USS Hornet CV-8 & CV-12 - A Tale of Two Carriers

the story of two

carriers

it was the best of destinations it was the worst of destinations it was the era of the hellcats it was the era of zeros it was the era of the 40 millimeter bofors it was the epic of brand 14. it was the season of the blue blanket and it was kiributai season it was spring in essex it was winter in york cities stories about the aircraft carrier

hornet

began notably in the late 1930s the us navy had been aiming to complete its treaty collection of aircraft carrier assigned with a single three-ship class, but this had had some problems, the dangers of an especially small aircraft carrier had already been experienced with the USS Ranger, but the tonnage left to the US Navy after the two large Lexington plus the Ranger and Langley were not enough when split into three ways to give the fleet the aircraft carrier it would accept at the very least, even downgrading the USS Langley to an aircraft carrier had not been enough.

Instead, it was decided to go with two aircraft

carriers

roughly the size the US Navy could. live with Yorktown and Enterprise and then do their best to fill the remaining tonnage with a tiny wasp. This would complete the U.S. Navy's collection of treaty carriers into two very large carriers, two decent carriers, and a couple of tinder boxes, but all of this occurred while the treaty system was collapsing faster than a prematurely retired soufflé and the drums. of war echoed once again over the Atlantic now unrestricted, but feeling that they were running out of time, the US Navy began preparing the design. for his ideal aircraft carrier and this would become the essex class but it would take some time to resolve so as an interim measure an additional aircraft carrier based on the yorktown class was ordered for immediate construction this would become uss

hornet

cv8.

She differed slightly. of its sisters in some ways, although not as many as the US Navy would have liked, largely because those kinds of major changes would have taken too much time in what was supposed to be an accelerated construction, most of the changes involved differences in fire control. and sensor arrays, which was to be expected as Hornet was built after several years of technological advancement compared to Yorktown and Enterprise and there were some differences in the details of its propulsion systems and an overall reduced superstructure profile, being This last one is the most visual difference. allowing easy distinction between her earlier sisters and the Hornet, laid down a few weeks after the start of World War II in Europe, her construction progressed at such a pace that the hull hit the water about 14 months later and within another 10 months he was commissioned one Captain Mitchell, in command, more on him later, while he was almost in service at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Hornet was still on a training and test cruise and was not considered fully operational until the spring of 1942. The crew expected to be shipped to the Pacific fairly smoothly. We were soon somewhat perplexed to arrive one day to find a B-25 Mitchell on deck, as a US Army Air Force medium bomber was not the usual carrier-based attack aircraft. A deeper exploration as the ship set sail for the Panama Canal. discovered that all of his most regular aircraft were huddled in the hangar and once in the Pacific via said channel more Bu-25s were loaded on board, only once the ship headed west would Captain Mitchell inform the rest of the crew. of its mission, this, of course, would become the famous doolittle attack that the company would join, which would provide air defense and anti-ship striking power if the force was discovered en route in the strike group willing to launch the B- 25 against Japan.

The mission was partially successful: all the planes were launched and all reached their targets, but they were launched 200 miles away because the aircraft carriers collided with a Japanese navy patrol boat that had sunk, but they were unsure of If the patrol boat had received a signal to return to Japan and so they wanted to launch as soon as possible to avoid being caught by the Japanese counterattack and therefore, with 200 miles cut from the B-25's range, they were unable to reach their planned bases for Instead, upon landing, the crews were forced to jump over disputed areas of China to a variety of destinations, as it turned out that the patrol ship had received a signal towards Japan before sinking, but that signal was confusing and therefore the Japanese did not know about it.

What to make of this, but even as the bombers headed towards the Japanese Hornet and their compatriots turned and ran at full speed, worried about the possible counterattack by the Japanese navy on their highly vulnerable formation with the crew busy sending a good part of her. Her own air group went up on deck to be ready for a possible launch. They made it out safely and the ship was quickly turned around and sent south to try to reinforce Yorktown and Lexington who were trying to hold the South Pacific against the Kirobutai, but unfortunately they arrived a little late to help in the Battle of the Coral Sea. , the loss of Lexington and the damage to Yorktown resulting from that fight left the Hornet as one of only two operational U.S.

Navy aircraft carriers on the Pacific front, even as information arrived about a planned plan. midway japanese movement for this historic battle joined by a hastily partially repaired yorktown hornet air group, at this point had basically no actual combat experience while aboard the carrier, this didn't do the ship's air group much good , dive bombers and escort fighters. headed on the infamous flight to nowhere, more details in the video linked above, while his vt-8 torpedo boats managed to find the japanese fleet, but they arrived alone and without escort and complained in full about their problems with only one man remaining. alive and of course he was in the water the plane had been wandering around the pacific it was a little better running out of fuel when they finally returned hornet was left with a handful of intrepid dive bombers that managed to land successfully in addition to the fighters that were had been retained for air defense and anything that could be put into service with its spare parts and stopped with the pilots who had been pulled out of the water in exchange for no results to speak of and many planes and pilots missing.

However, as the battle progressed, he managed to rescue several planes from Yorktown and make another equally unsuccessful but somewhat less disastrous attack in the last course of the engagement with a final effort that finally obtained some results, since in a third attempt his planes remaining would help sink a Japanese heavy cruiser, damage another, and damage a destroyer, furthermore, with Mitchell promoted up and on, Captain Mason assumed command soon after, with Hornet rebuilding her air group and improving her defenses, eventually sailed to join the Guadalcanal campaign, which was just as the three aircraft carriers that had been sent before the Japanese navy's air and submarine operations had sunk Wasp, had sent Saratoga back to dry ground for her repair and had punched a series of holes in a company that was grimly in a partially operational state.

Subject to repairs in the field, this set the stage for the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, their second battle, and as would turn out in the last major engagement, the battle started off well enough with Hornet's air group damaging the Shikaku and Chikuma. , but it was a combined counterattack. by Japanese Navy dive bombers and torpedo bombers along with a number of damaged Japanese aircraft that were deliberately launched towards the ship, left the Hornet subject to multiple hits from torpedoes and bombs, in addition to the damage and fuel burning of the semi-kamikazes. hornet was left helpless and adrift with his flight. covered in flames and more resembling a lunar landscape than a mobile airfield.

Damage control efforts along with a tow nearly left her in partially operational condition at least long enough to make it home when another wave of torpedo boats arrived moving at five knots despite a furious anti-aircraft bombardment. which shot down more than 90 percent of the attacking planes, since there were many wildcats, and also still in the air, a torpedo managed to get through and that delayed all efforts so far to square the starting point now that, in theory , there was a marginal chance that he could still make it home. The Japanese navy now intervened. They had powerful surface forces that were approaching at high speed.

The full complement of American surface forces present at the battle did not in fact have the combat power to take on Japanese Navy ships at night under the best of circumstances and a drifting aircraft carrier. She was not in the best of circumstances, so the ship was ordered abandoned and efforts were made to sink her with 5-inch guns and torpedoes, partly thanks to the surprising durability of the ship and partly because the American torpedoes at that time were absolutely terrible around like a drifting wreck when a pair of Japanese destroyers found her somewhat disconcerted, briefly considered boarding her and taking her as a prize or at least trying to extract some form of intelligence from her, but quickly decided that the ship was on the wrong side. of beyond saving her and sent her to the bottom with an ointment of long spears, the wreck settled upright more than five kilometers deep after the fall without intervention, but that would not be the end of the name of the Hornet aircraft carrier called Hornet or even involving aircraft carriers.

Called Hornet in World War II, the carriers that had been built to buy time for the Essex class had the first three of their number, Essex, a newly named and intrepid Yorktown, almost ready for service, and the next carrier in the List, CV12, was currently assigned the name USS Kirsaj and had been established a few months before the loss of CV-8, so in honor of the lost ship CV12 it was renamed USS Hornet and duly launched as such in August 1943. The speed of wartime production was accentuated by the fact that this much larger vessel had gone from keel to launch about two months faster than the already accelerated construction time of its smaller predecessor;

She also took only about three months to take it from launch to commissioning and so on, after a year and a half without a Hornet in the fleet. The new Hornet arrived as the latest addition to Task Group 58 in March 1944. The operating environment for the USS CV-12 Hornet was quite different from that in which the CV-8 had fought in the United States Navy. It was now completely up to date. offensive and its first combat mission was not to fight Japanese naval warships in a fleet battle, but rather a series of attack missions on Japanese air and naval bases in conjunction with other American aircraft carriers.

This included the use of pairs of mines deployed from the air by Avengers torpedo boats to hold whatever they could. had failed to sink trapped in port, this was quite successful and with the proliferation of not only aircraft carriers but also light aircraft carriers, Hornet soon found herself at the head of a force in which she was the big sister to a group of more ships. little ones. Independence class flat tops for further offensive attacks against several Japanese airfields Now, while these were not operating directly on the various amphibious landings that were occurring at the time, these missions were incredibly important, as they damaged and destroyed air bases and the aircraft they In the surrounding region, they hampered Japanese air counterattack efforts and also ensured that aircraft in direct support of the troops had fewer incoming enemy fighters to contend with, thus improving the quality of that ground support, as well as another objective.

A favorite of Hornet and his companions and the US Navy in general, as the war progressed, this important Japanese forward naval base was not directly invaded but rather isolated and subjected to repeated air and surface attacks over the course of the war. final part of the Pacific campaign, eventually this would damage and isolate the base so much that for most operational purposes, the Japanese naval high command would end up treating it as if it had actually fallen compared to its previous incarnation, this hornet was considerably larger and therefore, despite the increasing size and complexity of carrier-based aircraft, could carry considerably more. largest air group, the composition of the air group had also changed at the beginning of thewar, American carriers would carry many intrepid dive bombers and usually around a single squadron each of torpedo bombers and fighters, although this could be slightly larger than the standard 12.

There were still typically more fearless or fearless guys on board than the Avengers. By 1944 the number of fighters had grown significantly and they had become the largest detachment on board and many fighters could be used in a pure fighter role or in a fighter-bomber role, which increased. the attack potential of the ship while allowing for much greater air defense than in previous situations, as well as heavier air escort on offensive missions at the time when the new Hornets fighter group could muster almost as much force as two US aircraft carriers. entire fleet had been able to during the Guadalcanal campaign, which itself had occurred midway, increased the number of fighters deployed by the US Navy and, in mid-1944, small contingents of fighters also began to appear night aircraft carriers, although the older aircraft carriers, Enterprise and Saratoga, were the primary specialists in that particular field for the U.S.

Navy during the later stages of the war, the CV12 was also considerably more heavily armed at 50 percent more of heavy anti-aircraft guns and, thanks to the deployment of eight of these guns in twin mounts, super firing towards and after the island, the starboard heavy anti-aircraft. The side was twice that of the CV-8 and the port side, assuming no flight operations were in progress, was three times that of the older ship. Dozens of 40-millimeter bofors and 20-millimeter oligons were also installed, the former in quad mounts and the latter in single mounts. It is assembled at least at first, as with all other US Navy ships it would accumulate more firepower in this map department over time By the summer of 1944, the Hornets task force had changed the USS Cowpens, an independence type aircraft carrier, by the uss yorktown cv10, which was another essex so named fallen predecessor this small fleet was part of the larger task group 58 under the command of now vice admiral mitcher, a former cv-8 commander and is now headed to the Mariana Islands before the invasion force here again the Hornets air group performed mostly well, especially in air-to-air combat, although the fighter-bomber role was found to need a little more work, as Hellcat pilots could place a bomb on a stationary ground target, but they had not received any significant anti-aircraft training. -ship bombing techniques, something that would be addressed later, but for the moment made a couple of anti-ship attacks by Hellcats somewhat less than optimal in terms of damage dealt after several major airstrikes followed by A coastal bombardment by a battleship, the Japanese realized that In fact, the United States intended to take the island chain and then go through almost everything they had in terms of carrier-based aircraft and supporting ground units in the fleet American fleet which, while large and on the offensive, was still at least on paper about the same magnitude as the Japanese Navy's own carrier forces, since, apart from a couple of survivors, both navies had been defeated.

They were forced to effectively rebuild their main carrier fleets after the mutual attack of 1942. However, the Japanese plan was not as coordinated as it had been. been in some of the early operations and Hornet and friends were able to conduct multiple anti-aircraft sweeps over several islands in the lead-up to the arrival of Japanese carrier forces, destroying some of the land-based air power that the Japanese sought to counter local superiority. provided by the various carrier forces of the US Navy dawn on June 19 came with mixed results, the Japanese by mid-morning had generally been much better at finding the US fleet and keeping the exact location of their own fleet hidden, so On the other hand, thanks to the last few days of operations, the United States knew where the Japanese navy ground reinforcements, many of which had just arrived, were going to attack from, and once again we were able to intercept those airfields instead of engaging them. his planes and the aircraft of the carrier forces in open battle, but now that Admiral Azawa's force was here, the main battle joined with the Japanese navy sending wave after wave of heavy assaults against the American navy, the size and scope of the attacks would probably have flattened out. any US Navy formation of 1942, but even though the Japanese Navy took the first hit, they ran into a veritable wall of US Navy Hellcats, including many from Hornet's air group, the first wave was systematically fired from the sky with minimal damage to the US Navy.

The Hornet was recovering and reloading her planes as the Japanese second wave was similarly devoured, but she had some planes return in time to eliminate most of the part of the third wave that had managed to get a little closer to the ships. US aircraft carriers with the ship's aircraft specifically claimed 21 deaths from minimal damage or loss. In this phase of the battle, a fourth wave of Japanese aircraft attempting to reach Guam was similarly maimed and the day ended with the Japanese navy shooting down some 84 of the nearly 400 carriers. aircraft they had committed to the battle not counting the losses of land aircraft plus two aircraft carriers sunk by submarines in exchange for 31 losses of American aircraft despite the losses of two aircraft carriers, there were not enough aircraft left in the Japanese navy formation to fill Not even the hangars of those who had survived the day and although most of the air battle that constituted the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot ended, the battle as a whole continued until the next day when the retreating Japanese forces were detected and then attacked, resulting in the loss. of most of the remaining aircraft and another carrier with damage to four others, including Zuikaku, having entered the battle with quite formidable numbers on paper, nine operational carriers, five fleet carriers and four light carriers, the Japanese abandoned the battle area with one operational fleet carrier and one damaged. and two light aircraft carriers operational on the second day also suffered considerable losses of American aircraft: 20 were lost during the attack on the Japanese fleet, but another 69 went down during afternoon landing operations because they reached the limits of their fuel capacity and could not They were very familiar.

With night landing procedures, although unlike the much greater losses of the Japanese navy, many of the American aircrew involved at the last moment could be recovered from the ocean, what remained of Japanese air power in the region was then bravely launched but ineffectively against the US Navy fighters over the course of the next few days and with enemy air power in the region breached the Hornet and other aircraft carriers went on the offensive against several Japanese bases until it was time to refuel and rearm a once again. assigned to more preliminary attacks, this time targeting several Japanese bases supporting or even in the Philippines, which were the next target of the American amphibious forces, a series of attacks followed that met with relatively little resistance and a slightly strange pattern emerged in this campaign stage.

American carrier pilots vastly exaggerated the number of air-to-air kills, which in itself was not especially unusual for an air-to-air conflict, but they also slightly underestimated their anti-ship kills when in that department they obviously had not actually inflicted a little more damage than they thought they had caused, this kept the ship running until the end of September and then it was time to rearm and refuel again as they fired on Japanese airfields, shot down Japanese planes and blew up the ships Japanese is a busy job. It was also time for Hornet to change air groups, something she would do a couple of times during her deployment, as new pilots and new aircraft equipment allowed the carrier to maintain an otherwise brutal pace of operations since she went into combat.

The closest the hornet had come home had been forward operating bases and ports, and even then these had been brief visits to resupply and return again. More attacks on Japanese bases followed, including heavy attacks on Formosa (now Taiwan), with US naval forces suffering some nasty hits from Japanese naval aircraft for the first time in quite some time with the cruisers Canberra and Houston both carrying hornets. the name of ships that had been lost earlier in the war and were damaged by torpedoes launched from torpedo bombers, although this took a heavy toll on Japanese aircraft and pilots in Canberra were actually victims of a torpedo that had been aimed at Hornet but which the carrier had carefully evaded while October carried Hornet.

Hornet pilots found themselves executing missions in direct support closer and closer to landings in the Philippines and eventually. of the month were on their way back to refuel and rearm once again as their ammunition and fuel were nearly depleted when Admiral Halsey summoned them to what he promised would be another major carrier battle as it turned out these were the circumstances. that surrounded the battle of leyte golf and the distance hornet had already traveled in the direction of resupply meant that he missed cape and ghana and managed only a few long range attacks against the retreating forms of admiral karita's forces retreating from taffy 3. although this managed to claim the light cruiser nashiro it was not much to show for it after the hundreds of sorties flown by the combined carriers of the hornet task group.

This brief interruption aside from resupply at Ulithi saw Mitchell once again move on to better things as Hornet led his group. Back to the Philippines, but in the course of the campaign several aircraft carriers were lost and many more were damaged by the increasing number of kamikaze aircraft. This led to two important changes: first, the number of fighters would be increased further, further reducing dive bombers and torpedo bombers. squadrons to a squadron with more strength each, the fighter-bomber role of most of the fighters now on board compensated to some extent for the loss of attack power, but this would in any case take some time to implement, the most immediate change Was that the Hornet after a few more attacks in the Philippines was reassigned to a task force that was to go after the Japanese airfields outside the landing area and from where the kamikaze attacks were launched, however this was interrupted by Typhoon Cobra Hornet It withstood this relatively well compared to some ships, but was still delayed.

Attacks on a wide range of bases around the South China Sea began to push deeper into Japanese-controlled territory and attacked heavily defended land. More U.S. Navy aircraft were lost in these engagements than had been lost in recent engagements with the Japanese Navy's remaining major fleets, while large numbers of Japanese aircraft and several hundred thousand tons of shipping were lost. destroyed. destroyed, cost just over 200 US aircraft and the aircraft carrier ticonderoga was badly hit by kamikazes. This mission, however, accomplished, was to support the landings on Iwo Jima, after a brief stop at Ulithi, once again this involved a series of attacks against the Japanese home islands first before heading to the islands under invasion Further attempts would be made to suppress the airfields on the home islands as more and more kamikazes appeared, but these were largely thwarted by bad weather, but once Iojima fell and Okinawa was next on the list.

Hornet again left Japan, it should be noted that during these operations the US Navy was suffering losses at a ratio of approximately one to one, while the Japanese rose to a slightly better ratio of kills of two to one. one in some missions. The kirobutai may have disappeared for the most part, but the Japanese pilots still had skilled pilots in their ranks and the massive ground-based anti-aircraft guns would also claim that many American aircraft were launched more attacks, but as their numbers decreased , the remaining Japanese pilots began to get smart. very clever in exploiting weaknesses in the US Navy's radar coverage caused by an unfortunate combination of its own IFF systems and air search radars tolaunching small attacks using a single aircraft and occasionally pairs with some surprising results, the USS Franklin being the best known victim in this After a series of operations, the carriers fell back to protect their damaged ships and resupply their air groups with the returned damaged ships to safety and new aircraft loaded, emphasizing how important an important logistical story was in the Pacific campaign in general, but the American offensive in The Pacific Hornet, more specifically Hornet, returned to the Okinawa area in March 1945, taking out reinforcement convoys that attacked aircraft and kamikazes and launching direct ground support operations to assist the troops, but the kamikazes continued to arrive and one after another, the aircraft carriers and other ships abandoned the formation. with varying degrees of damage, but Hornet proved remarkably unaffected by the chaos this enchanted life meant that his air group would be one of several called upon to stop the battleship Yamato while it attempted its own kamikaze run as part of Operation Got the Battleship.

Giant and most of her escort were duly sent to the bottom and returned to the dual roles of directly supporting the invasion of Okinawa and then heading to Japan for indirect support by attacking airfields before her kamikazes and other attack aircraft could be launched, then having observed ticonderoga franklin hancock. The intrepid Bunker Hill and Enterprise, among others, retreat with heavy damage caused mostly by kamikazes. Finally it was Hornet's turn to be sent home, although not directly because of Japanese action. Rather, in early June, the admiral once again led the fleet into the jaws of a typhoon.

Halsey, the first Typhoon Hornet had mostly survived. He attempted to restore balance by hitting a massive wave on the ship that crashed into the forward part of the flight deck. His shipmate Bennington was also damaged and the cruiser USS Pittsburgh had to offer a loving and hasty offer. goodbye to most of its bow as well, this did not immediately stop the Hornet, although American aircraft carriers were designed to operate aircraft from the bow or stern, so it provided combat air patrol with this method sailing astern to generate enough wind speed, however, a week. After Typhoon Hornet was ordered home for the first time in the war, she received repairs and a small refit that saw the end of the war while she was still in dock after participating in Operation Magic Carpet in order to carry American troops home, she was placed in reserve and may have been Essex class, but with the long-hulled Essex of recent times, the later production and entry into service of the Midways, even an early Essex class was something superfluous to the immediate requirements of the US Navy.

He finished his wartime career with nine battle stars and one claim. Twenty 1,410 Japanese aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground. More than 1.2 million tons of ships sunk or had helped sink them. She expended a total of 17,793 bombs, 5,842 rockets, 116 torpedoes and almost 4.9 million rounds of 50 caliber ammunition by air. group along with 7,275 5-inch rounds, 115,179 40-millimeter rounds, and 409,508 rounds of 20-millimeter ammunition in its own defense in the early 1950s, although it was refitted to the relatively basic SCB-27A standard, it did not obtain A flight deck angled at this point, but designated as an attack carrier, she gained the designation CVA 12, participating in several operations in the Western Pacific as part of the 7th Fleet, operating new aircraft and helping to search for survivors, among other things, of a British plane that had been shot down by the Communist Chinese, her plane shot down two Chinese fighters loitering in the area and may well have been the plane responsible for the shoot down, but in mid-1955 she was called back home.

For the most complete upgrade of the scb-125 this time it would be given an angled flight deck and shortly after this was completed as more supercarriers entered the fleet it was retrofitted to an anti-submarine warfare aircraft carrier still assigned to the Pacific and In this type she was assigned as a support ship for the NASA space program, recovering a variety of spacecraft and astronauts from various missions as the 1960s progressed, she would also be sent to operate out of Vietnam several times with a further upgrade of the scb-144, but as Vietnamese submarines were somewhat Rare combat operations for the aircraft carrier were limited.

Hornet and other similar upgraded aircraft carriers were instead used to assist attack carriers, as their large complement of aircraft and helicopters designed specifically for search work were very useful in recovering pilots who had had to abandon their homes. ships due to malfunction or, more often, combat damage; However, between these deployments, she spent considerable time on NASA's mission support and, as such, was the flagship available when the Apollo 11 command module splashed down, recovering Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in a convert mobile home on the hangar deck to quarantine in case they had contracted moonitus or other equally interesting afflictions after it became clear that there was a general absence of these, as well as face-hugging brain slugs or moon spiders on the faces. that the astronauts could be safely introduced.

The natural setting of it received too much public acclaim. Hornet would also regain its successes in the Apollo 12 mission, but by the time of the eventful Apollo 13 mission, Hornet was no longer around as it was scheduled for decommissioning and therefore ended its career in June 1970. Two decades later before its role in World War II and the space program granted it national historic landmark status and in 1998 it was restored and opened to the public in Alameda California, where it offers a unique triple vision of World War II, the War of Vietnam and Of course, the Apollo space program is home to a number of unique artifacts from the latter, in particular as of the time of this recording it has recently been reopened to the public and again as of the time of this recording can be visited for general tours On weekends and all week for specialized tours that are booked in advance, these specialized tours can take you from the heights of the ship's island to the depths of the engineering spaces, while regular general tours will take you around the deck flight deck and the hangar deck and one of the lower decks below that, if you are in or around alameda california i highly suggest you go and take a look on board and of course if you are watching this video anywhere any time in the future after the release date, obviously check their website to determine what the new revised opening times are as I'm sure they will only get better and better and if you, like me, are stuck abroad right now, but would still like to take a look at the ship there.

There are also some virtual tours available on the website and of course like any good museum they have embraced social media so if you are on social media you can follow them there. They also have their own YouTube channel link in the description and hopefully it will appear above. right now which has a number of interesting interviews including some interviews with veterans who served aboard her so go check them out and if you want tell them Drak sent you that's all for this video thanks for look if you have a comment or suggestion for a boat to review, let us know in the comments below, don't forget to comment on the pinned post if you have questions about dry docking.