The carrier was laid down on 15 December 1942 by the New York Naval Shipyard and launched on 26 February 1944, sponsored by the wife of Congressman Melvin Maas of Minnesota.

Bennington completed trials, shakedown training, and post-shakedown availability by 14 December when she departed New York and headed for the Pacific theater.

The aircraft carrier remained at Ulithi only two days, departing the atoll with TG 58.1 on the 10th to make air attacks on the Japanese home islands in support of the landings on Iwo Jima.

After the air groups carried out the training sorties on 12 February, the ships fueled at sea on the 14th and then headed toward the launching point some 200 km southeast of Tokyo.

The aircraft carrier retired from the vicinity of Honshu on 18 February, fueled the next day, and then steamed toward Iwo Jima to provide close support.

After several days of training exercises, Bennington and the other carriers of TF 58 steamed toward Kyushu, southernmost of the major Japanese home islands, to hit airfields and naval bases there in preparation for the projected invasion of Okinawa.

That same day, Bennington and the other units of TF 58 began their retirement from Japanese waters and toward Okinawa to begin direct support for the landings.

That small group of islands, needed as a fleet anchorage and forward repair base, fell late the following day, and the fast carriers shifted their attention to softening up the main objective.

The battleship Yamato, escorted by light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers, came out of Japan in a desperate attempt to break up the landings at Okinawa.

Her planes ranged the length of the island chain from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south, making frequent attacks on Honshu.

Young took command of Bennington in a ceremony attended by more than 1,400, including the Secretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball and Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter.

After a stop at Norfolk to disembark her air group, the carrier reentered the New York Naval Shipyard on 25 May to begin post-shakedown availability.

That summer, she began normal operations with the United States Atlantic Fleet out of her home port, Naval Air Station Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

That operation ended on 4 October, and Bennington steamed through the Strait of Gibraltar to begin her first deployment with the United States Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, still with CVG-7 on board.

Late in May, she moved south to Norfolk where she embarked Air Task Group 181 (ATG-181) on 22 May and put to sea for carrier qualifications in the Narragansett Bay area.

Ten minutes later, white "smoke" emanating from Hangar Bay 1 caused Captain William F. Raborn to issue two general fire alarms[2] and within seconds a series of explosions rocked the ship when the port side catapult accumulator burst and released vaporized lubricating oil which was detonated by some unknown heat source.

[2] Though severely damaged internally, the warship managed to launch the entire air group and send it into Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

[2] The most severely injured men were carried to Quonset Point in a helicopter lift, and Bennington dropped the remainder off there before heading to New York for extensive repairs.

The explosion cost her 103 officers and men dead and over 200 others injured, most of them severely burned, the second highest casualty count in the post-war peacetime U.S.

[1] A court of inquiry into the explosion chaired by Quonset Point Commander Fleet Air John Hoskins determined that hazards related to hydraulic catapults were previously known and had not yet "led to serious consequences.

The two most notable changes were the addition of an enclosed hurricane bow to lessen the potential for damage in heavy weather and of an angled flight deck to improve the efficiency of air operations.

Following her return to normal west coast duty in January 1959, the U.S. Navy decided to use the carrier exclusively for antisubmarine warfare.

She was used in the movie, "The Wackiest Ship in The Army," During her fourth tour of duty in the Far East, carried out between October 1960 and May 1961, the Laotian crisis erupted.

The Bennington remained offshore in heavy seas and the twenty Marine helicopters she carried were invaluable in providing assistance and supplies to the stricken residents.

[10] Bennington's final seven years of active service, which included four more assignments with the 7th Fleet, coincided with the period of direct involvement of United States armed forces in the Vietnam War.

The first deployment of this phase of her career started peacefully enough early in 1964, but the Tonkin Gulf incident in August extended her Far Eastern tour and brought duty in Vietnamese waters in October and November.

[11] She was the prime recovery vessel for the unmanned Apollo 4 mission and on 9 November 1967 recovered the spacecraft which had splashed down 10 mi (16 km) from the ship.

The deployment ended on 21 April, and Bennington headed for Australia to participate in the celebration commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Allied victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Her last deployment brought more of the same duty that she had seen on the previous one, antisubmarine protection for TF 77, ship identification work, and search and rescue services.

The aircraft carrier resumed active service on 30 April 1969 and conducted normal operations along the California coast for the remainder of the year and into January 1970.