USS Rabaul (CVE-121)
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| Career | Missing image USN-Jack.png United States Navy Jack |
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| Ordered: | |
| Laid down: | 2 January 1945 |
| Launched: | 14 June 1945 |
| Commissioned: | — |
| Decommissioned: | — |
| Struck: | 1 September 1971 |
| Fate: | sold for scrap, 25 August 1972 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 11,373 tons |
| Length: | 557.1 ft (169.8 m) |
| Beam: | 75 ft (22.9 m) |
| Draft: | 32 ft (9.6 m) |
| Propulsion: | |
| Speed: | 19 knots (35 km/h) |
| Range: | |
| Complement: | 1,066 officers and men |
| Armament: | 2 × 5-inch (127 mm) guns, 36 × 40 mm guns |
| Aircraft: | |
| Motto: | |
USS Rabaul (CVE/CVHE/AKV-121) was a United States Navy Commencement Bay-class escort aircraft carrier, named for Rabaul, an important island during the Solomon Islands campaign of World War II.
Rabaul was laid down 2 January 1945 by Todd Pacific Shipyards, Tacoma, Washington, launched 14 June 1945, sponsored by Alice Schade (wife of naval architect Henry A. Schade), completed by the Commercial Iron Works, Portland, Oregon, and delivered to the Navy 30 August 1946.
Accepted into the 19th Fleet, (the Pacific Reserve Fleet), Rabaul was berthed at Tacoma without seeing any active service. The warship was mothballed there during the early years of the Cold War and served as a mobilization reserve in case of war with the Soviet Union. Reclassified CVHE-121 in June 1955, she was transferred to the San Diego Group, Pacific Reserve Fleet in June 1958 and reclassified AKV-21 in May of the following year. She remained in reserve at San Diego until 1 September 1971 when she was struck from the Naval Vessel Register. Rabaul was sold on 25 August 1972 to the Nicolai Joffe Corporation of Beverly Hills, California, for scrapping.
This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.