USS Hancock was commissioned in 1944, and was an aircraft carrier of the Essex-class. The ship was built in Massachusetts and then sent to the Pacific in the summer and was involved in combat almost right away. She helped with raids on the Philippines, the Ryukyus and Formosa, and was damaged by a typhoon and a suicide plane in the end of 1944.
In 1945, the ship helped with the Luzon landings and was part of the raid in the South China Sea performed by Task Force 38. There was an accident shortly into the deployment that killed 50 service men aboard the vessel and injured dozens more. The following day, USS Hancock launched attack planes on Okinawa.
In 1945, the ship was again damaged by a suicide plane that killed 62 crewmen and prompted a return to the United States for repairs in a shipyard. Hancock was able to return to the Pacific and help throughout the final days of World War II, and then took a role as a transit vessel for servicemen and aircraft. For eight years, USS Hancock was inactive until 1954 when she was recommissioned and modernized to deploy to the Far East, where she spent two years. After that, the ship became a part of the Seventh Fleet in the Pacific, helped in the Vietnam War, and decommissioned and was sold for scrap in 1976.