A Brief History

The U.S.S. Tarawa (CV-40)

The U.S.S. Tarawa (CV-40) never saw combat. World War II had ended by the time she was commissioned on 8 December 1945. After a number of years with the fleet, she was deactivated and then recommissioned in 1951 in response to the Korean War. But even then, she was relegated to duty relieving other carriers so they could go to the conflict.

But the Tarawa left her mark. She made two World Cruises, in 1946-1947 and in 1953-1954, in the latter representing the United States in Australia for the celebration of the 12^th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. She cruised with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean four times, showing the flag and extending American ‘Good Will’ from Gibraltar to Suez. She was a frequent visitor to the Caribbean, engaging in exercises that kept her battle-ready as she was upgraded in 1952 to CVA (Attack Carrier) and then in 1955 to CVS (Anti-Submarine).

She was in the North Atlantic in 1957 on exercises with ships of America’s NATO Allies. A year later the carrier was the flag-ship for the highly secret Project Argus deep in the South Atlantic; three nuclear-armed missiles were fired from the accompanying U.S.S. Norton Sound and detonated 300 miles into space. The test was to determine their impact on radar and radio frequencies, their possible use in defense against missiles and how they might disrupt our own defensive weapons.

The Tarawa crossed the Equator in the Atlantic and the Pacific, repeatedly crossed the International Date Line and once found herself up beyond the Arctic Circle. Her crewmen walked the streets of Singapore and Port au Prince and Rotterdam and Tsing Tao and Istanbul and Naples and Rio de Janiero and Oran and a hundred other ports of call across the globe, wherever duty called.

During her relatively brief career, the Tarawa operated out of Atlantic and Pacific ports for extended periods, training hundreds of Navy and Marine pilots, regulars and reserves, in carrier operations. The Tarawa bridged the gap between props and jets and in the process hastened her own demise. As jet aircraft gradually replaced the World War II prop planes, the demands on carriers for their care and nurturing increased. The jets burned more fuel and could carry heavier loads of weaponry, putting greater storage demands upon the ships. The larger air groups had more personnel that had to be fed and berthed. Space had to be found for the new sophisticated electronics.

Time was working against the Tarawa. She was young by normal ship standards but she had been overtaken by the jet and nuclear age. No amount of overhauls or updates could bring her up to meet the demands of modern carrier operations. She was decommissioned in 1960 and put into mothballs until 1968 when she was sold for scrap.