Hoehling, A. A. The Franklin Comes Home. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.

ISBN 1-55750-371-0
132 pages

Preface; Acknowledgments; photos; Postscript; Bibliography; Index.

Special Appendix (other USN ships surviving heavy damage)

Weiland, Charles Patrick. Above & Beyond. Pacifica, CA: Pacifica Press, 1997.

ISBN 0-935553-22+3
245 pages

Acknowledgements; Preface; photos; Epilogue.

When Major Pat Weiland, commander of Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF) 452, took his unit aboard the USS Franklin (CV 13) in February 1945, both the major and the carrier had already been through much combat.

The Franklin began her combat career launching air strikes against the Bonin Islands in July 1944. On 13 October, operating off the Philippines, she was hit but not damaged by a Japanese aircraft that skidded across her flight deck and into the sea. The next day she took a bomb in an elevator. On the 30th "Big Ben" was clobbered by a kamikaze and suffered sufficient damage that she sailed for the States to be repaired.

Pat Weiland -- who had joined the Marines in 1940 -- transferred to the Pacific in mid-1942 as part of VMO 251 flying photo-reconnaissance in Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters. Along with other pilots of the squadron, he was rotated to Guadalcanal to fly combat missions on loan to Marine fighter squadrons based there. Over Munda Point in December he scored his first victory. In April Weiland headed back for the States, eventually taking command of the newly formed VMF 452.

On 7 February 1945 the Franklin, with Weiland and VMF 452 aboard, sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge bound for Pearl Harbor and then westward to join Task Force 58 for air attacks against the Japanese Home Islands.

On 18 March the Franklin's air group took part in strikes against Kyushu, with Weiland flying Combat Air Patrol over CV 13. A number of kamikazes attacked the American TF. Several of Franklin's aircraft and pilots were lost during the day, but the carrier suffered no damage.

The next day, Weiland flew in the strike mission against the Kawanishi aircraft engine plant, pressing his rocket attack through dense flak then veering right and running back to sea.

We continued to gain altitude, and soon our southerly heading took us down the blunt peninsula of Kii Haneo. We deviated to avoid another city to the east, then paralleled the coast of Shikoku Island until we came to open sea, then to our task group.

We maneuvered past the destroyer screening force and homed in on the Franklin. At this point I observed a cloud of smoke on the horizon; some ship must have been hit. Suddenly, a sense of desolation overwhelmed me.

Indeed, some ship must have been hit.

A pilot standing at the side of the flight deck, Lt. Arthur Schmagel of St. Louis, looked up and saw a swiftly approaching plane. Confidently, he "thought it was one of our boys trying to drop a message."

No guns were firing.

At than instant, logged variously as 7:07, 7:08, and 7:09 A.M., [Commander Stephen] Jurika, "searching the sky overhead and also ahead for aircraft," saw two bombs "flash into my field of vision and hurtle down towards Franklin." He could not "see the enemy aircraft as such but glimpsed the flashing shadow as it swept past the island structure at about masthead height."

Split seconds too late, a 5-inch mount just forward of the superstructure spat its heavy shells at the retreating plane. Lookouts on the Hancock had already identified it as a "Judy," the effective aerial workhorse of the Japanese navy.

Still standing beside Steve Jurika, [Ensign Richard E.] Jortberg did not witness even that much. All at once he was propelled up and up, until he hit the steel overhead that blanked his vision and set lights dazzling inside his head.

Pat Weiland's account is the personal story of his journey through the USMC from 1940 until the end of the war, with a concluding chapter about his post-war years and the fates of his flying comrades. Hoehling's, on the other hand, is the concatenated memory of those who survived the hellish disaster aboard Franklin in March 1945. Both books are interesting enough; reading the intersecting chapters together makes them all the more gripping.

The Franklin Comes Home is available from mail order booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Naval Institute Press in a new softcover edition under the "Bluejacket Books" imprint. Above & Beyond is available from mail order booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Pacifica Press.

Thanks to NIP and Pacifica for providing these review copies.