Ships
- USS Hoggatt Bay (CVE-75) Captain, 30 January 1946 – 11 June 1946
Marvin Pabodie Evenson came out of the United States Naval Academy in 1926. He had grown up in Sioux City, Iowa, finished at Central High School, and left for Annapolis in 1922. His father, George N. Evenson, had been a vice president of the Knapp and Spencer Company in Sioux City and was later living in St. Paul. Evenson completed the Academy course with honors.
The years just after graduation put him with the forces engaged in Nicaragua and with the ships sent to Shanghai during the disorders on the China coast. In 1929 he reported to Pensacola and qualified as a naval aviator. By September 1942 the Navy had raised him to commander, and he was serving on an admiral's staff.
His best-known flight came in the Solomons. On 11 November 1943, while he was at the airfield at Munda, a Liberator returning from a strike on Rabaul was forced down. Most of the crew had already jumped, and three men were still with the wreck, far out at sea. Evenson took a Grumman Duck amphibian from Munda, spotted them about 125 miles from the field, landed, and taxied alongside the damaged bomber. A flat sea made the takeoff difficult. He ran the hull a long distance, caught a swell, and lifted the overloaded amphibian into the air. Major General Nathan Twining, then directing Allied air operations in the Solomons, decorated him for bringing the three men back.
Hoggatt Bay, a Casablanca-class escort carrier, had been commissioned at Astoria, Oregon, on 11 January 1944, with William Vincent Saunders in command. Through the rest of the Pacific war she ferried aircraft, patrolled with destroyers against submarines, and supported the closing operations around Japan. Late in 1945 she joined the Magic Carpet fleet and began carrying servicemen home. A second voyage, by way of Buckner Bay and Guam, brought her into San Francisco on 28 January 1946.
Evenson was a captain when he took Hoggatt Bay at San Francisco on 30 January 1946, two days after that arrival. She had just come off a Magic Carpet trip, and he took her out of that duty for the move to the Atlantic reserve. At San Francisco she embarked five SB2C Helldiver dive bombers, four F4U Corsair fighters, and 450 Marines, then sailed for San Diego on 11 February and unloaded the next day. She took on another load of aircraft, passed through the Panama Canal, and put the planes ashore at Jacksonville on 7 March. She stopped at Norfolk on 17 March and arrived at Boston on 20 March.
William Paul Schroeder relieved him on 11 June 1946. Hoggatt Bay was decommissioned at Boston on 20 July 1946 and laid up with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. Evenson's command had lasted a little more than four months, long enough to bring a veteran escort carrier from the last Pacific homeward voyage to the East Coast and into reserve.