Ships
- USS Franklin (CV-13) Captain from 31 January 1944 · Relieved on 7 November 1944
James Marshall Shoemaker of Helena, Montana, was born in 1895 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with the class of 1915. He spent his career in naval aviation. From 1936 to 1939 he served in Paris as the Navy's air attaché. In late May and early June 1940, still a commander, he held a short command of the carrier Saratoga. He also commanded the seaplane tender Wright. He was promoted to captain on 1 July 1941.
On 7 December 1941 he was commanding officer of Naval Air Station Ford Island, in the center of Pearl Harbor. His wife, Frances, and their children lived on the station, a short walk from Arizona. Japanese aircraft struck the battleships along the shore while his family was there. He stayed in aviation assignments ashore through the early years of the war.
He took command of the new carrier Franklin at her commissioning at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia, on 31 January 1944. The ship had been built at Newport News and launched on 14 October 1943. She fitted out through February. On 2 March she went to sea for the first time, running trials and gunnery practice in Chesapeake Bay while Carrier Air Group 13 qualified aboard. The crew worked long hours, and a full deckload of combat planes could be launched in about thirteen and a half minutes. Her crew called her Big Ben. After a Caribbean shakedown and a return to Norfolk for repairs and stores, she sailed for the Pacific in May, trained off San Diego, and in June joined Task Group 58.2 at Eniwetok.
At the end of June 1944 Franklin left Eniwetok to strike the Bonin Islands in support of the Marianas campaign. On 4 July her planes hit Iwo Jima, Chichi Jima, and Haha Jima, wrecking aircraft on the ground and in the air, battering airfields and guns, sinking a large cargo ship, and setting smaller ships afire. From 6 July she struck Guam and Rota. On 21 July her aircraft covered the first waves of the Guam landings. After taking supplies at Saipan she worked with the fast carriers over Palau. In September, with Task Group 38.4, she struck Yap and covered the landings on Peleliu.
That autumn, Japanese naval bombers attacked the formation. Two Betty torpedo planes dropped torpedoes toward Franklin. Shoemaker handled the ship so that both missed. The attackers were shot down, three by antiaircraft fire and one by a fighter on combat air patrol, and men on the carrier were killed and wounded. On the evening of 23 October 1944 he received word that the submarines Darter and Dace had found a large Japanese force in Palawan Passage, the opening of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. On 25 October he commanded Franklin in the fight against the Japanese carrier force to the north. Planes from Franklin flew with the other carriers of the task force. Together they sank all four enemy carriers in that detachment and damaged or destroyed most of the ships that remained. He was awarded the Silver Star for his leadership that day.
He was relieved of command of Franklin on 7 November 1944. Leslie Edward Gehres succeeded him. On 19 March 1945, with Gehres in command, bombs set Franklin afire off Japan and about 800 of her crew were killed. The ship stayed afloat and reached port. Shoemaker had already gone to the Philippines. As a commodore he commanded Naval Air Bases in the Philippine Islands and Naval Air Base Samar during the offensive there, service for which he received the Legion of Merit. He retired as a rear admiral. He died on 20 June 1983 at Sibley Memorial Hospital after a heart attack.