She is the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name. Decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early s as an attack carrier CVA , and then eventually became an antisubmarine carrier CVS. In her second career, she served mainly in the Atlantic, but also participated in the Vietnam War.
She was the recovery ship for a Mercury and a Gemini space mission. Because of her prominent role in battle, she was nicknamed "the Fighting I", while her frequent bad luck and time spent in dry dock for repairsβshe was torpedoed once and hit in separate attacks by four Japanese kamikaze aircraftβearned her the nicknames "Decrepit" and "the Dry I".
She was launched on 26 April , the fifth Essex -class aircraft carrier to be launched. She was sponsored by the wife of Vice Admiral John H. On 16 August , she was commissioned with Captain Thomas L.
Sprague in command before heading to the Caribbean for shakedown and training. She thereafter returned to Norfolk, before departing once more on 3 December, bound for San Francisco. She proceeded on to Pearl Harbor , Hawaii, arriving there on 10 January, where she began preparations to join the rest of the Pacific Fleet for offensive operations against the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The three carriers' air group destroyed all 83 Japanese aircraft stationed on Roi-Namur in the first two days of the strikes, before Marines went ashore on neighboring islands on 31 January in the Battle of Kwajalein.
