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Shoemaker led aircraft carrier Franklin through kamikaze attack

James Marshall Shoemaker, the first commanding officer of the aircraft carrier Franklin, led the ship in hard combat in the Pacific. By the time Shoemaker relinquished command in late 1944, the Franklin had survived a devastating kamikaze attack and was on its way to becoming one of the most famous naval vessels of World War II.

Born in Montana in 1895, Shoemaker graduated from the Naval Academy in 1915. He served aboard the battleships Utah, New Mexico and Nevada, and the destroyer Rogers. He studied aeronautical engineering at the Naval Academy from 1920 to 1921 and completed flight training at Pensacola, Fla., to begin a successful career as a naval aviator.

According to a March 11, 1944, article in the “Franklin Forum,” the famous carrier’s newsletter, Shoemaker was “the commanding officer of VS-Z, the Navy’s first long range patrol squadron in the late 1920s.”

In the 1930s, he also served as the naval attache “at the American embassies at Paris, Madrid and Rome.”

From June 1940 until March 1941, then-Cmdr. Shoemaker commanded the seaplane tender Wright. In mid-1941, he took command of the Naval Air Station on Ford Island at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. When the Japanese attacked Dec. 7, 1941, then-Capt. Shoemaker was wounded by shrapnel. He was awarded the Purple Heart.

On Nov. 30, 1943, he was ordered to duty as prospective commanding officer of the Franklin, named for founding father Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin launched its first strike of the war in early July 1944, when its aircraft attacked Japanese forces at Iwo Jima, Guam and Rota. From August through October, Franklin’s aircraft repeatedly attacked Japanese aircraft, hangars and merchant ships, including one strike on Okinawa in which some 100 enemy aircraft were destroyed and 19 ships sunk.

But disaster struck on Oct. 30, 1944, off Samar in the Philippines. Six Japanese suicide planes attacked the Franklin, with one intentionally crashing directly onto the flight deck. The resulting fires and explosions eventually killed 56 men and wounded 30.

Shoemaker received the Silver Star for his gallantry while in command of the Franklin. He relinquished the ship in November, when it sailed to Bremerton, Wash., for repairs.

Under new skipper Capt. Leslie H. Gehres, the Franklin returned to the Pacific. In March 1945, it was again badly damaged in a bigger and better-known kamikaze attack; this time, almost 800 sailors were killed and nearly 500 wounded. Hard work and sacrifice by the crew made the carrier the hardest-hit warship to survive World War II.

“While my father loved flying, he really enjoyed in being in command of ships because he loved leading sailors,”said his son, Tom Shoemaker, of Virginia Beach, Va. Shoemaker retired as a rear admiral in 1948. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1983.

Fred L. Borch retired from the Army after 25 years and is the regimental historian for the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He is the author of “The Silver Star,” a history of America’s third-highest award for combat heroism. His e-mail address is borchfj@aol.com. Robert F. Dorr, an Air Force veteran, lives in Oakton, Va. He is co-author of “Hell Hawks,” a history of an American fighter group. His e-mail address is robert.f.dorr@cox.net.