Service History
After commissioning and fitting out at Astoria, Oregon, and conducting shakedown in Puget Sound, Ommaney Bay sailed 19 March from Oakland, California, with passengers and a cargo of supplies and aircraft for Brisbane, Australia. (While the ship is presumably named for Ommaney Bay in Alaska, note that Brisbane has a landmark and suburb called Mount Ommaney.) By 27 April she had completed her mission and was back in San Diego, where she began a rigorous ten days of carrier qualification landings, drills and tests. Then, after minor alterations and repairs, the ship sailed 10 June for Pearl Harbor. Until 12 August she trained air groups and squadrons there in the art of operating from "baby flattops", then she sailed to Tulagi to rehearse for the invasion of the Palau Islands. From 11 September until the beginning of October Ommaney Bay stood off Peleliu and Anguar Islands and provided air cover for the fleet and close support strikes for the forces ashore.
Ommaney Bay sailed to Manus Island to renew her depleted stock of fuel and ammunition, then joined Rear Admiral Felix Stump's "Taffy 2" (TU 77.4.2) for the invasion of Leyte. At the beginning of the Battle off Samar on 25 October, the escort carriers began launching air strikes in an effort to cripple as many of the approaching enemy force as possible. In the ensuing battle aircraft from Ommaney Bay contributed to the sinking of one Japanese cruiser and helped to damage a number of other warships. Ommaney Bay launched some six strikes that day, and helped to turn threatened defeat into victory.
The carrier spent the month of November at Manus and Kossol Passage for availability and replenishment, then, from 12 December to 17 December, operated in the Mindanao and Sulu Seas in support of operations on the Island of Mindoro. On the 15th, a day of heavy enemy air attacks, she splashed an enemy bomber as it dived for the ship from the port bow. On 19 December she returned to Kossol Passage to prepare for the landings in Lingayen Gulf.
Read more about this topic: USS Ommaney Bay (CVE-79)
Famous quotes containing the words service and/or history:
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)