Ships
- USS Hancock (CV-19) Captain from 30 November 1944 · Relieved on 7 September 1945
Captain Robert Ferdinand Hickey took command of the Essex-class aircraft carrier Hancock on 30 November 1944, relieving the officer who had brought the ship through her first combat tour. The carrier was then in the western Pacific with the fast carrier force, and Hickey’s tenure covered the last nine months of the war against Japan.
Under his command Hancock worked with Task Force 38 in the winter campaign that supported the landings on Luzon. In January 1945 her air group struck Japanese airfields and shipping in the South China Sea, including raids toward Formosa, the China coast, and French Indochina, before the force returned to Ulithi.
In February the ship moved north for the assault on Iwo Jima. Hancock’s planes flew strikes against the Bonins and then against airfields in the Tokyo area, the first large carrier attacks on the Japanese home islands since the Doolittle raid, before shifting back to cover the Marines ashore at Iwo Jima.
When the fleet turned to Okinawa in March 1945, Hancock remained with the fast carriers off the island. On 7 April a kamikaze crashed into her flight deck forward, starting fires among fueled and armed aircraft and killing and wounding a large part of the ship’s company. Hickey kept the damaged carrier in the operating area long enough for her remaining planes to join the strikes that helped sink the battleship Yamato that same day, then took her out of the line.
Hancock went to Pearl Harbor for repairs. She was back with the fast carriers in July and, through early August, launched strikes against airfields, shipping, and industrial targets on Honshu and Hokkaido. After Japan’s surrender she remained in Japanese waters for the opening of the occupation. Hickey was relieved as commanding officer on 7 September 1945.
His nine months in Hancock covered the carrier’s second and most costly combat period: the Luzon and South China Sea operations, the strikes that opened the assault on the home islands, the fight off Okinawa, and the final raids of the summer of 1945.