An additional factor - especially in FRANKLIN's case - may have been the extensive battle damage received by both ships at the very end of WWII.

While both ships went into the yards just as the war was ending, it is very likely that they were only patched together enough to be worth keeping in reserve as secondary mobilization assets, with little intention of ever really having to send them out again. With so many other ESSEX class ships in much better material condition at the end of WWII - and with war $$ drying up faster than a puddle in the desert - this hypothesis makes as much sense to me as any other.

Just a guess, though.

--
Mike Kanze

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

-- General William Tecumseh Sherman

"Jim Carriere" wrote in message . ..
Dave in San Diego wrote:
"Keith W" wrote in
:

"Dave in San Diego" wrote in message
. 30...
"DDAY" wrote in
nk.net:

I was looking through Stefan Terzibaschitsch's book Aircraft Carriers
of the US Navy and I see that CV-17 Bunker Hill was withdrawn from
service in 1947 and essentially stayed in mothballs until 1966. She
was used as an immobile electronics research ship during that time.

Does anybody know why she was withdrawn from service in 1947?
See http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/...istories/cv17-
bunkerhill/cv17-bunkerhill.html for further info.

Google is your friend!

Dave in San Diego

Well OK but it really doesnt answer the question as to why she was
withdrawn and not modernized like most of the other Essex class
carriers.

An article on the global security website claims that along with the
Franklin
she was excluded from other modernization programs to be available for
the "ultimate"
conversion to operate with the supercarrier United States.

Following the cancellation of the United States, they were eventually
broken up unmodified.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita.../ship/cv-9.htm

Well, I read the article, and came to this conclusion - money, and needs of
the Navy, which, in many cases, are the driving forces for change or the
the lack thereof.

I arrived at that hypothesis without reading the article