USS Leyte, a 27,100-ton Ticonderoga class aircraft carrier built at Newport News, Virginia, was commissioned in April 1946. Her initial cruise was made along the South American Pacific coast in the fall of 1946. That was followed by three years of Atlantic Fleet operations, including four deployments to the Mediterranean in 1947, 1949 and 1950. Leyte had just returned from the last of those tours in August 1950 when she was quickly prepared for another, taking her to the other side of the World to augment Naval forces during the Korean War. She operated off Korea from October 1950 into January 1951, providing nearly 4000 aircraft sorties to support UN forces ashore. During this cruise, one of her aviators, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Thomas J. Hudner, Jr., performed an act of heroism for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Leyte returned to the Atlantic in February 1951 and spent the rest of her service career there. She made two more Mediterranean deployments later in 1951 and in 1952-53, receiving the new designation CVA-32 in October 1952. During the last part of 1953, Leyte was converted to an anti-submarine warfare support carrier and was redesignated CVS-32. On 16 October 1953, while in the Boston Naval Shipyard undergoing this conversion, she suffered an explosion and fire that killed 37 men and injured many more. The carrier returned to the active fleet in January 1954 and conducted anti-submarine operations in the Atlantic and Caribbean over the next five years. She also served briefly as an interim amphibious assault ship in 1957, with her normal air group replaced with Marine Corps transport helicopters.

USS Leyte was decommissioned in May 1959, and simultaneously reclassified as an aircraft transport, with the new hull number AVT-10. She remained in the reserve fleet for another decade and was sold for scrapping in September 1970.