Ships
- USS Saratoga (CV-3) Captain from 2 June 1946 · Relieved on 6 August 1946
Captain Donald Swain MacMahan took command of USS Saratoga (CV-3) on 2 June 1946. The carrier’s fighting days were already over. The Navy had assigned her to Operation Crossroads, the atomic tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, and his duty was to carry that target ship through the last weeks she remained afloat.
Saratoga had been in commission since 1927, one of the Navy’s first large carriers, built on a battlecruiser hull. Through the Pacific War she launched aircraft and took hard hits, including a submarine torpedo in 1942 and kamikaze strikes off Iwo Jima in 1945. After repairs she closed the war in a training role on the West Coast. Captains of earlier years included William Frederick Halsey, Jr. and John Henry Towers. MacMahan inherited a famous ship whose last assignment was to lie at anchor and absorb a bomb.
In June 1946 he had Saratoga fitted as an instrumented target among the other Crossroads ships in the lagoon. Gauges and sample equipment were set out to record blast, heat, and radiation, and some of the target ships also carried test animals. Before each detonation the crews left their vessels and waited clear of the anchorage. MacMahan stayed her captain through that work and through both shots.
On 1 July the Able bomb was dropped from an aircraft and burst in the air over the fleet. Saratoga lay outside the worst of that blast, came through with limited damage, and was still afloat when the lagoon settled. On 25 July the Baker device was fired underwater, close aboard the carrier. The water column and the surge that followed broke her open. She took a heavy list and sank in Bikini lagoon later that day. The underwater burst of Test Baker sent her down.
He was relieved on 6 August 1946, with Saratoga already on the lagoon floor. The command had lasted a little more than two months and had covered her whole passage from a worn-out veteran to a sunken target. She was struck from the Navy list soon afterward. The wreck still lies at Bikini, where divers visit what remains of the carrier MacMahan commanded at the end.