World War II Database

1.  David Stubblebine says:
10 Aug 2018 06:13:12 PM

The official US Navy caption for this photo only identifies the Missouri and lists the date simply as March 1945. Missouri’s logs show she was only in Apra from 18 May to 20 May 1945. The configuration of the hospital ship identifies it as a Mercy-class, of which there were only three. The only one that was at Guam while Missouri was there was Hope, which departed Guam early on 19 May 1945. That establishes the date of the photo pretty conclusively as 18 May 1945, which was also the day Admiral William Halsey made Missouri his flagship.

Of the 50 Casablanca-class carriers, six were listed as being at Apra (or simply Guam) on that date. The paint scheme of the carrier closest to Missouri confirms that this is either Windham Bay (CVE-92) or Lunga Point (CVE-94). The other four at Guam were Sargent Bay (CVE-83), Makassar Strait (CVE-91), Shamrock Bay (CVE-84), or Wake Island (CVE-65) but none of their paint patterns match what is seen in the photo for the carrier at right. None of the substantially similar looking Sangamon-class or Commencement Bay-class carriers were at Guam on this date.

The photographer was LtCdr Horace Bristol, a pre-war professional magazine photographer who was recruited by Edward J. Steichen in 1941 to the U.S. Naval Aviation Photographic Unit as one of the unit’s six elite photographers.