Superstition persisted and from the moment her name was changed from USS Midway to St. Lo, she fulfilled every dire prediction that she was to be an unlucky ship
WERE KAISER'S COFFINS" ANY WORSE THAN MOST WAR-BUILT SHIPS?Almost from her inception some form of bad luck seemed to plague the St. Lo, nee Midway, nee Chapin Bay. Laid down 23 January 1943, first bureaucratic meddling and then a shipyard labor strike threatened serious delays in her assembly. At last well on her way toward taking shape, in early April she was renamed USS Midway. Another ill omen of the sea occurred on 17 August 1943, as CVE-63 saw a yard worker fatally injured when he fell from construction scaffolding as she slid down the ways during her launching. Commissioned USS Midway on 23 October 1943, the spanking new carrier soon embarked on sea trials in Puget Sound with Capt. F.J. McKenna commanding her newly mustered crew. As was common with the breaking in of most new escort carriers, her shakedown cruise was followed by two quick round robin transits to Pearl Harbor and one to Australia as an aircraft ferry.The first such vessels to be designed and constructed from the keel up as bantam-sized aircraft carriers, these thin-hulled 7800-ton escorts were the inspiration of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser who, almost on a dare with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, boasted he could employ the same mass production pre-fabricated building techniques pioneered with his Liberty Ships to construct 50 cheap warships in record six-months' time. Enjoying much renown for his "can do" resourcefulness, Kaiser was given the green light to build from scratch the shipyard that would see these 512-ft floating airfields remarkably join the wartime fleet in a matter of months, not years. Making this challenge even more demanding was the fact that no steam engines existed to power the new carrier. This problem was solved by a clever redesign of the much disliked but easy to build Skinner Uniflow steam engine of 1912 origin. By devising special lubrication means to correct the engine's boiler feed water shortcomings, Kaiser's engineers evolved and built a reliable 11,000shp powerplant that could propel his maverick twinscrew carrier at more than 19-kts.While Washington politics and acute labor shortages served to slow down the initial building program, Kaiser's new shipyard defied the skeptics and was m full production only a few months late. Quickly making up for lost time, and in some cases meeting production deliveries ahead of time, Kaiser's prodigious feat saw class leader Casablanca (CVE-55) launched on 5 April 1943, and the 50th carrier - USS Munda (CVE-104) - slide down the ways 8 June 1944. In an astonishing regimen of 14-months of round-theclock cutting, welding, and outfitting, 50 aircraft carriers were launched at a rate of nearly four per month, or almost one per week! Remarkably, 18 were in commission by Christmas 1943.In fairness to Kaiser, it must be stressed that the escort carrier as a Naval concept was never intended to battle enemy surface warships; that with a single 5-in/38-cal sternmounted dual-purpose gun their puny armament of 16 40mm Bofors primarily focused on antiaircraft defense. As with all war-built vessels produced at a frantic pace, there was no time or budget for frills or niceties. Conceived on an emergency basis as were the war's destroyerescorte, auxiliaries, and amphibious fleets, the Kaiser carriers were created to perform a single task - launch planes to sink U-boats.While they could carry 28 aircraft and had two deck elevators to shift aircraft, the Casablancas, like all CVEs, were limited to the type of aircraft they could safely accommodate. After much trial and error it was agreed the specially modified General Motors-built FM-2 Wildcat adapted from Grumman's stubby F4F fighter well suited CVE flight deck geometries. Likewise, the Wildcat's big-sister TBM-IC Avenger torpedo bomber was, despite its 6ton girth, comfortable with the CVE's postage-stamp-sized flight deck. Lacking folding wings, the equally combat-proven Douglas SBD Dauntless was too difficult to handle in the confined spaces CVE crews were forced to deal with. As a result, the FM-2 and TBM became standard issue aircraft for all escort carriers.To meet this incredible delivery schedule, "Kaiser's Coffins" were of necessity better engineered for mass production than survival in battle. In the strictest sense they indeed were not warships at all, but highly modified Maritime Commission S4-S2BB3 merchant hulls designed for Kaiser by the noted Naval architects Gibbs & Cox. Working wonders within limited amounts of space, the designers transformed Kaiser's mass production dictates into utilitarian 19kt aircraft carriers. Totally devoid of any armored spaces that might sustain modest bomb or torpedo damage, as in the larger Esser-class fleet carriers, the Kaiser-built ships gained early notoriety as flimsily-built vessels. Welds were said to be "tacked" rather than fully beaded; a situation that saw shipyard workers often still aboard even as the oemmissioned ships embarked on sea trials.As if Si. Lo's name changes alone wasn't enough to bedevil crusty old salts, her brief existence was dogged by many minor misfortunes, as if the vicissitudes of an unkind fate early marked her for extinction; a ship seemingly cursed from the moment her keel was laid. To begin with St. Lo had the dubious distinction of being one of "Kaiser's Coffins," a rather cryptic wartime appellation applied to 50 escort carriers built in record time by Kaiser Shipbuilding at Vancouver, Washington.There's an old seafaring superstition that changing a ship's name curses her with bad luck. Though countless vessels have had their names changed through the ages, it can well be argued that few suffered fates which gave much credence to the old superstition. Unfortunately, the USS St. Lo (CVE-63) was not one of those many exceptions. In fact, she would be doubly anathematized, for this gallant warship had her name changed twice before she met her most premature and tragic end.Laid down as the Chapin Bay in June 1943, CVE-63 was soon renamed and commissioned USS Midway in. honor of the famed Pacific battle. Having ordained that American "Bays" were not inspiring enough names for Henry J. Kaiser's carriers, President Roosevelt decided that several would be renamed for World War II battle sites. Hence, among more than a dozen others under FDR's personal direction Aiazon .Bay (C VE-55) became class leader Casablanca, and Anguilla Bay (CVE-58) became USS Corregidor. However, upon further consideration, FDR deemed the pivotal victory at Midway was worthy of considerably more distinction than a mere escort carrier could convey. As a result, the name Midway was assigned to one of the trio of giant new 45,000-ton supercarriers then under construction. Meanwhile, by 1943 the war in Europe was breeding victory after victory, so rather than return CVE-63 back to her original "Bay" identity she became USS St. Lo (CVE-63) in honor ofthat bloody American victory on the Normandy battleground.As the Atlantic War unfolded, by the time most of Henry J1S carriers were at sea in 1944, Germany's Uboat menace was already in steep decline. Thus, with the exception of the USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60), Kasaan Bay (CVE-69) and Tulagi (CVE-72) which served in the Atlantic, the balance of the new CasaWanca-class vessels joined the Pacific Fleet where they could augment the tremendous number of carrier planes required to support far-ranging amphibious operations.THE HANDIWORK OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELTENTER "HENRY J"LO. THE ST. LO: A SHIP BY ANY OThER NAME
Almost from her inception some form of bad luck seemed to plague the St. Lo, nee Midway, nee Chapin Bay. Laid down 23 January 1943, first bureaucratic meddling and then a shipyard labor strike threatened serious delays in her assembly. At last well on her way toward taking shape, in early April she was renamed USS Midway. Another ill omen of the sea occurred on 17 August 1943, as CVE-63 saw a yard worker fatally injured when he fell from construction scaffolding as she slid down the ways during her launching. Commissioned USS Midway on 23 October 1943, the spanking new carrier soon embarked on sea trials in Puget Sound with Capt. F.J. McKenna commanding her newly mustered crew. As was common with the breaking in of most new escort carriers, her shakedown cruise was followed by two quick round robin transits to Pearl Harbor and one to Australia as an aircraft ferry.
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