By Captain Lawrence B. Brennan, U.S. Navy (Ret.) - New Jersey ...

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Lawrence B. Brennan NJ-Built Aircraft Carriers Page 28 NJ-BUILT FAST AIR CRAFT CARRIERS – Part II ~ Lawrence Brennan USS PRINCETON (CV-23) (CVL-23) 1943-1944 The fourth Princeton 18 was laid down as Tallahassee (CL-61) on June 2, 1941; reclassified CV- 23 on February 16, 1942; renamed Princeton on March 31, 1942; launched on October 18, 1942, she was commissioned at Philadelphia February 25, 1943, with Capt. George R. Henderson, U.S. Navy in command. Fig. 28: Launch of the USS Princeton, at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation shipyard, Camden, New Jersey, on 18 October 1942. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. (Photo #: 19-N-46451) Following shakedown in the Caribbean and reclassification to CVL-23 on July 15, 1943, Princeton, with Air Group 23 embarked, got underway for the Pacific. Arriving at Pearl Harbor on August 9, she sortied with Task Force 11 on the 25th headed for Baker Island. There she served as flagship, Task Group 11.2, and provided air cover during the occupation of the island and the construction of an airfield there between September 1 and 14, 1943. During that time her planes downed Japanese Emily reconnaissance planes and, more importantly, furnished the fleet with photographs of them. After completing that mission, Princeton rendezvoused with TF 15, conducted strikes against enemy installations on Makin and Tarawa, and then headed back to Pearl Harbor. In mid-October 1943, she sailed for Espiritu Santo where she joined TF 38 on the 20th. She launched her planes against airfields at Buka and Bonis on Bougainville (November 1-2) to suppress Japanese aerial resistance during the landings at Empress Augusta Bay. On the 5th and 11th her planes raided Rabaul and on the 19th, with TF 50, they helped neutralize the airfield at Nauru. Princeton then steamed northeast, covered the garrison groups en route to Makin and Tarawa and, after exchanging operational aircraft for damaged planes from other carriers, got underway for Pearl Harbor and the West Coast. NJPH 220 Vol. 36/No. 4 November 2008 Whole No. 172 Published by the New Jersey Postal History Society Originally published in the pages of NJPH
Lawrence B. Brennan NJ-Built Aircraft Carriers Page 29 Lawrence Brennan ~ NJ-BUILT FAST AIR CRAFT CARRIERS – Part II Fig. 29: The launch cover for USS Princeton (CV-23) postmarked at Camden, NJ on October 18, 1942 with a steel hand cancel device. The cover bears a printed cachet on the left face sponsored by George V. Sadworth, whose name appears in the lower left under the outer ring of anchor chain under the first part of the word "Carrier." The ship illustrated inside the concentric circles is not an Independence-class small carrier but probably is a Yorktown-class carrier. The erroneous handwritten ink annotation "Commissioned" at the top left of the cover – visible only in the electronic version of this article - has been eradicated. It is franked with a purple three cent "Win the War" stamp. Fig. 30: USS Princeton underway in the Delaware River, off the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, March 28, 1943. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. (Photo #: 19-N-42904) Vol. 36/No. 4 221 NJPH Whole No. 172 November 2008 Published by the New Jersey Postal History Society Originally published in the pages of NJPH
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By Captain Lawrence B. Brennan, U.S. Navy (Ret.) - New Jersey ...

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