USS Hornet

1942

Doolittle's launch, Santa Cruz, the Japanese torpedoes Location: South Pacific, Santa Cruz Islands · Coordinates: 8.63°S 166.70°E · Casualties: 140 · Survivors: ~2,200 · Depth: 5,400 m · Cause: aerial attack · naval torpedo — Repeatedly bombed and torpedoed by Japanese carrier aircraft at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942. Her crew was ordered off. American scuttling torpedoes failed to sink her; the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo finished her in the small hours of the 27th. · Fate: abyssal · located 2019 · Type: aircraft carrier · Yorktown class · Tonnage: 20,000 tons · Crew: 2340 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1940 American Yorktown-class carrier, launched the Doolittle Raid against Tokyo in April 1942. At the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942 she was bombed and torpedoed repeatedly by Japanese carrier aircraft until her crew was ordered off; American scuttling torpedoes failed to sink her and the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo finished her in the small hours of the 27th. 140 dead. Located by Paul Allen's team in 2019 at 5,400 metres, upright and apparently intact. The Vessel USS Hornet (CV-8) was the third and last of the Yorktown-class aircraft carriers of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company on 20 October 1941. She was 251 metres long, 25,600 tons standard displacement, carried 82 aircraft, and designed for 32 knots. Her construction had been accelerated by the 1940 two-ocean navy appropriation; at her commissioning, six weeks before Pearl Harbor, she was the newest American fleet carrier in service. Her commanding officer through her brief 12-month career was Captain Marc A. Mitscher, 54, a career naval aviator who had served on the first American carrier USS Langley in 1923 and who would, after the war, become the principal American carrier force commander of the late Pacific campaign. His Hornet command was his first major sea command. Her first operational deployment is the mission for which she is primarily remembered: the Doolittle Raid. On 2 April 1942 Hornet departed Alameda, California, carrying 16 Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell medium bombers under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel James Doolittle. The aircraft, loaded on her flight deck (no American carrier had ever carried medium bombers on an operational deployment before), were launched on 18 April 1942 at a distance of 650 nautical miles from Tokyo for the first American aerial attack on the Japanese home islands. The Doolittle Raid caused minimal physical damage but had large psychological consequences for Japanese strategic planning; it w The Disaster The Japanese strike reached Hornet at 10:12 on 26 October 1942. Over the following 25 minutes, Hornet was struck by four bombs, three from diving Val dive-bombers and one from a crippled Aichi D3A that crashed deliberately into her stack as a suicide attack. She was also hit by two Type 91 aerial torpedoes on her starboard side, and by a second suicide-crash Japanese aircraft on her flight deck forward. By 10:40 she was listing 8 degrees to starboard, her engine rooms were flooded, her steering was disabled, and she was on fire in her forward hangar. The cruiser USS Northampton took her in tow at 14:30. The second Japanese strike, delivered by nine more Vals from Zuikaku's reserves, reached her at 15:15 and scored two more hits. Hornet was now clearly beyond salvage. At 17:27 on 26 October 1942 Captain Charles Mason (her recently-appointed commanding officer) ordered abandon-ship. The damaged crew was transferred to Northampton and the destroyer Russell; 140 of her 2,340 crew had died in the attacks. Through the evening of 26-27 October 1942, the American task force attempted to scuttle Hornet before she could fall into Japanese hands. Eight torpedoes from USS Mustin and Anderson struck her without sinking her; over 400 rounds of 5-inch gunfire from the same ships set her burning but she did not sink. At midnight on 26-27 October, with Japanese search aircraft reported approaching, the American destroyers withdrew, leaving Hornet still afloat but burning from end to end. Horn