USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70)

Gift of William Waldorf, EDU.004.001

Escort aircraft carriers were built on merchant ship hulls and initially designed to protect merchant ship convoys against U-boats in the Atlantic, however, in the Pacific, escort carriers were used to soften up enemy positions by air attack prior to amphibious invasions. CVE-70 participated in one of the largest engagements in naval history when, as a member of Task Force 77.4.3, engaged a large contingent of Japanese battleships and cruisers off of the island of Samar in the Philippines. Destroyers and Destroyer escorts along with the air groups of the escort carriers from the task force, though impossibly outgunned, attacked the Japanese force, allowing CVE-70 to escape.