USS Guadalcanal leaves Norfolk on her third ASW cruise, 15 May 1944.

"The Guadalcanal (CVE-60) operated in the Atlantic and, like other ships of the class assigned to antisubmarine escort duties, was equipped with a high-frequency direction-finding antenna on a pole mast forward of the island. She carried the standard class armament of a single 5-inch/38-caliber dual-purpose gun at the stern, eight twin 40-mm Bofors antiaircraft mounts paired on the gallery deck at the four corners of the flight deck, and 20 single 20-mm Oerlikons spaced along the gallery deck. Six Avengers and eight Wildcats are on deck in this May 1944 view."

(Quoted text from the April 2007 issue of Naval History Magazine, US Naval Institute, via Joe Radigan.)

Image from the USS Guadalcanal Memory Log (Cruise Book.) Taken at Mayport, Fla., 20 April 1945.

Commander Joy Bright Hancock, USNR, is met by Captain B.C. McCaffree, USN, Commanding Officer, USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60), as she comes aboard his ship, 19 July 1945.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives (# 80-G-383994).

Joy Bright was born in Wildwood, New Jersey, on 4 May 1898. During World War I, after attending business school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she enlisted in the Navy as a Yeoman (F), serving at Camden, New Jersey and at the Naval Air Station, Cape May. Following the war, she married Lieutenant Charles Gray Little, who was killed in the crash of the airship ZR-2 in 1921. A year later, she obtained employment with the Bureau of Aeronautics, where her duties included editing the Bureau's "News Letter," which later evolved into the magazine "Naval Aviation News." In 1924, she left the Bureau to marry Lieutenant Commander Lewis Hancock, Jr., who lost his life when USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) crashed in September 1925—subsequently, she sponsored USS Lewis Hancock (DD-675), named after her late husband.

Joy Bright Hancock returned to the Bureau after attending Foreign Service School and obtaining a private pilot's license. For more than a decade before World War II and into the first year of that conflict, she was responsible for the Bureau's public affairs activities. In October 1942, she was commissioned a Lieutenant in the new Women's Reserve (WAVES). She initially served as WAVES representative in the Bureau of Aeronautics and later in a similar position for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air), rising to the rank of Commander by the end of the War.

In February 1946, Commander Hancock became the Assistant Director (Plans) of the Women's Reserve and was promoted to WAVES' Director, with the rank of Captain, in July of that year. She guided the WAVES through the difficult years of Naval contraction in the later 1940s and the expansion of the early 1950s, a period that also saw the Navy's women achieve status as part of the Regular Navy. Captain Hancock retired from active duty in June 1953. The next year, she married Vice Admiral Ralph A. Ofstie and accompanied him on his 1955–56 tour as Commander, Sixth Fleet. Following her husband's death in late 1956, she lived in the Washington, D.C., area and in the Virgin Islands. She died on 20 August 1986.

This 8-foot (2.44 meters) model of USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60) was donated to the Intrepid Museum in NYC and will go on display in 2008.

"Ex-Navy Carriers [Guadalcanal and Mission Bay] May Go To Japan for Breaking Up."

Stripped and powerless, the veteran WWII escort carriers Guadalcanal and Mission Bay take a last voyage to a Japanese scrapyard under the charge of the Dutch tug Elbe.