OTD President Franklin Roosevelt Died

On April 12 1945, Franklin Roosevelt died. One month later, USS Coral Sea (CVB 42) was renamed in his honor and CVB-43 was named the Coral Sea. In 1950, the USS Roosevelt (CVB 42) became the first carrier to take nuclear weapons to sea. The weapons would have been delivered by P2V Neptune bombers launched with “jet-assisted take-off” (JATO). Like the Doolittle raid, there would have been no way for the carrier to recover the Neptunes after a strike because the bombers lacked a tailhook, so they would have had to ditch or landed ashore