On 3 March 1945, "Bataan" departed Pearl Harbor for Ulithi, arriving at that atoll on 13 March. There she joined Task Unit (TU) 58.2.1, an ad hoc convoy comprising carriers , , , two battleships, two heavy cruisers and a host of destroyers formed for the short trip back to the Fast Carrier Task Force (TF-58). The task force conducted a series of raids to support the last major amphibious operation of the war, the invasion of Okinawa. Tasked with suppressing Japanese aircraft on Kyushu, one of the Japanese home islands, fighter sweeps and bomber strikes hit airfields on 18 March and struck at Japanese naval bases at Kure and Kobe. Over the next three days, vigorous counter-attacks by Japanese aircraft were mostly broken up by CAP, although a few aircraft got through and severely damaged "Franklin". Other attacks targeted "Bataan", whose antiaircraft guns claimed kills on two Judys and a Nakajima B6N Jill bomber. "Bataan"s air group lost four aircraft in these actions while the ship's company suffered one man killed and eleven injured from shell fragments.