How Escort Carriers Delivered 998 Planes Mid-Ocean — and Ended Japan's Air Arm

The escort carrier was the ship the fleet laughed at — until it delivered 998 replacement aircraft to Task Force 58 in the middle of the Pacific, 4,800 miles from home, to a fleet that never once returned to port. Japan never caught the ship that kept the American carriers flying, and the Imperial Japanese Navy would never understand where the planes came from. This documentary reconstructs the American fleet train that made it possible: Task Group 30.8 under Rear Admiral Donald B. Beary and his flagship USS Detroit, the oilers and ammunition ships of Service Squadron Ten, the Kaiser-built escort carriers that catapulted replacement aircraft and aircrew into the fast carriers at sea, and the anchorage at Ulithi that held 722 ships. The record runs from the USS Maumee and Chester Nimitz in 1916 to the Okinawa campaign of 1945 — 10,133,000 barrels of fuel oil, 16,375 tons of bombs and ammunition, and 1,032 replacement personnel, delivered without the Fifth Fleet ever leaving station. Built from after-action reports, loss tables, Service Force records and the fleet's own logistics histories — not from the legends. Subscribe for the definitive history of the United States in the Second World War — new documentaries every few days. #WW2 #WorldWarII #PacificWar #USNavy #WWIIHistory #EscortCarrier #TaskForce58 #Ulithi #MilitaryHistory #USAInWW2