USS Shangri-La (CV/CVA/CVS-38) was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers completed during or shortly after World War II for the United States Navy.

Like many of her sister ships, she was decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, but was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s, and redesignated as an attack carrier (CVA).

She operated in both the Pacific and Atlantic / Mediterranean for several years, and late in her career was redesignated as an anti-submarine carrier (CVS).

On 17 January 1945, she stood out of Hampton Roads, formed up with large cruiser Guam and destroyer Harry E. Hubbard, and sailed for Panama.

Upon her arrival at Pearl Harbor on 15 February, she commenced two months of duty, qualifying land-based Navy pilots in carrier landings.

After an overnight stay in the lagoon, Shangri-La departed Ulithi in company with destroyers Haggard and Stembel to report for duty with Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's Task Force 58 (TF 58).

On the 2nd, the oath of office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air was administered to John L. Sullivan on board Shangri-La, the first ceremony of its type ever undertaken in a combat zone.

On the following day, Shangri-La's aircraft damaged light cruiser Ōyodo and battleship Haruna, the latter so badly that she beached and flooded.

On 9 August, after heavy fog had caused the cancellation of the previous day's missions, the carrier sent her planes aloft to bomb Honshū and Hokkaido once again.

From 23 August – 16 September, her planes sortied on missions of mercy, air-dropping supplies to Allied prisoners of war in Japan.

[3] Shangri-La entered Tokyo Bay on 16 September, almost two weeks after the surrender ceremony onboard battleship Missouri, and remained there until 1 October.

[3] Upon her return, Shangri-La began normal operations out of San Diego, primarily engaged in pilot carrier landing qualifications.

In May 1946, she sailed for the Central Pacific to participate in Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests conducted at Bikini Atoll.

During the next two years, she received an angled flight deck and twin steam catapults, and her aircraft elevators and arresting gear were overhauled.

At a cost of approximately $7 million, she was virtually a new ship when she commissioned for the third time on 10 January 1955, Captain Roscoe L. Newman commanding; she was the second (after USS Antietam (CVA-36)[4]) operational U.S. carrier with an angled flight deck.

She entered Mayport after visits to Callao, Peru; Valparaíso, Chile; Port of Spain, Trinidad; Bayonne, New Jersey; and Norfolk, Virginia.

[3] After six weeks of underway training in the local operating area around Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, she embarked upon her first Atlantic deployment, a NATO exercise followed by liberty in Southampton, England.

Almost immediately after her return to Mayport, Shangri-La was ordered back to sea—this time to the Caribbean in response to trouble in Guatemala and Nicaragua.

[citation needed] As a result of this incident, Shangri-La underwent an extensive overhaul during the winter of 1965 and the spring of 1966, this time at Philadelphia, then resumed operations as before.

Her tours of duty on Yankee Station were punctuated by frequent logistics trips to Subic Bay, by visits to Manila and Hong Kong, in October, and by 12 days in drydock at Yokosuka, Japan, in July.

En route to Mayport, she visited Sydney, Australia; Wellington, New Zealand; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

[6] On 6 September 2017, USS Shangri-La's bell was placed on display at Jacksonville University NROTC Building as a permanent loan.

He notified the USS Shangri La Reunion Group, who repaired and restored the bell before loaning it to the NROTC unit.