World War II Database

1. Rich Miller says:
28 Jan 2021 09:37:14 PM

Essex was in Majuro 4 times during the war, all in 1944: Feb 4-12, Feb 26-28, May 8-15, and May 26-June 6. In the time between the February dates she was on Operation Hailstone, the attack on Truk. It is extremely unlikely the picture was taken in late February, she was very busy preparing to leave for the US as between the February and May dates she was in San Francisco for an overhaul. She then added a strike on Marcus May 18-19. The June 6 date is noteworthy not because of D-Day at Normandy, but because that was the sortie date by Task Force 58 for Forager against the Marianas. Iowa was in port for at least some part of each of those date ranges. I would suspect the picture was taken during one of the May periods, and most probably the last one.

2.  David Stubblebine says:
28 Jan 2021 11:06:07 PM

Rich Miller (above):
Your thoughtful analysis is always welcome. All four times Essex was at Majuro, so was Iowa so comparing their calendars does not help in dating this photo. This is why I originally dated this image across the entire span of dates. In looking a little deeper today, I noted that the Navy created the photo card for this image in Apr 1944, something that often lags behind the actual photo date by a few days to a few weeks but never pre-dates the photo itself. That would preclude the May 1944 dates so the Feb 1944 dates would now seem the most likely. The caption has been adjusted to reflect this and thank you for encouraging me to take a closer look at this question.