USS Belleau Wood was a United States Navy Independence-class light aircraft carrier active during World War II in the Pacific Theater from 1943 to 1945.

[1] Starting in January 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the first of several of the new cruisers to be converted into light carriers, and New Haven was among those selected for conversion on 10 February.

That day, fighters from Belleau Wood's combat air patrol (CAP) intercepted and shot down a Japanese Kawanishi H8K flying boat.

The two light carriers rejoined Lexington in mid-September to carry out strikes on Japanese positions in the Gilbert Islands on 18 and 19 September, as part of the preparatory attacks before the Battle of Tarawa.

The fleet left Pearl Harbor on 16 January 1944; for the operation, Belleau Wood had been transferred to Task Group 58.1, along with Enterprise and the carrier Yorktown.

The carriers then transitioned to providing direct support to the soldiers and marines fighting in the Battle of Kwajalein, during which another three of Belleau Wood's planes were shot down.

The bulk of the Fast Carrier Task Force, including Belleau Wood, sailed west on 12 February to launch Operation Hailstone, a major attack on the Japanese base in Truk.

Belleau Wood once again provided air defense for the task group, and on the afternoon of 16 February, one of her fighters shot down a Nakajima B5N torpedo bomber.

On 22 February, a pair of G4M bombers slipped through the CAP aircraft and attempted to bomb Belleau Wood, but her anti-aircraft battery shot both planes down before they could hit the ship.

Task Group 58.1, which by then included only Belleau Wood and Enterprise and their escorts, sailed on 7 March for Espiritu Santo in the south Pacific, which they reached five days later.

The carriers then steamed north to hit the Carolines again; Belleau Wood's aircraft targeted Palau on 30 March, and the next day, she launched raids on Yap, Ulithi, and Ngulu.

The ships withdrew on 1 April, and while leaving the area, Belleau Wood sent her fighters to raid Woleai, destroying seven Japanese aircraft on the ground in the process.

On 29 April, the fleet carriers raided Truk again, while Belleau Wood provided the CAP defense; the same pattern was repeated the following day against Pohnpei in the Carolines.

Belleau Wood again sent her CAP fighters aloft that morning, but the fleet's search planes did not locate the retreating Japanese until late in the day.

The ships of TG 58.1 detached from the main fleet and steamed north to resume their attacks on the Bonin Islands that had been interrupted by the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

Belleau Wood once again provided the task group's fighter defense while the rest of the carriers raided Iwo Jima and inflicted heavy damage on the Japanese aircraft on the island.

The same day, Belleau Wood left the fleet to return to Pearl Harbor for modifications that included storage for rocket ammunition for her aircraft.

On 7 August, the carriers began attacking targets in the Palaus, and several of Belleau Wood's planes struck a phosphate plant on Anguar.

[4] Belleau Wood's fighters carried out sweeps over the airfields at Buayan and Digos on 10 September, while her TBF Avengers raided the field at Cotabato, though they found few Japanese aircraft to destroy.

The group left Seeadler Harbor on 24 September to patrol off Palau, remaining there until 5 October because of a typhoon in the area, before rejoining the rest of the fast carrier task force west of the Marianas.

In the course of the so-called Formosa Air Battle, which lasted from 12 to 16 October, Belleau Wood carried out a series of raids against Japanese infrastructure on the island, claiming to have destroyed five aircraft in strikes on airfields.

[4] Belleau Wood provided air defense over Iwo Jima for the following five days to prevent Japanese aircraft from supporting the garrison as US marines fought for control of the island.

The Japanese were mounting increasingly severe kamikaze attacks on the fleet, so the fast carrier task force sailed north to launch another major raid on the Tokyo area.

Belleau Wood's fighters once again provided CAP defense, and her TBFs were used to carry out rocket attacks on Japanese installations on Okinawa on 1 March.

TG 58.1 was ordered to attack Japanese airfields on Kyushu, the southern-most of the Home Islands, to reduce the considerable air power assembled for the final defense of Japan.

The carriers then turned their attention to Okinawa itself from 23 to 28 March, and Belleau Wood's fighters conducted sweeps over the Ryukyus to catch any Japanese aircraft that may be in the area.

On 29 March, she contributed her aircraft to a major raid on Kyushu airfields in concert with Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers flying from the Mariana Islands.

Belleau Wood's aircraft next raided the naval base at Kur on 24 July, where they assisted in the sinking of the hybrid battleship-carrier Hyūga and another fifteen smaller vessels.

Belleau Wood's aircraft struck airfields on the northern end of Honshu, which disrupted a Japanese strike on the Marianas using long-range bombers.

[10] In June 1957, Bois Belleau joined a contingent of six ships to participate in an international naval review held in Hampton Roads, Virginia, in the United States.