Gerald R. Ford, the jumper on the left, goes up for the ball in a game on the forward elevator of USS Monterey, June 1944. U.S. Navy, National Archives. Click the photo to see it larger.
Two men leap for the ball in a steel-walled pit, while sailors with their shirts off sit along the edge of the flight deck above and watch. This is a basketball game aboard the aircraft carrier USS Monterey in June 1944, played in the well of the ship’s forward elevator, the platform that carried planes between the hangar and the flight deck. The jumper on the left, blond and bare-chested, is the ship’s athletic officer, Gerald R. Ford Jr. Thirty years later, he became the 38th president of the United States.
A Court on the Elevator
The National Archives titles this photo “Navy Pilots Playing Basketball on the USS Monterey.” The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library holds other photos from the same game and names Ford in them. Its caption explains the court: “As physical education director it was Mr. Ford’s idea to create a basketball court on the elevator.” A hoop hangs on the left wall, a chalk tally is marked on the right wall, and “NO SMOKING” is painted in big letters across the steel.
Ford at Sea
Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and played center and linebacker for the University of Michigan, which won national championships in 1932 and 1933. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the Navy, and he was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve on April 13, 1942. In May 1943 he joined the crew of the new carrier Monterey at the shipyard in Camden, New Jersey. From her commissioning on June 17, 1943, until the end of December 1944, he served aboard as assistant navigator, athletic officer and antiaircraft battery officer.
Monterey fought across the Pacific in those months. Her planes helped secure Makin Island in the Gilberts in November 1943, struck Kavieng on New Ireland on Christmas Day, supported the landings at Kwajalein and Eniwetok, and later backed the landings on Leyte and Mindoro in the Philippines.
Typhoon Cobra
Japanese planes never damaged Monterey, but the weather nearly did. On December 18 and 19, 1944, Typhoon Cobra hit Admiral William Halsey’s Third Fleet, with winds over 100 knots. Three destroyers and more than 800 men were lost. On Monterey, planes tore loose from their cables and crashed into each other on the hangar deck, starting a fire. Ford was the general quarters officer of the deck, and he was ordered to go below and see how bad it was. He went down, came back safely and reported to the captain, Stuart H. Ingersoll. The crew got the fire under control and the ship got underway again.
The damage put Monterey out of action, and Ford left the ship. He spent the rest of the war in the Navy’s training programs, first in the athletic department of the Navy Pre-Flight School at Saint Mary’s College in California, then on the staff of the Naval Reserve Training Command at Naval Air Station Glenview in Illinois. He served as president from 1974 to 1977.
About This Photo
- Archive title: “Photograph of Navy Pilots Playing Basketball on the USS Monterey”
- Date: June 1944
- Place: Aboard the light aircraft carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26), in the forward elevator well
- Photographer: U.S. Navy (the record doesn’t give a name)
- Who’s in it: The jumper on the left is Gerald R. Ford Jr., identified in a note on the Archives record that cites the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
- Collection: General Photographic Files, General Records of the Department of the Navy (Record Group 80), National Archives at College Park, Maryland
- Photo number: Archives number 80-G-417628, National Archives Identifier 520764
- Rights: Public domain, a work of the U.S. government
- Restoration: KNOWOL, 2026, from the Archives’ scan of the print
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