3/8/44: Leaving Majuro, 3rd Fleet-5th Fleet, "The Blue Ghost"

8 MAR 44

0530 found the men of Princeton making preparations to get underway, with an interruption at 0638 to deal with an electrical fire in the after diesel generator room. No open flame and only superficial damage to the solenoid coil in a circuit breaker was dealt with rapidly. After watching several ships stand out ahead of them, by 0741 the P was "underway from Berth A-17...to sortie in accordance with orders from ComTaskGroup 58.4 for passage to Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides."

The War Diary notes that the Task Group had been assigned to "report to the Third Fleet for duty." Recall from our March 1st "Chain of Command" post that the United States Navy had two fleets in the Pacific, the Third under Admiral William Halsey and the Fifth led by Admiral Raymond Spruance.

Or did it?

In point of fact, each fleet shared the majority of ships with each other and simply changed names depending on whether they were being led by Halsey or Spruance. An elegantly simple scheme, the Admirals would alternate leadership during major operations, allowing their respective staffs to maintain a cycle of plan, execute, conclude, transfer command and repeat as American forces attacked their way north toward the Japanese home islands. This strategy had the added bonus of introducing a measure of confusion in the enemy as the American fleets, and their radio communication callsigns, changed back and forth continuously.

"At 0829 sighted USS LEXINGTON and escorts bearing 090˚, distant five miles."

The War Diary has a smattering of sightings of Lexington (CV-16) and every time I see her mentioned, I smile. In my mind I picture Dad taking a breather up on the flight deck or maybe in the perimeter "cat walk" and glancing across the wave tops to see "The Blue Ghost" making way just off to the east. Forty years and a few months later, while still in college and with nary a clue what I was going to do, I traveled with Mom and Dad to Pensacola for the 40th reunion of Princeton's final cruise. Memorable not only for the opportunity to meet a bunch of great men, we were also able to spend several hours touring USS Lexington (AVT-16), which at the time had been modernized and was homeported at NAS Pensacola as the Navy's training carrier.

Incredibly, a little more than two years after the photo above was taken — January 21st, 1987 to be exact — I became a tailhooker by making my first 4 carrier landings (known as traps) on?...You guessed it, USS Lexington.

By 0854, all ships had left the confines of the lagoon and the War Diary noted that "Task Group 58.4 now consists of USS YORKTOWN, USS LANGLEY, USS PRINCETON, USS BOSTON, USS BALTIMORE, USS CANBERRA, USS SAN JUAN, USS MAURY, USS GRIDLEY, USS CRAVEN, USS McCALL, USS CASE and USS STERRETT" and remained under the command or Rear Admiral Ginder, whose flag now flew aboard Yorktown.

As the ships proceeded almost due south, 4 VF and 4 VT replacement aircraft launched from the strip at Majuro to fill the complement of Air Group 23. After the recovery, CAPs and ASPs were launched, as well as a target-towing VT so the ships of the TG could conduct target practice. Three more launch and recovery cycles were conducted throughout the day, thankfully uneventful, as the Task Group began the 1400 mile journey south to the New Hebrides.

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