Kaiser's Coffins: The Casablanca Class [21:02]

YouTube ^ | May 15, 2026 | The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

[SunkenCiv]

While the massive Essex-class fleet carriers grabbed the headlines with their sprawling air groups and high-speed strikes, the "Jeep carriers" of the Casablanca class provided the indispensable backbone of Allied maritime operations. 

Note: Just because you can think up a reason to criticize doesn't mean that you are obligated to do so. Pedantic is not a compliment folks. 

Kaiser's Coffins: The Casablanca Class | 21:02 
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered 
1.64M subscribers | 67,484 views | May 15, 2026

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TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs; historyguy; lancegeiger; pacificwar; thg

[SunkenCiv]

At 0430, November 24, reveille was made in Liscome Bay. The ship went to routine general quarters at 0505 as flight crews prepared their planes for dawn launchings. There was no warning of a submarine in the area until about 0510 when a lookout shouted: . . . here comes a torpedo! The missile struck abaft the after engineroom an instant later with a shattering roar. A second major detonation closely followed the first, the entire interior burst into flames. At 0533, LISCOME BAY listed to starboard and sank. ... Admiral Mullinix, Captain Wiltsie, 53 other officers, and 591 enlisted men [went] down with her; 272 of her crew were rescued. Gallantly her men had served; gallantly they died in the victorious campaign giving their lives for the Nation's future.

The United States Navy Memorial Liscome Bay | CVE-56 | Lost 11-24-1943

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai (excerpt).

Transcript

Doris "Dorie" Miller was a mess attendant second class aboard the battleship USS West Virginia on December 7th, 1941, in Pearl Harbor. His actions that day were legendary. He helped carry many of his crew members to safety, including his captain. And then he took control of an anti-aircraft gun despite having no training in the weapon and defended his ship, shooting down at least one Japanese aircraft. He became a national hero overnight. He became the first black sailor to be awarded the Navy's highest award for valor in the face of the enemy, the Navy Cross. He was nominated for a Medal of Honor.

Much less remembered was his death just two years later aboard the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay. Miller's death represented the risks faced by the young men who served aboard the ships that were derisively called Kaiser's coffins. The fleet carriers, the Essex carriers, grabbed all the headlines with their sprawling air groups and their fast attacks. But the small carriers, the jeep carriers of the Casablanca class, were the indispensable backbone of Allied naval operations.

The battle in which Dory Miller became a hero put the US into a difficult position regarding naval aviation. In 1941, the US had only seven fleet aircraft carriers, a precious few, even considering that none had been lost at Pearl Harbor. More were being constructed, but fleet carriers took time to build, and the air groups required training.

[hanamizu]

Watched this last night. The Kaiser in the title refers to Henry J Kaiser, the man who mass-produced Liberty ships as well as the Jeep carriers.

[Repeal The 17th]

My Dad served on several of Kaiser’s Liberty Ships
in the Atlantic and in the Pacific.

[rlmorel]

Well, even the vaunted Essex class carriers had their own design flaws. When the USS Franklin (I think) was hit by a kamikaze, it suffered damage to its ventilation system which then spread toxic smoke throughout the ship, resulting in many smoke related deaths.

I believe this flaw was identified in the postmortem damage assessment, and addressed in refits of other Essex class carriers, but all ships have design flaws...many do not have them exposed in combat, but some do.

When the USS Forrestal had its terrible fire in 1967, it came very close to going from terrible from catastrophic when fires threatened the LOX (Liquid Oxygen) generator compartment towards the aft portion of the ship above the port quarter. There was a sailor who became trapped in that compartment, and the bulkhead was glowing red from the fires on the other side. He managed to stay alive in that oven, but if the fire had breached that bulkhead and entered the LOX generation machinery compartment, it was estimated by engineers that the explosion involving that volume of LOX may have blown off the stern of the vessel. During the damage control operations when fighting the fire, nobody was aware of that ticking time bomb.

When the postmortem damage control assessment was later performed, this so alarmed the US Navy that they retrofitted all carriers that followed the Forrestal with rails on which the machinery was mounted. There was a giant hatch to the exterior of the ship that could be removed (I don’t know how easily or quickly THAT could have been done) and the entire LOX generation plant could have been rolled out the side of hull and pushed into the ocean.

Our engineers were never perfect. The Sherman tank had a terrible reputation for catching fire after being hit, as it ran on gasoline and not diesel.

But we had to fight the war with the weapons we had, designed under tight deadlines and to make the best use of scarce resources.

Granted, these were built by Kaiser, who had the reputation for building Liberty ships, not warships. The building of warships was not well translated from merchant to warship building by shipyards and shipbuilders, so the Casablanca class was an exception. Normally, they did not transition merchant ship builders to warship builders, but kept them segregated. This is not a knock on Kaiser or the teams that built Liberty ships, it was simply a well known fact to everyone, including the shipyards and builders themselves. (according to Thomas Heinrich who wrote “Warship Builders-An Industrial History of US Naval Shipbuilding 1922-1945...an excellent and fascinating book if this interests you)

The Casablanca class was the largest class of carriers ever built, fifty were built, and five were lost during the war. One to torpedo attack, one to naval gunfire during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and three to kamikaze-not surprising, as they were not robustly built, lacked armor, and had light defensive systems.

[Seruzawa]

The jeep carriers also couldn’t carry Hellcat fighters. The fielded the older less capable Wildcats. Though, well piloted a Wildcat was no pushover. And Japanese pilot quality never recovered from the losses at Midway.

[rlmorel]

It got even worse for them in the battles around the Solomons after that. To be fair, they were generally intended to be used in areas for invasion ground support missions and such where their lack of armor and armament wouldn’t be as much of an impediment.

Boy, we did get that part wrong. The Japanese simply weren’t going to roll over, and they didn’t.

[fidelis]

"Note: Just because you can think up a reason to criticize doesn't mean that you are obligated to do so. Pedantic is not a compliment folks."

LOL. Love this little note below the video. It should be a banner on FR.

[Rinnwald]

The fielded the older less capable Wildcats.

Yes, but it was a wilder Wildcat. The FM2 couldn't match late war fighters, but it was a hotrod compared to the earlier models.

[norwaypinesavage]

My FIL was a sailor on the Corregidor, a sister ship of the Lissome Bay, and was near her when she was hit. His battle station was at an antiaircraft gun position on the side of the ship. He saw the torpedoes coming and thought at first they were coming toward him. He believed a big explosion on the Lissome Bay was from a torpedo penetrating to the magazine.

[SunkenCiv]

Surprisingly, Kaiser had never built any ships prior to WWII. Sounds like he did pretty well overall. As you said, you fight with what you have. US torpedoes were terrible for the first couple of years, and complaints about them were met with something to the effect, use them anyway, that’s all we’ve got.

[SunkenCiv]

A childhood friend had a father who served as a cook on one or more Liberty ships. He had trouble sleeping through the night, and would volunteer as an extra lookout. He said in the dark ocean, the white splash as the ship cut slowly through the water made him think of a searchlight, and that worried him.

[SunkenCiv]

He’s got another recent vid about the Hindenburg, pretty interesting, even though it’s been written about no end.

[SunkenCiv]

Taffy 3 really took a beating, but they put up such a fight that it buffaloed the Japanese, and they beat a retreat. They weren’t ready to lose the Yamamoto, and probably thought more counterattacking planes were on the way. Our magnificent men saved the US invasion.

The Japanese policy after they started the war against the US was, since there’s not enough fuel supply to keep the entire fleet running, so the loss of ships wasn’t as important. And when they did make a big push, they brought everything, fully fueled or not.

[Seruzawa]

It’s ruggedness stood it in good stead once the US pilots learned to not dogfight the Zero.

[Seruzawa]

Another YouTuber, Drachinifel, has a naval history channel that is top notch. He has an excellent several part series on the battles at Guadalcanal that shows how the early battles finally killed off the most incompetent Admirals from the prewar period and taught the USN vital lessons.

[SunkenCiv]

If people were careful readers, they’d actually see that message, but then they wouldn’t need it most of the time.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks: https://www.youtube.com/@Drachinifel/videos

We were blessed with some great admirals, and first line commanders. Mostly I doubt that the Japanese had any idea how hard we were going to fight back.

And 2 or 3 months after they started it, the little punch in the nose that was Doolittle’s Raid must have made them think, uh, y’know, all our cities are on the coast...

Meanwhile, the bulk of our industrial plants and population was well off our west coast, and protected by a range of high mountains and altiplano about 1000 miles wide. They couldn’t do anything about it.

Parshall’s numbers are something like, the US prewar economy was about 5 times as large as Japan’s, and by the end was about 8 times. Meanwhile our sub fleet immediately went after their shipping. By the end of ‘44 US fleets and planes rarely found any shipping to sink.

They were taken quite by surprise by the surprise attack on their occupation of Guadalcanal, and even more surprised when their naval superiority and (even after the loss of their four big decks at Midway) better flight radius to give them cover out of land bases in the Solomons wound up not working and they had to retreat.

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/j/japanese-naval-merchant-shipping-losses-wwii.html