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Following commissioning,
Windham Bay conducted shakedown training in Puget Sound and then
headed for San Diego on 6 June. There, she conducted air
qualifications and catapult trials before taking on a load of
Hawaii-bound aircraft and passengers. She departed San Diego on 12
June and arrived in Pearl Harbor on the 19th. Trading her cargo of
aircraft and passengers for a similar one bound for the Marshall
Islands, Windham Bay stood out of the harbor on 25 June and arrived
at Majuro on 2 July. After unloading her aircraft, she moved on to
Kwajalein where she loaded planes and men of Marine Night Fighter
Squadron 532 (VMF(N)-532) and headed for the Marianas. The Marines
flew off near Saipan, and Windham Bay put into Garapan anchorage to
unload the squadron's gear.
Afterward, the escort carrier took on a load of captured Japanese
aircraft and other material for transportation back to Hawaii. She
arrived in Pearl Harbor on 10 July and remained there for 15 days,
getting underway for the west coast on 25 July. The warship arrived
in San Diego on 31 July and soon began overhaul at San Pedro.
Repairs took the entire month of August, but she was back at sea on
1 September with a load of aircraft bound for Emirau and Manus. She
arrived at Emirau at mid-month and at Manus on the 18th. From there,
she voyaged to Espiritu Santo on a passenger run, returning to Manus
on 5 October with a load of planes. After a brief visit to
Guadalcanal during the second week in October, she got underway for
the United States. Windham Bay steamed via Espiritu Santo and
arrived in San Diego on 20 October. In November, she made another
voyage from the west coast to the South Pacific, carrying aircraft
to Manus and picking up about 350 casualties from the Palau campaign
at Guadalcanal on 24 November for the return voyage to San Diego.
The escort carrier remained at San Diego from 10 December until the
27th when she resumed aircraft ferrying operations. She arrived in
Pearl Harbor on 2 January 1945, unloaded one cargo of aircraft there
and took on another made up of F4U Corsairs. She departed Pearl
Harbor on 5 January and arrived at Midway Island on the 9th to
unload the Corsairs. Departing Midway the next day, Windham Bay
returned to Oahu on the 13th. On 1 February, the ship stood out of
Pearl Harbor on her way to the Central Pacific. Carrying replacement
aircraft for the fleet carriers of Task Force 58, she made a stop at
Eniwetok on her way to the staging base at Ulithi Atoll in the
Western Carolines.
From there, she operated with the 5th Fleet Logistics Group, Task
Group 50.8, in support of the fast carrier strikes conducted during
the Iwo Jima and Okinawa operations. During the next four months,
she visited Guam and the Ryukyu Islands. On 4 June to 5 June, while
steaming with the logistics group in support of TF 58 and the
strikes on Okinawa, the carrier steamed right through the famous
typhoon of 1945, suffering lost and damaged planes as well as damage
to her flight and hangar decks. On 16 June, she cleared the Marianas
en route to Oahu. The warship arrived in Pearl Harbor on the 25th
but departed again two days later. She entered port at San Diego on
11 July, and immediately began repairs to correct the typhoon damage
she had suffered earlier in the month. Those repairs lasted through
late August, so that she missed the final weeks of the war.
On 26 August, she departed San Diego on her way back to the Central
Pacific carrying Marine Fighter Squadron 312 (VMF-312) to Guam. She
stopped briefly at Pearl Harbor and arrived in Apra Harbor on 15
September. After unloading passengers and cargo at Guam, Windham Bay
headed for Samar in the Philippines where she arrived on 19
September. There, she loaded passengers, planes, and equipment for
transportation back to Hawaii. She got underway from Leyte on 24
September, made a stop at Guam on the 27th, and arrived back at Oahu
on 7 October. On the 8th, she continued eastward toward the west
coast and arrived at San Diego on the 14th.
Five days later, the ship headed back to Pearl Harbor on her way to
participate in Operation "Magic Carpet", the return of American
servicemen to the United States. After a round-trip voyage to San
Pedro, California, and back to Pearl Harbor, she set out for the
western Pacific once more on 13 November. Arriving at Samar in the
Philippines on the 26th, she loaded passengers and then headed east
again on the 28th. She stopped at Oahu along the way and arrived in
Port Hueneme, California, on 17 December. She moved to San Pedro on
the 18th and remained there through the New Year.
On 8 January 1946, Windham Bay departed San Pedro, headed for
Hawaii, and arrived in Pearl Harbor on 14 January. She departed Oahu
again on the 15th and arrived in San Pedro on the 21st. Within days,
however, she moved north to Tacoma, Washington, where she reported
for duty with the Pacific Reserve Fleet on 25 January 1946. She
remained there—in commission, in reserve—until 23 August 1946 when
she was placed out of commission.
The escort carrier stayed with the Reserve Fleet until hostilities
erupted in Korea during the summer of 1950. On 28 October 1950, she
was recommissioned at Bremerton, Washington, Capt. Charles E.
Brunton in command. On 20 November, she steamed south to California,
visiting San Francisco on the way to San Diego where she arrived on
2 December. After 11 days, the escort carrier returned to San
Francisco whence she embarked upon a voyage to Pearl Harbor on the
19th. Returning to the west coast at Alameda on 2 January 1951, the
warship headed west again five days later. She arrived in Yokohama,
Japan, on the 24th and unloaded a cargo of aircraft for use in the
Korean War which the United States had entered under the auspices of
the United Nations. Departing Japan two days later, she visited
Saigon in French Indochina and Manila in the Philippines before
shaping a course back to the United States. Windham Bay reentered
San Francisco Bay on 24 February.
At this juncture, the escort carrier settled into a routine of
transpacific resupply voyages between the United States and Japan.
Over the next 20 months, she made nine round-trip voyages, beginning
each at either San Francisco or San Diego, stopping always at
Yokosuka, and returning always to San Francisco. She broke that
nine-voyage routine in October and November 1952 when she visited
Takao, Japan, and Bangkok, Thailand, before returning via Japan to
the west coast at Alameda on 9 December.
Windham Bay continued her aircraft ferrying voyages between the
United States and Japan during 1953. The war in Korea, however,
began to subside in intensity at about the same time, and her
passages began to take on more of a peacetime character. She began
making more stops and side trips in addition to Yokosuka—notably to
Hawaii, the Philippines, and at other Japanese ports. French
Indochina also returned to her itinerary in May 1954 and again in
February and March 1955 when she made visits to Saigon, capital of
the newly constituted Republic of Vietnam. On 12 June 1955, she was
redesignated CVU-92. In May 1957, she added Naha, Okinawa, to her
list of ports of call; and, in December, she made one more stop at
Saigon. Otherwise, the remainder of her career consisted of the
normal west coast-to-Japan aircraft resupply voyages in support of
the fast carriers assigned to the western Pacific.
Her career lasted until the end of 1958. In January 1959, she was
decommissioned and was berthed with the San Francisco Group, Pacific
Reserve Fleet. Her name was struck from the Navy List on 1 February
1959, and she was subsequently sold to the Hugo Neu Steel Products
Corp., of New York City. The ship was scrapped in Japan in February
1961. |
