Franklin was an Essex-class carrier. Newport News launched her on 14 October 1943. Lieutenant Commander Mildred A. McAfee, director of the WAVES, sponsored her. She was commissioned on 31 January 1944 with Captain James Marshall Shoemaker in command. The ship's history prints him as James M. Shoemaker. Captain Leslie Edward Gehres relieved him on 7 November 1944 and had her on 19 March 1945.
She left Bremerton on 2 February 1945, trained, and rendezvoused with the fast carriers on 15 March. Before dawn on 19 March, off Honshu, one bomber dropped two bombs. One went through the flight deck to the hangar. The other hit aft and set off ammunition, bombs, and rockets. She was within 50 miles of the coast, dead in the water, with 724 men killed and 265 wounded. The Medal of Honor citations for that morning belong to the chaplain, Lieutenant Commander Joseph T. O'Callahan, and to Lieutenant (junior grade) Donald A. Gary. The captain was Gehres.
Santa Fe came alongside and took off wounded. Pittsburgh got a tow on her. Captain John E. Gingrich stayed at Pittsburgh's conn for 48 hours. At noon on 20 March Franklin could make 14 knots and cast off. She went to Pearl Harbor for a cleanup and reached Brooklyn on 28 April. Hunt was one of the destroyers that took men out of the water. Her own history names 429. Three other destroyers were with her.
The dates after Gehres are the NavSource list compiled by Wolfgang Hechler and Ron Reeves. Commander Henry Henderson Hale and Commander Clarence Earle Dickinson, Jr., had her next. She was decommissioned at Bayonne on 17 February 1947 and reclassified AVT-8 on 15 May 1969.