“Big Ben” regained power and was able to make 20 knots under her own steam. Spruance sent her back to Ulithi, and then to Pearl Harbor. From there, she made a 12,000-mile voyage to New York, also under her own steam. At every port on her voyage, witnesses gaped. The Franklin was a pitiable wreck, blackened and gutted. Deformed lumps of charred steel on her flight deck were the only remaining traces of her aircraft. (The fires had burned so hot that the wreckage had fused onto the ship, and could not be jettisoned.) The Franklin’s casualty list included 807 killed and more than 487 wounded,
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