USS Franklin (CV-13)

The USS Franklin (CV-13) was an Essex-class aircraft carrier serving in the US Navy during WWII. She was the fifth US Naval vessel to be named for Benjamin Franklin (her crew affectionately nicknamed her "Big Ben"); she was commissioned on 31 January 1944 under the command of Captain J.A. Shoemaker.

Construction

A total of twenty-four Essex-class carriers were built between 1940 and 1950; the last one continued in service until 1991. As built, the Essex-class carrier measured between 870 and 888 feet in length depending on the length of the bow and displaced up to 34,000 tons when fully laden. Power was provided by four Westinghouse geared steam turbines, with the eight boilers manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox.

Franklin was built at the Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Virginia between 7 December 1942 and 13 October 1943. Her normal crew compliment consisted of 160 officers, 2,170 seamen and 870 aviators and support personnel.

Repairs and Upgrades

Aircraft carriers are complex vessels, and even in the early days required frequent maintenance; regular upgrades were also necessary because of the rapid advance of aviation, communications and combat technology. Franklin was modified several times during the war and given additional, heavier armaments.

Franklin underwent three weeks of maintenance at the Eniwetok Naval Base in August 1944. Franklin suffered some of the most extreme battle damage of any Naval vessel during the war. The first time she required repairs after an encounter off Mindoro in late October 1944, she underwent temporary fixes at Ulithi before proceeding to the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Bremerton, Washington. She remained there from the end of November until 2 February 1945.

The second time she was struck on 19 March 1945, she was initially towed to Ulithi for temporary repairs that allowed her to get to Pearl Harbor. After emergency repairs, she proceeded to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, arriving at the end of April 1945. Although she was ultimately restored "Bristol fashion," for Franklin, the war – and her career - were over.

Wartime Service

After her shakedown trials in the Caribbean, Franklin was ordered to the Pacific, arriving off Bonin Island at the end of June 1944. She remained in the area on active duty through the end of August. Franklin’s crew took part in the Peleliu and Leyte campaigns, during which the vessel sustained heavy damage. Returning to action in March 1945 for the final strikes on the Japanese home islands, she was again hit and suffered damage that took her out of action for the duration.

Although she was eventually repaired, Franklin never saw action again. After years in mothballs at Bayonne, New Jersey, she was first sold to the Peck Iron and Metal Company of Portsmouth, Virginia. However, the Navy took her back when her steam turbines were needed. In 1966, the hulk was sold again to the Portsmouth Salvage Company in Chesapeake, Virginia; she was towed by vessels of the Red Star Towing Company.

Asbestos Risk on the USS Franklin (CV-13)

The Franklin sustained heavier damage than any other carrier in the Pacific that survived the war. Despite the heavy use of asbestos, most of the damage was the result of fires caused by explosions; this was likely to have released large amounts of asbestos fibers that would affect the respiratory health of survivors decades later.

In late 1944, the increasingly desperate Japanese High Command began using young pilots to carry out suicide missions against US naval vessels. Franklin was repeatedly targeted for such attacks; the first one occurred on 13 October near Palau. The Japanese plane crashed just behind the island on the port side, sliding across the flight deck and into the water off the starboard side.

Two weeks later during the invasion of Leyte, one of these kamikaze pilots stuck the flight deck and crashed through into the gallery, resulting in 116 casualties. The most serious damage occurred on 19 March 1945, when an Aichi B7A dropped two armor-piercing bombs – one on the centerline and the other just forward of the stern. At the time, there were 31 armed, fueled aircraft warming up on the flight deck. The resulting explosions and fires took out the hangar deck and resulted in 724 fatalities and 265 injured.

The use of asbestos insulation in the design of oceangoing ships was mandated by Congress in the 1930s, after a fire at sea on a luxury liner caused the deaths of more than 100 passengers and crew. If asbestos insulation is damaged it becomes friable, meaning that individual fibers can break off and escape into the air, where they can be inhaled or ingested by sailors and dockworkers, leading to mesothelioma. The damage done by asbestos fibers occurs when tiny fibers are inhaled or ingested; they can infiltrate the lungs and mesothelium and occasionally the stomach, causing scar tissue in the case of asbestosis and cellular damage in the case of mesothelioma cancer.

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Sources

Friedman, Norman. US Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1983)

Mooney, James. Dictionary of American Fighting Ships. (Washington DC; Department of the Navy, 1991)