History

USS Hornet CV-8, the seventh ship to carry the name Hornet, was a Yorktown-class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. During World War II in the Pacific Theater, she launched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and participated in the Battle of Midway and the Buin-Faisi-Tonolai Raid. In the Solomon Islands campaign she was involved in the Capture and Defense of Guadalcanal and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands where she was irreparably damaged and sunk. Hornet was in service for a year and six days and was the last US fleet carrier ever sunk by enemy fire. For these actions, she was awarded four service stars, a citation for the Doolittle Raid in 1995, and her Torpedo Squadron 8 received a Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism for the Battle of Midway.

A 19,800 ton Yorktown class aircraft carrier, Hornet was constructed at Newport News, Virginia. Commissioned in October 1941, she spent the next four months shaking down in the Atlantic. Transferred to the Pacific in March 1942, Hornet was immediately employed on the Doolittle raid. On 18 April 1942, she launched 16 Army B-25 bombers to attack Japan, a strike that caused relatively little damage, but which had enormous strategic implications.

Hornet was then sent to the South Pacific to reinforce U.S. units there following the Battle of Coral Sea, but was recalled to Pearl Harbor in mid-May. She then took part in the Battle of Midway, on 4-6 June, during which her planes shared in the sinking of the Japanese cruiser Mikuma.

In August 1942, Hornet returned to the South Pacific to join in the fight for Guadalcanal. During much of September and October, she was the only operational U.S. aircraft carrier available to oppose the Japanese in that area. On 26 October 1942, during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, her planes attacked and badly damaged the Japanese carrier Shokaku. In return, however, Hornet received heavy bomb and torpedo damage, necessitating her abandonment. Though accompanying U.S. destroyers attempted to scuttle her, she remained afloat until torpedoed and sunk by Japanese ships early in the morning of 27 October.

The Doolittle Raid, Aril 1942

Hornet arrived at Naval Air Station Alameda, California on 20 March 1942. With her own planes on the hangar deck, by midafternoon on 1 April she loaded 16 B-25s on the flight deck. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, 70 officers and 64 enlisted men reported aboard. In company of her escort, Hornet departed Alameda on 2 April under sealed orders. That afternoon, Captain Marc Mitscher informed his men of their mission: a bombing raid on Japan.

Eleven days later, Hornet joined the aircraft carrier Enterprise off Midway, and Task Force 16 (TF 16) turned toward Japan. With Enterprise providing combat air cover, Hornet was to steam deep into enemy waters. Originally, the task force intended to proceed to within 400 nmi (460 mi; 740 km) of the Japanese coast; however, on the morning of 18 April, a Japanese patrol boat, No. 23 Nitto Maru, sighted the American task force. Nashville sank the patrol boat. Amid concerns that the Japanese had been made aware of their presence, Doolittle and his raiders were forced to launch prematurely from 600 nmi (690 mi; 1,100 km) out instead of the planned 450 nmi (520 mi; 830 km). Because of this decision, none of the 16 planes made it to their designated landing strip in China. After the war, it was found that Tokyo received the Nitto Maru's message in a garbled form and that the Japanese ship was sunk before it could get a clear message through to the Japanese mainland.

As Hornet swung about and prepared to launch the bombers, which had been readied for take-off the previous day, a gale of more than 40 kn (46 mph; 74 km/h) churned the sea with 30 ft (9.1 m) crests; heavy swells, which caused the ship to pitch violently, shipped sea and spray over the bow, wet the flight deck and drenched the deck crews. The lead plane, commanded by Colonel Doolittle, had only 467 ft (142 m) of flight deck, while the last B-25 hung its twin rudders far out over the fantail. Doolittle, timing himself against the rise and fall of the ship's bow, lumbered down the flight deck, circled Hornet after take-off, and set course for Japan. By 09:20, all 16 were airborne, heading for the first American air strike against the Japanese home islands.

Hornet brought her own planes on deck as TF 16 steamed at full speed for Pearl Harbor. Intercepted broadcasts, both in Japanese and English, confirmed at 14:46 the success of the raids. Exactly one week to the hour after launching the B-25s, Hornet sailed into Pearl Harbor. Hornet's mission was kept an official secret for a year; until then President Roosevelt referred to the base the bombers started from only as "Shangri-La". Several years later, the USN would give this name to an aircraft carrier.

USS Kearsarge was (CV 12) renamed Hornet before completion on 22 January 1943. The Hornet II (CV-12) had an extraordinary combat record in WW II, engaging the enemy in the Pacific in March 1944, just 21 months after the laying of her keel and the shortest shakedown cruise in Navy history (2 weeks). For eighteen months, she never touched land. She was constantly in the most forward areas of the Pacific war - sometimes within 40 miles of the Japanese home islands. Her pilots destroyed 1,410 enemy aircraft and over one million tons of enemy shipping. Her planes stopped the Japanese super-battleship Yamato and played the major part in sinking her. She launched the first strikes in the liberation of the Philippines, and in Feb. 1945, the first strikes on Japan since the Doolittle raid in 1942. The "Grey Ghost" participated in virtually all of the assault landings in the Pacific from March 1944 until the end of WW II, earning 9 battle stars and the Presidential Unit citation.

In 1969, Hornet recovered the Apollo 11 space capsule containing astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - the first men who walked on the moon - and Michael Collins. A short time later, she recovered Apollo 12 with the all-Navy crew of "moon walkers".

The F/A 18 fighter plane is named after this distinguished ship. USS Hornet is a National Historic Landmark and a State Historical Landmark. The ship is located on the east side of San Francisco Bay. A "Living Ship" demonstration is presented on the first Saturday of each month.

Decommissioned 15 January 1947.
Recommissioned 1 October 1953.
Decommissioned 26 June 1970.
Stricken 25 July 1989.
Sold 14 April 1993 to be broken up for scrap.
Not scrapped and preserved by the Aircraft Carrier Hornet Foundation as a museum at the former NAS Alameda on 26 May 1998.