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USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56)
Career
Laid down:	9 December 1942
Launched:	19 April 1943
Commissioned:	7 August 1943
Fate:	sunk by a Japanese submarine
Stricken:	24 November 1943
General characteristics
Displacement:	7,800 tons
Length:	512 feet 3 inches
Beam:	65 feet
Extreme Width:	108 feet 1 inch
Draft:	22 feet 6 inches
Speed:	19 knots
Complement:	916 officers and men
Armament:	one 5-inch gun; 16 40 mm cannon
Aircraft:	28

USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56), a Casablanca-class escort aircraft carrier during World War II, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for Liscome Bay in Dall Island in the Alexander Archipelago off Alaska's southeast coast. She was lost to a submarine attack during Operation Galvanic, the Allied invasion of the Gilbert Islands, with a catastrophic loss of life, on November 24, 1943.

Her keel was laid down 9 December 1942 by Kaiser Company, Inc.'s Shipbuilding Division of Vancouver, Washington, under a United States Maritime Commission contract.

She was originally to have been given to the Royal Navy under the terms of Lend-Lease as HMS Ameer, but was reappropriated by the U.S. Navy whilst still being built.

She was launched on 19 April 1943 sponsored by Mrs. Ben Moreell, wife of the Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Yards & Docks. She was named Liscome Bay on 28 June 1943 and assigned the hull classification symbol CVE-56 on 15 July 1943. She was acquired by the Navy and commissioned on 7 August 1943 with Captain I.D. Wiltsie in command.

After training operations along the West Coast, Liscome Bay departed San Diego, California, on 21 October 1943 and arrived at Pearl Harbor one week later. Having completed additional drills and operational exercises, the escort carrier set forth upon what was to be her first and last battle mission. As a unit of CarDiv 24, she departed Pearl Harbor on 10 November attached to TF 52, Northern Attack Force, under Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, bound for the invasion of the Gilbert Islands.

The invasion bombardment announcing the United States's first major thrust into the central Pacific began 20 November at 0500, and 76 hours later, Tarawa and Makin atolls were captured. Liscome Bay's aircraft played their part in the 2278 action sorties provided by carrier-based planes which neutralized enemy airbases, supported landings and ground operations in bombing-strafing missions, and intercepted enemy raids. With the islands secured, the U.S. forces began a retirement.

On 23 November, the Japanese submarine I-175 arrived off Makin. The temporary task group built around Rear Admiral H.M. Mullinnix's three escorts, Liscome Bay, Coral Sea and Corregidor commanded by Rear Admiral Robert M. Griffin in New Mexico was steaming 20 miles southwest of Butaritari Island at 15 knots. At 0430, 24 November, reveille was made in Liscome Bay. The ship went to routine general quarters at 0505 as flight crews prepared their planes for dawn launchings.

There was no warning of a submarine in the area until about 0510 when a lookout shouted: "Here comes a torpedo!" The torpedo struck abaft the after engine room and hit the aircraft bomb stockpile, causing a major explosion engulfing the entire vessel and sending shrapnel out 5,000 yards. "It didn't look like a ship at all," wrote Lt. John C. W. Dix, communications officer on the nearby destroyer Hoel, "We thought it was an ammunition dump....She just went whoom — an orange ball of flame."^[1]

Burial at sea aboard transport Leonard Wood of two Liscome Bay sailors, victims of the submarine attack by Japanese submarine I-175. Foreground facing ceremony are survivors of Liscome Bay. Ship in background is transport Neville carrying remainder of the small number of survivors.

At 0533, Liscome Bay listed to starboard and sank, carrying 53 officers and 591 enlisted men — including Admiral Mullinix, Captain Wiltsie, and Cook Third Class Dorie Miller, famous for his actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor — down with her. Only 272 of her crew of 916 were rescued by destroyers Morris, Hughes and Hull. Counting the sailors who went down with the carrier, American casualties of the assault on Makin exceeded the strength of the entire Japanese garrison of that island. Future legal scholar Robert Keeton, then a Navy lieutenant, survived the attack.

Liscome Bay received one battle star for World War II service.

The ship is briefly mentioned in the clandestine diary that James Fahey kept as a sailor during the war. His brother John was an injured survivor and his ordeal and recovery are described.

See also: List of United States Navy losses in World War II

This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.

James J. Fahey, Pacific War Diary: 1942 - 1945, The Secret Diary of an American Sailor, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. ISBN 0-395-64022-9

• DANFS entry