The Wreck of the USS Hornet
The famed CV-8 Yorktown class carrier was discovered not far from Guadalcanal
The Hornet loomed out of the darkness and everyone in the R/V Petrel’s control room whooped with joy. The unmanned submersible had dropped practically right on top of the old ship on the first try. Paul Allen smiled. This was his 15th WWII wreck discovery, and one of his most anticipated.
The research ship, R/V Petrel, owned by Allen’s startup Vulcan, had parked directly over the wreck of the USS Hornet in the Solomon Sea. It was February in 2019, which was summer in this hemisphere. The weather was warm and sunny and tropical, with only a slight chop on the dark waters.
Allen had co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, and then used his immense wealth to do what he really loved: hunting old World War Two shipwrecks. Allan had already discovered the USS Lexington and the USS Indianopolis, as well as the Japanese battleship Musashi, in the preceding years, but Hornet would be his crown jewel.
Luckily, he and his team had had lots of information to go on. CV-8 was pretty much right where it had last been seen on the 27th of October, 1942.
The ship was resting upright on the ocean floor, 5,300 m (17,500 feet) deep. It was mostly intact, although the bridge tower was broken off and laying next to the ship. SBD Dauntless dive-bombers, TBD Devastator torpedo bombers and F4F Wildcat fighters lay scattered on the sea bed in concentric circles around the wreck.
Allen couldn’t believe how well preserved the ship and the surrounding wreckage was when he found it. It had been there for more than 77 years, yet the wooden deck was still intact, minus bomb damage. The AA guns were still pointing up, as if still fending off diving Japanese Val bombers.
CV-8 USS Hornet
The Hornet was one of the most famed of America’s aircraft carriers in the first year of the war in the Pacific. She had been the carrier to launch the Doolittle Raid against Japan. She had fought at Midway and at Guadalcanal. Her planes had sunk half the Japanese carrier fleet, and she had been hit more than two dozen times.
The USS Hornet was the last of the true Yorktown class carriers to launch (the USS Wasp was a scaled-down, lighter Yorktown class carrier built using materials left over from the USS Enterprise and USS Hornet constructions, thus not a true Yorktown). She was launched in December, 1940 at Newport News in Virginia, just one year before Pearl Harbour.
She was classified as CV-8, the eighth carrier launched by the United States Navy, although in 1940 there were only five carriers in service. She had a length of 251 m (825 ft) and a width of 25 m (83 ft). She was 35 m tall (114 ft).
The Hornet had a crew of 1400 men and officers and an additional 141 aircrew. She carried 72 planes. In 1940 those were several squadrons each of Dauntless, Devastators and Wildcats.
The Hornet was originally planned to be attached to the Atlantic Fleet, but the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 changed that. She was detached from her carrier group with the USS Ranger and sent to the Pacific to join the USS Enterprise for a highly secret mission, which even her own skipper, Captain Marc A. Mitscher, was unaware of what was planned for his ship.
He started to get an idea when 16 large twin-engined B-25 Mitchell bombers were loaded by crane onto the deck of the Hornet. A sealed envelope was handed to him by special courier as he watched the big land-based bombers being loaded.
The Doolittle Raid
The USS Hornet was to join Task Force 18, comprised of her sister carrier USS Enterprise, three heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and eight destroyers. Two refuelling tankers joined the task force as they sailed past Hawaii towards the open Pacific.
Their mission: launch the B-25s off the coast of Japan. The bombers would hit Tokyo and then land at friendly bases in China. The task force would turn and quickly run for safety once the bombers were all airborne.
The air mission was led by the enigmatic US Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmy Doolittle. It had been partially conceived of by him. They had tested taking off from a short 150 m runway on land in Florida. There was no time to train the crews or conduct tests to see if it was feasible from the pitching and wet deck of an actual carrier at sea. It would be every crew’s do-or-die first time.
America was spitting mad and itching for revenge after Pearl Harbour. Japan had exploded onto the scene with terrifying violence, conquering almost the entire Pacific in a matter of weeks. Malaya, the Philipinnes, Wake, Guam and dozens of smaller yet important island chains had all fallen. The US Pacific fleet and the British fleet at Singapore were almost destroyed. Hong Kong and Singapore, the two bastions of British power in Asia, had fallen.
Striking at Japan would send a shock to the Japanese and a message to the world. America was here.
On April 18, 1942, the task force was spotted by a Japanese patrol boat while still 650 miles from Japan. Although the escorting cruisers quickly sank the boat, the Japanese had managed to get a message out. Doolittle and Mitscher conferred and realized they had no choice. They had to launch now or risk the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy bearing down on them.
Doolittle and his 130 men boarded their big bombers. It was early morning and there was a light rain. The wind was up and the deck of the Hornet was pitching up and down. Doolittle was the first plane to go. He revved the engines to full power and released the brakes. The lumbering bomber slowly inched down the deck. Its speed picked up. Faster, and faster. The end of the Hornet’s flight deck grew large in the windshield.
Doolittle’s B-25 actually rolled off the end of the deck and dropped out of view for a moment, leading many to fear it had crashed. But then the plane roared up into view and began to climb into the sky.
The next bomber went, and then the next. It took just under an hour for all 16 planes to get airborne, but they all made it. The USS Hornet and Task Force 18 turned to the south east and fired the engines to full speed to get out of there.
The Doolittle bombers flew low. It took six hours to reach the coast of Japan, but they completely took the Japanese by surprise. They roared over Tokyo and dropped their bomb loads on the city, hitting several factories, a power plant, a school, and a train station. Their front gunners strafed cars and buildings as they blasted across the city.
15 of the 16 bombers ran out of fuel. Two of them went down in the Sea of Japan and their crews lost. 13 of the crews bailed out over China, and eight of them were captured by the Japanese. Two men were executed by beheading.
One of the bombers made it to Vladivostok, in Soviet Russia, where the crew were interred. They were treated well, but the USSR had a peace treaty with Japan and Stalin did not want to provoke them, especially with Nazi armies at the gates of Moscow. The NKVD would help the men sneak across the border into Iran a year later, and then acted surprised. “They escaped!” they informed the Japanese.
Doolittle himself met up with the Chinese resistance and made his way to friendly lines. He would end up commanding the US air forces in Europe a year later.
50 Japanese people were killed in the attack and the damage was light, but the entire Empire of Japan was shocked. The Japanese butchered 250,000 Chinese civilians in retaliation for the raid.
Midway
The USS Hornet was on the front page of newspapers around the world after the Doolittle Raid. She was feted and models of the ship sold like hot cakes across the US throughout 1942.
But she didn’t have time to rest. The USS Yorktown and USS Lexington had run into the main Japanese carrier fleet in the Coral Sea, and the admiralty rushed the USS Hornet south to aid them.
The battle was over before she got there and the USS Lexington was sunk while the Yorktown suffered extensive damage. Hornet launched several air raids against Japanese held islands, destroying a couple of airfields and sinking several transport ships and destroyers before heading back to Pearl Harbour.
She rejoined the USS Enterprise for a daring new mission: ambush the Japanese fleet off of Midway. The Yorktown joined the two carriers, even though she was damaged. Civilian contractors were welding the ship back together as they sailed into battle.
The Japanese had decided to sink the American carriers once and for all. The Doolittle Raid had shaken them up and they recognized the danger the small US carrier fleet represented. They planned an invasion of the island of Midway, with the goal of luring the American carriers out of Pearl Harbour. Four Japanese carriers would then ambush the surprised Americans.
But US intelligence had broken the Japanese naval codes and knew exactly what they planned. So they sent the three remaining carriers to the north of Midway to await the Japanese. They would ambush the ambushers.
On June 4th, 1942, Japanese carrier-based planes began bombing the tiny island of Midway. Shortly after, US spotter planes located the Japanese fleet. Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet launched their planes.
The first wave consisted of TBD Devastator torpedo bombers. These were slow, outdated and lumbering machines. They found the Japanese fleet and swooped in low to drop their torpedos. Japanese Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” fighters slaughtered the torpedo bombers.
Hornet’s bombers were particularly hard hit, and she lost every single Devastator she had sent out. Only one of the Hornet’s TBD aircrew survived. Ensign George Gay bobbed in the water, clutching a floatation device, as the battle raged all around him. The Devastators were woefully outclassed by 1942, but the SBD Dauntless dive bombers were a different matter.
As the Devastators were being shot down, several flights of Dauntless’s appeared high up in the sky over the Japanese fleet. They rolled over and began their screaming dives, each section aiming for a different Japanese carrier. Their bombs released only a few hundred meters above the ships, impossible to miss.
In quick succession, the Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga and Soryu, the four big carriers of Japan’s fleet, were blazing from dive bomber hits. Several destroyers and a Japanese heavy cruiser were also hit and on fire.
By the late afternoon the tide of war had shifted in the Pacific. The Imperial Japanese Navy had lost the bulk of its carriers. Several Japanese raids managed to hit and sink the USS Yorktown. Wildcat figthers from the Hornet fought off several waves of Japanese bombers, and the carrier was bracketed by bombs in the battle but suffered no damage.
Guadalcanal and the Solomon Sea
There wasn’t much chance to rest after Midway. The US Marines were planning a major operation in the Solomon Islands to protect Australia from Japanese invasion, and Hornet was needed there.
In October, 1942, the Hornet and Enterprise sailed into the Solomon Sea off the coast of Guadalcanal in support of the US Marine landings there. The Japanese sent their last remaining carriers to stop the landings.
The Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, also known as the Battle of the Solomon Sea, would be Hornet’s last. On 26 October, Dauntless dive bombers from the Hornet attacked the Japanese carrier Shokaku and severely damaged it. They also hit and sunk the Chikuma, a Japanese heavy cruiser.
But as the SBDs were en route back to the Hornet, several flights of Aichi D3A “Val” dive bombers appeared over the mighty ship. Her AA guns sent up a storm of defensive fire as the bombers screamed down. Three Vals were set alight. One of them aimed straight at the Hornet and hit her dead on astern, expoding in a massive fireball.
Several bombs smashed through the wooden deck of the carrier and exploded amidships, knocking out the main power. Then a flight of Nakajima B5N “Kate” torpedo bombers raced just a few meters above the water and launched their deadly “long lance” torpedos at the Hornet. There were two large detonations as the torpedos struck home.
The Hornet was stricken and burning, but was not sinking. Her returning airplanes were forced to land on the Enterprise. The American cruiser USS Northampton braved the diving Japanese planes and attempted to tow the Hornet out of harms way. She too was hit by bombs but her heavy armour was able to absorb the damage. She began towing Hornet at a reduced speed of less than five knots.
Then another flight of Kate torpedo bombers appeared. Hornet’s AA guns shot down eight of the planes but a ninth got through the wall of lead and hit a fatal blow with her massive torpedo.
Captain Mason, now in command of the USS Hornet, gave the order to abandon ship. He was the last man off the ship, crying as he left her burning on the water.
Several American warships attempted to scuttle the Hornet so she wouldn’t fall into Japanese hands. They hit her with more than 30 torpedos and 200 heavy shells, but she wouldn’t go down. As word of the approaching Japanese heavy surface fleet spread, the Americans left the Hornet to her fate.
Two Japanese destroyers discovered the burning hulk and finished her off with torpedos. The Japanese torpedos were bigger and deadlier than American torpedos, and they ripped a massive hole in the side of the Hornet. She quickly filled with water and sank at 1:35 am on 27 October, 1942. Nearly all of her crew had managed to get off, although 140 were killed by the Japanese bombs.
Hornet lives on
The loss of the Hornet was a hard blow for Americans to take. She was officially stricken from the order of battle in early 1943. There were memorial services across the country for the beloved carrier.
“She was a beautiful ship. She was tough, and her crew loved her. You could feel that the moment you stepped aboard.” - General Jimmy Doolittle
But her namesake would live on. The new Essex class carriers were rolling out of dockyards and CV-12 was given the proud name. USS Hornet (CV-12) joined the fleet in 1943 and served throughout the rest of World War Two. She then saw action in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and was the carrier to recover Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 astronauts after their moon landing. She was finally decommissioned in the 1970s and now serves as a floating museum. You can visit the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda, California.
When Paul Allen and his crew discovered the wreck of CV-8 in 2019, there was little fanfare. History nerds like us were excited, but the name of the USS Hornet had largely been forgotten.
The mighty ship was one of the finest warships to ever serve in the US Navy. And although she was in the war for just under one year before she met her demise, she contributed more to the final allied victory over Japan than many of the ships that would come after her. From the Doolittle Raid to Midway to Guadalcanal, the legend of the USS Hornet will live on!