 Every happening no matter how trivial is committed in detail to its pages and it becomes the official record of her every movement. The story of the Franklin can best be told by glancing through the pages of her log. There is recorded her gala days and her sad ones. The intimate details of the men who sailed and fought her. San Francisco in February is a battle scarred veteran. She had just been refitted at one of the yards where the Navy proudly licks its wounds and they are healed. Western Pacific where she should appear as a ghost ship to the enemy. They claim to have sunk her at least three times. Let's review a few highlights of her career. She joined the Pacific Fleet in July 1944 and what a list of calls she made. Iwo Jima, Guam, Rota, Yap, Pelelu, Okinawa, the Philippines, Formosa, Leyte. This girl had been around. The first combat mission had thundered down the Franklin Flight Deck on July 4th, 1944. The target Iwo Jima. Other fleet units were slugging it out. This was the softening up process to prepare the way for our amphibious landing forces. Organized kamikaze attacks by the suicide boys had not yet started. But watch this one crash on a ship. Sights of an Air Group 13 plane from the Franklin. It was usually scratch one meatball. Hickning and seldom was the need for any more working over. Hundred and ships by the score were accounted for by the task force of which the Franklin was a part. Kamikaze boys were in earnest. They were deliberately trying to crash on any ship they could. They got plenty of assistance in crashing. Often they were too close for comfort. Coming at 300 miles an hour and finally crashed on the flight deck. This sent the Franklin back to the States for major repairs. And just four months later, we pick up her saga as she draws up to Ford Island at Pearl Harbor. She didn't create much fuss. Only one small band played Aloha. We have 50 waves. A glee club by the way who were shown around the ship. They stayed for the awarding of combat decorations to a returning air group. The presentation was made by Vice Admiral Murray, commander of aircraft in the Pacific. Groups 75 and 35 came aboard for refresher exercises in the Hawaiian area. These combat teams and our own Air Group number five needed some sharpening up and they were going to get it. Carrier is roughly divided in thirds. The bow is fly one, center fly two and fly three at the stern. Fly officer one signals take offs. Look out there. If you step on those brakes too hard, you'll wind up on your nose. And this signal means rev it up. More speed. The towering bulk of a carrier to a slim graceful ship streaking through the water at 28 knots. The greater her speed, the easier she launches her planes. The white diamond on the wings and tail surfaces identifies the plane as belonging to the Franklin. When coming in for a landing that carrier deck 80 by 800 feet looks like a very small postage stamp on a very big ocean. Setting a fighter plane on a carrier deck is a trick not learned overnight. It takes at least two men, the pilot and the LSO, the landing signal officer. He's a veteran pilot who knows both the plane and his ship. When the approach is not to his liking he says keep going and try again sometime. Actually nurses every one of those planes down to a perfect landing with body English, a few prayers and the mandatory signal with the right hand paddle. Cut your engine to a perfect landing as the arresting gear grabs the tail hook. His opinion of some approaches would blister the ears off the pilot concerned if he could hear it. Navy slang for flyers, a little adieu but sunbathe. That night there was a party aboard. The guest of honor at the executive table was fortunate enough to pull the brass ring on the merry-go-round of flying carrier based planes and make the 9,000 landing on the deck of the Franklin. Ensign Graff was to make many more fast takeoffs and hurried landings before the story of the Franklin was committed to its log. Colorful sight. The flight crews were loud colored jerseys for quick identification with their jobs. Red shirts are fueling crews. Yellow shirts are plane directors and blue shirts armorers who load the planes guns and bombs. The men at the ship left port neckties were dropped along with many other formalities of dress and behavior. The enlisted men wore dungarees and the traditional white hats were dyed blue. However informal the dress the standards of smartness and cleanliness were still high. Any man who stood inspection needing a haircut got his orders fast and the haircut too. When the executive officer was satisfied that things were ship-shaped the tour ended and everyone off to his station. 775 were ordered to their shorefields. They took off a lot more smartly than they did when we first joined up together. Flying teams integrated used to each other and to our ship. They saw a diamond head long before we did and headed for the naval air station at Canioy. To be taken aboard the thousands of buried items needed to stock a floating airfield for weeks to come. The facilities available for rest and recreation in the Hawaiian islands have long been world famous and our flyers took proper advantage of them. The wonderful surf bathing at Waikiki and shooting the beach on mile long rollers in native outrigger canoes. All supplies were aboard. Everyone packed his gear and leaves for all hands were ended. The Franklin was on her way again to rejoin Task Force 58 with escort vessels alongside and her own planes overhead to spot any trouble or interference. She was steaming to Yulithi. Not too long ago these protected waters were filled with the Imperial Japanese Navy. Now it was America's secret weapon of the Pacific War. An anchorage large enough to hold the most powerful armada of warships in history. The fleet that had come to stay. The spearhead of our Pacific strategy was implemented with these fleet units formed into task groups they had prepared for and covered all our island landings and now we're ready to sort it to the very door of the Japanese home islands. Task Force anchored closely by was the carrier Hancock. She too was to join with us in a raid on shore installations on the Japanese islands of Honshu. The main Japanese islands were four days journey from Yulithi. We were on our way. And as before seven on March 19th less than a hundred miles from Honshu the Franklin's planes took off into a heavily overcast sky. We were making 24 knots. A sixth of the crew was at breakfast when we got a message from the Hancock that they saw a twin engine Jap medium bomber. Our planes started looking for him but he slipped down out of a cloud and laid two five hundred pound bombs on our flight deck. Forty five of our planes were a lot but there were thirty one on the flight deck and twenty two on the hangar deck fully gas and arm. The first heavy vapor explosion enveloped the stern in flames. We turned into the wind to keep the fire and smoke a stern. The jet bomber had pulled up from his bomb run and was speaking for home when the leader of air group five got him and shot him down. The plight of the Franklin was probably best described by one of our returning flyers. I was with the first squadron just before we got over the target my oil line let go so I had a nurse a cripple plane back home. I tried to stay in the clouds because I couldn't outfly a Seaco. When I broke through the overcast I saw flames shoot hundreds of feet above the Franklin and a two thousand foot column of smoke. It looked awful bad but she still had some headway. I got permission for an emergency landing on the Hancock. Full caliber ammunition continued to explode with increasing violence. Water pressure was good for a while but fires on the hangar deck soon severed the lines. Smoke and burning gas fumes were responsible for a great many casualties. Hospital corpsmen and first aid crews were as busy as those fighting the fire. With both elevators knocked out first aid stations had to be set up on the forward area of the flight deck. In the scene of chaos when the instinct for self-preservation should have been uppermost dozens of selfless heroes were born. The Franklin's crew was writing a magnificent page in the history book of naval disaster. One crewman tells this story. I just finished breakfast and come up on deck. That's all I remember till I found myself in the water swimming and I didn't have any uniform on. Couldn't see my ship for smoke. She seemed to be blowing herself to pieces. Our trouble would soon reach the enemy so gun crews were at stations for all available weapons. We didn't have long to wait. Even though we were flanked by our own ships the Franklin was a sitting duck. And here's what happened to one attacker. Some of our wounded transferred. The Franklin was now dead in the water because engine spaces had to be evacuated on account of smoke. The only power we had was from one forward emergency diesel generator unit. Air hues stood by the stern and took stretcher cases off the fan tail. These men had been marooned below the burning flight deck for about four hours. The water line is an emergency steering station. Here's a report of what happened there. I was the quartermaster on watch. We realized from the time of the first explosion that our ship was hurt. Maybe finished. Soon we were trapped by water pouring down. We had one phone line to the bridge. That's how we steered the ship. They told us to hang on. They would get us out somehow. They did. Eighteen hours later. Franklin's flooded to even her keel. A tow line was passed to the Pittsburgh. 12 hours the Franklin started under her own power. She had been hurt by the enemy and buffeted by fate. She had drifted a hulking wreck incapable of movement to within a few miles of the Japanese coast. But now she was steaming under her own power, manned by her own crew. As soon as decks could be cleaned, the survivors met in prayer for those less fortunate. Franklin's crew, some of them still on litters, were ferried over to the mercy. There, with quiet efficiency, the Navy's medical department took over tasks for which the Franklin's sick bay was never designed. More than flesh can be seared. There are sites to be forgotten. Experiences which must be erased from the memory. These are the things that chaplain must help them to accomplish. March 25th, within sight of the hospital ship Mercy, a thanksgiving and memorial service was held on the flight deck for the Full Ships Company. Memorial ceremonies were the short talk which added up to, well done. Sagged and buckled from the heat and the force of explosions from above and below. The wood planking was charred. These gun mounts tell their own story. Masks were askew, but she knifed through the water with some of her old spirit. All the wild debris was being jettisoned. Anything that could be moved was given the heave-hole. Hard to remember that we entered this same channel only two months ago. We were on our way west then. Again, we were greeted by the same group of waves. The banner was canted and it waved over more rust than paints, but it was still there. The 102,000 combat miles and by all the rules they use in this game, she should be sleeping on the bottom off the coast of Japan. But some people don't believe in all the rules and reach the canal zone. The supply at Pearl Harbor was not large enough to go around. 2000 miles, the most heavily damaged warship ever to reach port under her own power. Bay the Whistle Brigade from deep-throated liners to the family motorboat screeched a welcome to one of the Navy's great fighting ladies in all her rusty and battered dignity. People to bestow was worn by these men. If you ever meet a crewman of the Franklin, you'll know he belonged to that band of heroes who brought a lost ship back to port. Fondurable are the vessels that guard our ramparts. Rehabilitated from her broad bows to her broader stern, from her keel to the towering top of her fighting island amid ships, the Franklin rides proud and whole once more. A fierce phoenix risen from her ashes. Her guns and machinery sealed against him in action, but ready on short notice to defend the peace they so gallantly won through war. Probably Admiral Halsey was thinking of the Franklin when he said, We who had the privilege of serving in and with the flat tops of our Navy and knew the men who fought and lived them shall forever honor their bravery and achievements. A ship that won't be sunk can't be sunk.