The ‘Forgotten’ German Deck Gun That Changed Air Attacks In 1942

Today’s story is about a type of ship that was never supposed to face battleships in surface combat, yet found itself doing exactly that off the Philippines in October 1944.

This is how desperation turned a vulnerability into a weapon.

October 25th, 1944.

Dawn breaks over the Philippine Sea near Samar Island, and American lookouts aboard a small formation of escort carriers spot something that freezes their blood.

Emerging from a rain squall, massive pagota style superructures rise above the horizon.

The Imperial Japanese Navy’s center force, four battleships, including the monstrous Yamato, six heavy cruisers, and 11 destroyers has caught the American invasion fleet completely exposed.

On the bridge of USS Fansaw Bay, the officer of the deck grabs binoculars, his hands unsteady.

Through the lenses, he counts masts, then counts again, hoping he’s wrong.

He’s not.

The powerful American battleships that should be protecting them are 200 miles away, chasing a decoy force.

What stands between 23 Japanese warships and the vulnerable amphibious fleet at Lake Gulf are six tiny escort carriers designated Taffy 3, three destroyers and four destroyer escorts.

The mathematics of this engagement are brutally simple.

Admiral Karita’s center force displaces over 200,000 tons.

The entire American task unit barely reaches 50,000 tons.

Yamato’s main battery alone throws more metal in a single salvo than all six carriers 5-in guns combined.

Her 18.1 in shells weigh 3,200 lb each.

The escort carrier’s hulls are 3/4 of an inch of steel over a merchant ship frame.

At 0658 hours, the first ranging salvos arrive.

The columns of water erupt around the formation.

Red, yellow, green, purple.

Each Japanese ship uses dye in their shells to spot their fall.

It’s a grotesque fireworks display, a beautiful and terrifying sign the Japanese have the range and are walking their fire closer.

These escort carriers were never designed for this.

Built on C3 cargo ship holes, they were intended to provide air cover for Atlantic convoys.

Their single 5-in gun was mounted on the stern for submarine defense.

Maximum speed 17.5 knots.

They had no armor belt, no armored deck, no torpedo blisters.

Their aviation fuel lines ran exposed through the hangar deck.

A single 8-in shell through the wrong bulkhead could turn one into a floating crematorium.

Their crews called them jeep carriers, or more grimly, none of Kaiser coffins after the shipyards that stamped them out.

Their thin plating couldn’t stop anything bigger than a 20 millimeter cannon shell, and their flight decks were wooden.

From the bridgewing of USS Kinan Bay, Captain Douglas P.

Johnson could see the profile of Yamato, her massive turrets rotating toward his ship.

Each turret weighed more than his entire vessel.

The tactical problem was absolute.

The carriers could not fight.

Their single 5-in gun was a pop gun against battleship armor.

They could not run.

The Japanese heavy cruisers made 35 knots.

They could not hide.

It was dawn with 10 mi of visibility.

The nearest American heavy ships were beyond radio range.

At 700 hours, shells arrived in earnest.

16-in projectiles screamed overhead like freight trains, throwing up geysers higher than the carrier’s masts.

The spray crashed down across flight decks and splinters from near misses slashed through the thin plating, wounding men on exposed catwalks.

The Americans made smoke, but the morning wind blew it in the same direction they were fleeing.

The Japanese ships simply maintained course, their gunnery officers using radar to keep shooting through the thinning haze.

Aboard USS St.

Low, sailors hauled ammunition for the single 5-in gun.

The crew fired steadily at the Japanese column, 24,000 yd distant.

The shells bounced off Yamato’s armor without a scratch, but they kept firing because doing nothing meant thinking about what was coming.

The carriers tried evasive maneuvers, but they were too slow.

A destroyer could turn sharply, but these merchant holes needed a half mile to come around.

By the time they completed a turn, the Japanese had adjusted their aim.

At 0720 hours, USS Kinan Bay took her first hit.

An 8-in shell punched through the port side, passed completely through the hull, and out the starboard side.

It didn’t explode.

Its fuse was set for heavy armor.

It left two neat holes that immediately began flooding a compartment.

Men stared at the gushing water, understanding with perfect clarity that this was the good scenario.

The American pilots launched everything that could fly.

Wildcats and Avengers clawed into the air from pitching decks while shell splashes bracketed their sterns.

Some aircraft carried bombs, some depth charges, some nothing but their machine guns.

They went anyway, strafing battleship superructures with 050 caliber rounds that sparked harmlessly off steel plate.

When ammunition was exhausted, pilots made dummy runs.

The diving at Japanese ships to distract gunners, and by another minute, they flew until their fuel gauges read empty, then ditched in the ocean.

A Wildcat took a 25mm shell through the engine over Haguro, its splash was lost among the shell impacts.

By 0745 hours, the Japanese had closed to 18,000 yd.

Yamato shells arrived every 40 seconds.

The colored geysers merged into a continuous forest of water columns.

The roar of explosions was constant.

Aboard USS Fshaw Bay.

A 14-in shell hit the water 10 yard off the port beam, and the explosion lifted the entire ship.

In the hangar deck, a mechanic looked down at a piece of razoredged steel embedded in his thigh.

He pulled it out and kept working.

The destroyers and destroyer escorts made their runs, charging the Japanese formation with torpedoes.

It was suicide, but it was calculated suicide, trading their lives for time.

The Japanese were forced to maneuver, but there were only seven escorts against 23 Japanese ships.

The mathematics didn’t work.

At 0800 hours, USS Gambia Bay took a hit that didn’t pass through.

An 8-in shell detonated inside the engine room, killing everyone inside instantly.

Steam pressure dropped.

Speed fell away.

The carrier began to fall behind the formation.

The Japanese concentrated fire on the Shells poured into Gambir Bay.

Hits multiplied faster than damage control could count them.

Fires broke out.

She was still shooting her single 5-in gun, still launching her few remaining aircraft, but everyone watching knew she was dying.

On the other carriers, men watched Gambia Bay fall behind and understood their future.

That that would be them in 20 minutes or 30 or an hour.

The Japanese were methodical.

They would kill the escorts, then work their way through the carriers one by one.

There were no reinforcements coming.

Radio calls for help went unanswered because Admiral Hoy’s battleships were too far north to do anything but listen.

The battle should have ended at 700 when the first Salvos landed.

that it was still going at 8:30 was merely extending the inevitable.

What the escort carriers needed was something that would make the Japanese break off.

Something that would make battleships running at flank speed toward a helpless target suddenly turn away.

They needed a weapon these ships were never designed to carry, employed in a manner that defies every principle of naval warfare.

They needed something that could turn vulnerability into a threat.

The mathematics said they were all dead.

What they needed was something that would make Admiral Karita question his mathematics because in 20 minutes Gambia Bay was going to sink and after her there were five more escort carriers that couldn’t run, can’t fight, and couldn’t survive what was coming.

The solution and legacy.

When the first Casablanca class escort carriers arrived at Pearl Harbor in the summer of 1943, experienced Navy men questioned whether they qualified as warships at all.

Built by Kaiser Ship Building Company using commercial ship construction techniques, they looked more like converted freighters than proper aircraft carriers.

Their holes showed rivet lines and welded seams that would have horrified pre-war naval architects.

And their wooden flight decks were flexible enough to visibly ripple in heavy seas.

Unlike fleet carriers with armored hanger decks and multiple watertight compartments, these ships were essentially cargo vessels with a flight deck bolted on top.

Officers noted the cramped quarters, exposed aviation fuel lines, a single propeller shaft that made maneuvering sluggish, and thin hull plating barely adequate for open ocean service.

The engine room housed reciprocating steam engines, obsolete technology in 1943 because turbines were reserved for destroyers and fleet carriers.

Everything about the ships screamed temporary expedient.

Yet Admiral Ernest King had ordered 50 of them and Kaiser’s Vancouver shipyard was churning them out at an astonishing rate.

These were CVE class escort carriers.

A designation crews grimly joked stood for combustible, vulnerable, expendable.

Each vessel displaced 10,400 tons measuring 512 ft long.

Power came from two Skinner unofflow reciprocating engines driving a single propeller to a maximum speed of 19 knots.

Painfully slow compared to fleet carriers capable of 33 knots.

Their whole design sacrificed all protection for simplicity and speed of construction.

The flight deck was wooden planking with no armor below and aviation fuel tanks sat relatively exposed.

Defensive armorament was light.

one 5-in gun on the stern, a handful of 40mm bow force mounts, and scattered 20mm Orlicon cannons.

Aircraft capacity was just 28 planes, typically a mix of FM2 Wildcat fighters and TBM Avenger torpedo bombers.

Accommodations were Spartan for the 860man complement with hot bunking and inadequate ventilation.

These ships were designed for one purpose, converting American industrial capacity into floating airfields faster than Japan could sink them.

Kaiser used pre-fabrication techniques borrowed from Liberty ship production, assembling and welding massive sections.

The Navy accepted that these carriers would never survive battleship gunfire.

They needed to launch aircraft, support amphibious landings, and be replaced cheaply when lost.

The first combat test came not hunting yubot in the Atlantic as intended, but in the central Pacific supporting operation Galvanic in November 1943.

Four Casablanca class carriers, Liscom Bay, Coral Sea, Corugador, and Kolen Bay joined the invasion of the Gilbert Islands.

On November 24th, NA the Japanese submarine.

I75 put a single torpedo into Lisk Bay’s stern, striking near the aircraft bomb magazine.

The resulting explosion was catastrophic, blowing through the flight deck.

The ship sank in 23 minutes, taking 644 men with her, including Rear Admiral Henry Molinux.

The loss seemed to confirm every fear about CVE vulnerability, aviation fuel, and munitions in a thin hole created a floating bomb.

Yet, the other three carriers continued operations, their aircraft supporting the Marines ashore.

The lesson learned was not that the carriers were too vulnerable, but that they needed better anti-ubmarine screening and damage control.

By mid 1944, Casablanca class carriers were operating across the Pacific, supporting the Mariana’s campaign, Pleu, and the Philippines.

Their slow speed and light construction kept them from fleet actions, but they provided constant invaluable air cover for amphibious landings, relieving fleet carriers for major strike operations.

During the invasion of Saipan, their Avengers dropped napalm on Japanese positions too close for naval gunfire.

The continuous dawn to dusk air presence they provided proved indispensable.

Their greatest test came on October 25th, 1944 off Samar.

Taffy 3, a task unit of six escort carriers screened by three destroyers and four destroyer escorts was supporting the laty landings when Admiral Karita’s formidable center force emerged from San Bernardino Strait.

The American carriers faced four battleships, including the super battleship Yamato, six heavy cruisers, and 11 destroyers.

The Japanese fleet could make 30 knots, the escort carriers 19.

On paper, it was a massacre.

Instead, Rear Admiral Clifton Sprag, commanding from USS Fansaw Bay, ordered his carriers to flee east while launching every available aircraft.

His destroyers and destroyer escorts charged directly at the Japanese fleet in suicidal torpedo attacks.

The carriers began making smoke, obscuring Japanese optical rangefinders.

For 2 and 1/2 hours, the CVE ran for their lives while their aircraft made continuous attacks with whatever they could carry, torpedoes, bombs, depth charges, or nothing at all.

Making dry runs to force Japanese ships to maneuver.

Fansaw Bay drew concentrated fire, taking six 8-in shell hits that damaged an engine room and killed crewmen.

Yet, she maintained 16 knots on one engine.

She continued to recover, rearm, and relaunch her aircraft in minutes.

Noah sustaining a furious operational tempo.

The Japanese high command perceived these desperate maneuvers as coordinated fleet carrier tactics.

Admiral Karita received reports from his cruisers claiming hits on large carriers, mistaking the small CVE for much larger prey.

The ferocity of the American destroyer attacks and the relentless air assaults from multiple directions convinced him he was sailing into a trap.

At 9/11, with victory within his grasp, he ordered a general withdrawal.

Taffy3 had lost two escort carriers, Gombia Bay to gunfire and St.

Low to a kamicazi, plus several of its screening ships.

But the landing beaches at Lady were safe.

six fragile carriers, never meant for surface combat, had held off one of the most powerful battleship forces ever assembled.

But Japanese records later revealed Karita genuinely believed he had engaged Essexclass fleet carriers.

His action report described repeated air attacks by large numbers of Grumman fighters and Avenger torpedo bombers.

The unrelenting tempo of air operations, possible because the small CVE could cycle aircraft faster than larger fleet carriers, created an impression of overwhelming force.

The aggressive destroyer charges seemed to indicate they were screening high value targets, not acting as the primary defense.

The smoke screens ordered by Sprag to hide his carrier’s vulnerability, instead convinced the Japanese they were concealing more, larger ships.

Kita’s decision to withdraw remains controversial, but his reports confirm he believed he faced a superior force.

The Casablanca class had undeniable limitations.

Their reciprocating engines required constant maintenance.

The single propeller shaft was an Achilles heel, and ventilation in tropical climates was abysmal.

The wooden flight decks were a persistent fire hazard, and their short length demanded perfect landings.

Anti-aircraft batteries were concentrated near the island, leaving the stern exposed, and they were devastated by kamicazi attacks.

St.

Low sank in 30 minutes from a single hit.

Yet production continued at an unprecedented rate.

Kaiser ship building delivered all 50 carriers between July 1943 and July 1944, an average of one every 7 days.

The entire class of 50 carriers cost less than 12 Essexclass fleet carriers.

This industrial efficiency meant losing a CVE while tragic was strategically acceptable.

A sunken escort carrier could be replaced in weeks.

An Essex class took 18 months.

This calculation shaped deployment, assigning CVS to dangerous close support missions where kamicazi and submarine threats were highest.

By the war’s end, five had been sunk in combat, a 10% loss rate.

34 earned battle stars with Fshaw Bay receiving five.

Their postwar fate reflected their expedient design.

Obsolete and unable to handle jets, all surviving carriers were decommissioned by 1946.

Most were sold for scrap by 1960.

None were preserved as museum ships.

Naval historians debate whether the class represented brilliant improvisation or wasteful overproduction.

Critics note that building 50 carriers in a year strained the availability of trained air crews.

Proponents argue the industrial capacity used would have otherwise sat idle.

The truth lies in between.

They were expendable platforms built to solve a specific problem and they succeeded because their design honestly acknowledged their purpose.

The Battle of Samar was the class’s defining moment, demonstrating that naval warfare isn’t determined solely by tonnage and armor.

The crew’s determination, the pilot’s courage, and the commander’s tactical improvisation transformed material weakness into psychological victory.

Admiral Sprag’s dispatch as the battle began.

Small boys attack summarized the escort carrier philosophy.

Modern historians identify Samar as the moment the CVE concept proved itself not as a substitute for fleet carriers but as a complimentary force multiplier where fleet carriers projected strategic power.

Escort carriers provided persistent tactical presence.

The legacy of the Casablanca class lies in this distinction and in its demonstration of industrial warfare.

Speed of production and simplicity of design trumped individual ship quality.

These carriers were built to be sunk, yet their crews fought them as if they were battleships.

That contradiction defines their service.

The Navy accepted a trade of American industrial capacity against Japanese military skill, and the families of those lost on the five sunken carriers paid its price.

The Marines who received air support on bloody beaches received its benefit.

Fans Shaw Bay survived with her fragile hole scarred by shells, proving that courage could compensate for fragility.

She earned her battle stars a hero, doing exactly what her designers intended.

Launching aircraft from places bigger stronger carriers wouldn’t risk going.

That was enough.