked in Brooklyn at the New York Naval Shipyard for an overhaul. At the beginning of 1962 he returned to Mayport, on February 7th the next assignment in the Mediterranean followed. This lasted until mid-August, after which the Shangri-La returned to Florida, where it arrived on August 28th. A month later, the aircraft carrier was docked again in New York, during the subsequent modernization four 127 mm guns were removed and the ship received new radar systems. After the work was finished, it returned to Mayport and began practice drives in the Caribbean in March 1963. On October 1, the Shangri-La left for another seven-month mission with the 6th fleet in the Mediterranean. The missions in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic continued, interrupted by two further longer stays in the shipyard in Philadelphia in the winter of 1964 and 1965, until 1969, on June 30th the reclassification to anti-submarine carrier (CVS) took place.

The Shangri-La (left) and the Saratoga with the 6th fleet in Augusta Bay off Sicily

On March 5, 1970, the Shangri-La set out on its first mission in the Pacific in ten years. She visited Rio de Janeiro , circumnavigated Cape Horn and crossed the South Pacific towards the Philippines , where she arrived on April 4 at the United States Naval Base Subic Bay . For the next seven months, the aircraft carrier was used at Yankee Station off the coast of Vietnam , from where the carrier aircraft flew attacks against North Vietnamese targets. During the breaks, the Shangri-La visited Manila and Hong Kong , in October it went to the dock in Yokosuka for overhaul for twelve days . The operation in the Pacific ended on November 9th when the ship left Subic Bay and returned to Mayport via Sydney, Wellington and Rio de Janeiro, where it arrived on December 16.

fate

After returning from the Pacific, preparations for the deactivation of the Shangri-La began on board , after a further stay in the Boston Naval Shipyard , the decommissioning took place on July 30, 1971. The Shangri-La was assigned to the Atlantic Reserve Fleet and in Philadelphia mothballed. She remained moored there until she was deleted from the ship register on July 15, 1982, after the deletion from the register, the carrier was sold on August 9, 1988 for scrapping in Taiwan.

Additional information

literature

• Randy Baumgardner (Ed.): USS Shangri-La CV / CVA / CVS-38 . Turner Publishing Company, Paducah KY 2003, ISBN 1-56311-835-1 .
• Stefan Terzibaschitsch : aircraft carrier of the US Navy. 3rd, expanded edition. Bernard and Graefe, Bonn 2001, ISBN 3-7637-6200-0 .

Web links

Commons : USS Shangri-La (CV-38)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• USS Shangri-La Reunion Association (Engl.)
• History of Shangri-La (Engl.)
• Pictures of the Shangri-La at navsource.org (engl.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ navsource.org , as of September 19, 2007
2. ↑ Terzibaschitsch: aircraft carrier of the US Navy. 2001, p. 337.
3. ↑ Terzibaschitsch: aircraft carrier of the US Navy. 2001, p. 377.
4. ↑ Terzibaschitsch: aircraft carrier of the US Navy. 2001, p. 386.
5. ↑ Doolittle Raid on navy.mil , as of September 19, 2007
6. ↑ Terzibaschitsch: aircraft carrier of the US Navy. 2001, p. 66.
7. ↑ cv6.org , as of September 19, 2007