From tanker to carrier
She began as the Standard Oil tanker Esso Trenton. She was laid down by Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company at Kearny, New Jersey, on 13 March 1939 (Maritime Commission hull 7), launched on 4 November 1939 and delivered on 14 December 1939 for the Gulf-to-East-Coast oil trade. The Navy bought her on 22 October 1940 and renamed her Sangamon after the Sangamon River of Illinois. The next day she was commissioned as fleet oiler AO-28, one of the Cimarron class. She served off the West Coast and in Hawaii, then shifted to the Atlantic for the Neutrality Patrol, carrying fuel to Canada and Iceland. On 7 December 1941 she was unloading at Argentia, Newfoundland.
In early 1942 she was picked to become an aircraft escort vessel. She was decommissioned at Newport News on 25 February 1942 and rebuilt with a 502-by-81-foot flight deck, two elevators, a hangar, a catapult, magazines and shops. She was recommissioned on 25 August 1942 as ACV-26, lead ship of the Sangamon class. The four tanker conversions were bigger and steadier than the Bogue class and kept enough fuel to refuel destroyers. The postwar Commencement Bay class was based on them.
Torch and the Solomons
On 25 October 1942 she sailed with Task Force 34 for the invasion of North Africa. Off Port Lyautey from 8 November, her Composite Squadron 26 flew air patrols, antisubmarine patrols and ground support. She then went to the Pacific. By mid-January 1943 she was at Efate. With her sisters Suwannee and Chenango in Carrier Division 22, she guarded convoys to Guadalcanal and the assault on the Russell Islands. She was redesignated CVE-26 on 15 July 1943. After an overhaul at Mare Island she covered the Tarawa assault in November 1943.
1944: Marshalls, New Guinea, Marianas, Morotai
Off Kwajalein on 25 January 1944, a Hellcat missed the wires, crashed into the parked planes forward and set the flight deck ablaze. The fire lasted eight minutes, killed seven men and left two missing. The next day she collided with Suwannee at low speed. She still supported Kwajalein and then Eniwetok (17–24 February). In March and April she escorted the fleet's oilers, and she covered the Aitape landing in New Guinea (22–24 April). In June and July she supported the Saipan and Guam operations, and in September Morotai, where her planes also hit airfields on Halmahera.
Leyte Gulf
At Leyte she flew with "Taffy 1." On 20 October 1944 a Zero's bomb tore loose a section of her plating at main-deck level, fell into the sea and exploded about 900 feet away. On 25 October, as Kurita's battleships fell on Taffy 3 off Samar, she sent planes north to help. At about 07:40 Taffy 1 became the target of the first organized kamikaze strike of the war. Santee and Suwannee were hit, and Suwannee's gunners shot down one attacker only 150 feet from Sangamon.
Okinawa and the last kamikaze
After an overhaul at Bremerton she trained night fighters in Hawaii and joined the Okinawa operation in March 1945. She covered Kerama Retto and the Hagushi landings and struck airfields in the Sakishima Islands. On 22 April her dusk strike caught 25 to 30 planes warming up on Nobara Field on Miyako, and her fighters shot down seven Oscars. On the evening of 4 May, leaving Kerama Retto, she was attacked. At 19:33 a kamikaze dropped its bomb and crashed into the middle of her flight deck. Fires spread through the flight deck, the hangar and the fuel deck, and the ship went out of control for a time. The fire main was ruptured, and men fought the fires with CO2 bottles while other ships came alongside to help. By 22:30 the fires were under control. Eleven men were dead, 25 missing and 21 badly wounded.
Fate
She went home by Ulithi and Pearl Harbor to Norfolk. Repairs stopped when the war ended. She was decommissioned on 24 October 1945, struck on 1 November, and sold as a merchant hull, delivered to the Hillcone Steamship Company on 11 February 1948. After several owners she was scrapped at Osaka, Japan, from August 1960. She earned eight battle stars, and all three of her air groups received the Presidential Unit Citation.
Sources
Wikipedia, "USS Sangamon (CVE-26)" (based on DANFS).
NHHC/DANFS, "Sangamon."