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

[Music] the tale of two carriers it was the best of fates it was the worst of fates it was the age of hellcats it was the age of zeroes it was the epoch of the 40 millimeter bofors it was the epic of the mark 14. it was the season of the blue blanket and it was the season of the kiributai it was the spring of the essexes it was the winter of the york towns the tales of the carrier's hornet began remarkably late in the 1930s the us navy had been aiming to complete its treaty allocated carrier collection with a single class of three ships but this had run into some issues the hazards of an especially small carrier had already been experienced with uss ranger but the tonnage left to the us navy after the two big lexingtons plus ranger and langley were not enough when divided three ways to give the fleet the carrier it would accept as a bare minimum even downrating uss langley to a seaplane carrier hadn't been enough instead it had been decided to go with two carriers of the size the us navy could just about live with yorktown and enterprise and then do the best they could filling up the remaining tonnage with a diminutive wasp this would complete the us navy's carrier collection according to the treaty at two very large carriers two decent carriers and a pair of tinder boxes but all of this took place to the background of the treaty system collapsing faster than a prematurely removed souffle and the drums of war were echoing once more over the atlantic now without restrictions but sensing they were a little bit short on time the us navy began to prepare the design for their ideal carrier and this would become the essex class but that would take some time to sort out and so as a stop gap a further carrier was ordered on the basis of the yorktown class for immediate construction this would become uss hornet cv8 she differed slightly from her sisters in some ways although not as many as the us navy would have liked largely on the grounds that those kinds of major changes would have taken too long on what was supposed to be an expedited build most of the changes involved differences in fire control and sensor suites which was to be expected as hornet was built after several years of a technological advancement when compared to yorktown and enterprise and there were some differences to the details of her propulsion systems and a reduced superstructure profile overall the latter being the most visual difference which allows an easy distinction between her earlier sisters and hornet laid down a few weeks after the start of world war ii in europe her construction came on a pace the hull hitting the water about 14 months later and within another 10 months she was commissioned with one captain mitchell in command more on him later whilst just about in commission by the time of the pearl harbor attack hornet was still undergoing a training and shakedown cruise and was not considered fully operational until spring 1942. the crew expecting to be sent into the pacific fairly soon were thus somewhat perplexed to arrive one day to find b-25 mitchells on the deck as a medium bomber of the united states army air force was not the usual carrier-based strike aircraft a further exploration as the ship set sail for the panama canal discovered that her more regular aircraft complement were all snuggled up in the hangar and once into the pacific via said canal more bu-25s were loaded aboard it would only be once the ship was actually heading out west that captain mitchell informed the rest of the crew of their mission this of course was to become the famous doolittle raid joined by the enterprise which would provide air defense and anti-shipping strike power if the force was discovered on its way in the strike group set out to launch the b-25s against japan the mission was partially successful with the aircraft all being launched and all making it to their targets but having been launched 200 miles short due to the carriers running into a japanese navy patrol boat which had been sunk but they were unsure as to whether the patrol boat had gotten a signal back to japan and so they wanted to launch asap to avoid being caught by japanese counter-strike and thus with 200 miles shaved off the range of the b-25s they weren't able to make it to their planned bases for landing instead the crews were forced to bail out over contested areas of china to a variety of fates as it turned out the patrol boat had actually got a signal off to japan before it was sunk but that signal was garbled and so the japanese had not known what to make of it but even as the bombers were heading for japan hornet and her compatriots were turning around and running at full speed worried about that potential japanese navy counter-attack on their highly vulnerable formation with the crew busy sending a good chunk of her own air group up onto the 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 and reinforce yorktown and lexington who were trying to hold the south pacific against the kirobutai but unfortunately they were a little too late to assist in the battle of the coral sea the loss of lexington and the damage to yorktown resulting from that fight left hornet as one of only two operational u.s navy carriers on the pacific front even as intel came in about a planned japanese move on midway sailing for this historic battle joined by a hastily partially patched up yorktown hornet's actual air group had at this point basically no actual combat experience whilst aboard the carrier this did not do the ship's air group much good the dive bombers and escorting fighters headed off on the infamous flight to nowhere more details in the video linked above whilst vt-8 her torpedo bombers managed to find the japanese fleet but arrived alone and without escort and were duly moaned down in their entirety for their troubles with only one man left alive and of course he was in the water the aircraft had gone wandering over the pacific fared little better running low or out of fuel when they eventually came back hornet was left with a handful of dauntless dive bombers that managed to land successfully plus any fighters that she'd held back for air defense and whatever might be able to be put into service from her spares and stopped with pilots who've been fished out of the water in exchange for no results to speak of and a lot of missing aircraft and pilots however as the battle progressed she did manage to rescue a number of yorktown's aircraft and to fly off another equally unsuccessful but somewhat less disastrous strike in the latter course of the engagement with one final effort finally netting some results as with a third try her remaining aircraft would help to sink a japanese heavy cruiser damage another and damage a destroyer into the bargain with mitchell promoted upward and onward captain mason took over shortly thereafter with hornet rebuilding her air group and upgrading her defenses she eventually sailed out to join the guadalcanal campaign which was just as well as of the three carriers that had been sent ahead of her japanese navy air and submarine operations had sunk wasp sent saratoga back into dried up for repairs and poked a number of holes in enterprise which was grimly hanging on in a partially operational state subject to in-field repairs this set the stage for the battle of the santa cruz islands her second and as it would turn out last major engagement the battle started fairly well with hornet's air group damaging the shikaku and the chikuma but a combined counter-attack by japanese navy dive and torpedo bombers along with a number of damaged japanese aircraft deliberately flying themselves into the ship left hornet subject to multiple torpedo and bomb hits plus the damage and burning fuel from the semi kamikazes hornet was thus left powerless and drifting with her flight deck ablaze and more resembling a moonscape than a mobile airfield damage control efforts together with a tow almost had her in partially running condition at least enough to get home when another wave of torpedo bombers came in moving at five knots despite a furious anti-aircraft barrage that downed over 90 percent of the attacking aircraft since there were plenty of wildcats also still aloft one torpedo got through and that set back all the efforts thus far to square one now whilst there was theoretically a marginal chance that she might still make it home the japanese navy now intervened they had powerful surface forces approaching at speed the entire complement of u.s surface forces present at the battle did not in fact have the combat power to face off with the japanese navy ships at night in the best of circumstances and a drifting carrier was hardly in the best of circumstances thus the ship was ordered abandoned and efforts were made to scuttle her with 5-inch guns and torpedoes partially thanks to the surprising durability of the ship and partially because american torpedoes at the time were utterly terrible she was still around as a drifting wreck when a pair of japanese destroyers found her somewhat bemused they briefly considered boarding her and taking her as a prize or at least trying to extract some form of intelligence from her but they quickly decided that the ship was just the wrong side of beyond saving and sent her to the bottom with a salve of long lances the wreck settling upright over five kilometers down after the unintervening fall but that was not to be the end of the name hornet aircraft carriers called hornet or even the involvement of aircraft carriers called hornet in world war ii the carriers that horn it had been built to buy time for the essex class had the first three of their number essex a newly named yorktown and intrepid almost ready for service and the next carrier on the list cv12 was currently assigned the name uss kirsaj and had been laid down a few months before the loss of cv-8 thus in honor of the lost ship cv12 was renamed uss hornet and duly launched as such in august 1943. the speed of wartime production emphasized by the fact that this much larger vessel had gone from keel to launch about two months faster than her smaller predecessor's already accelerated build time it also took only about three months to get her from launch to commission and so after a year and a half without a hornet in the fleet the new hornet arrived as the latest addition to task force 58 in march 1944 the operational environment for uss hornet cv-12 was quite a different one to that that cv-8 had fought in the us navy was now fully on the offensive and her first combat mission was not to fight japanese navy warships in a fleet battle but rather a series of strike missions on japanese air and naval bases in concert with other u.s carriers this included the use of pairs of air deployed mines by avenger torpedo bombers to keep anything they hadn't managed to sink stuck in harbour this had a fair degree of success and with proliferation of not just fleet carriers but light carriers as well hornet soon found herself at the head of a force wherein she was the big sister to a gaggle of smaller independence class flat tops for further offensive strikes against various japanese airfields now whilst these were not directly operating over the various amphibious landings that were going on at the time these missions were incredibly important as by damaging and destroying air bases and the attendant aircraft on them in the surrounding region they hampered japanese aerial counter-attack efforts and also ensured those aircraft in direct support of the troops had fewer incoming enemy fighters to deal with thus improving the quality of that ground support as well another favorite target of hornet and her companions and the us navy generally as the war went on was truck 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 latter part of the pacific campaign eventually this would so damage and isolate the base that for most operational purposes japanese navy high command would end up treating it as if it had actually fallen compared to her earlier incarnation this hornet was considerably larger and thus despite the ever increasing size and complexity of carrier-based aircraft she could carry a considerably larger air group the makeup of the air group had also changed early in the war u.s carriers would carry many dauntless dive bombers and typically around a single squadron each of torpedo bombers and fighters although this might be slightly over strength from the standard 12. whilst there were still typically more dauntless or helldiver types aboard than avengers in 1944 the number of fighters had grown significantly in they had become the single largest detachment aboard with many fighters being able to be used in a pure fighter role or in a fighter bomber role which augmented the ship's strike potential whilst allowing for a much greater air defense than in earlier situations as well as heavier air escort in offensive missions at the time the new hornets fighter group could marshal almost as much strength as two full fleet carriers had been able to during the guadalcanal campaign which itself had occurred part way into the us navy's increase in deployed fighters and by mid-1944 small contingents of night fighters were also starting to show up although the older carriers enterprise and saratoga were the main specialists in that particular field for the us navy during the latter stages of the war cv12 was also considerably more heavily armed with 50 percent more heavy anti-aircraft weapons and thanks to the deployment of eight of these guns in twin mounts super firing for and after the island the starboard heavy anti-aircraft broadside was twice that of cv-8 and the port side broadside assuming that there were no flight operations ongoing was thrice 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 at least at first as with all other us navy ships it would accumulate more firepower in this map department over time by summer 1944 the hornets task group had swapped uss cowpens an independence class-like carrier for uss yorktown cv10 which was another essex named for a fallen predecessor this small fleet was part of the larger task force 58 under the command of the now vice admiral mitcher one time commander of cv-8 and now heading to the marianas islands in advance of the invasion force here again hornets air group acquitted themselves mostly well especially in air-to-air combat although it was found that the fighter bomber role did need a little bit more work as the hellcat pilots could just about put a bomb on a stationary target on land but had not received any major training in anti-shipping bombing techniques something that would be addressed further down the line but for the moment rendered a couple of anti-shipping strikes by hellcats somewhat less than optimal in terms of damage inflicted after several major airstrikes followed by a battleship shore bombardment the japanese realized the us did in fact mean to take the island chain and then through almost everything they had in terms of carrier-based aircraft and supporting land-based units at the us fleet which whilst large and on the offensive was still at least on paper within the same order of magnitude as the japanese navy's own carrier forces since aside from a couple of survivors each both navies had been forced to effectively rebuild their major carrier fleets after the mutual battering that was 1942. however the japanese plan was not quite as coordinated as it had been in some early operations and hornet and her friends were able to conduct multiple anti-aircraft sweeps over various islands in the run-up to the arrival of the japanese carrier forces destroying some of the land-based air power that the japanese were seeking to bring to bear with local superiority afforded by the various u.s navy carrier forces the dawn of the 19th of june 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 concealed on the other hand thanks to the last few days of operations the us knew where the japanese navy's land-based reinforcements many of which had only just arrived were going to attack from and once again we're able to interdict those airfields instead of facing their aircraft and the carrier forces aircraft in open battle but now the admiral azawa's force was here the main battle was joined with the japanese navy sending wave after wave of heavy assaults against the us navy the sheer size and scope of the attacks probably would have flattened any u.s navy formation of 1942 but despite the japanese navy getting the first punch in they ran headlong into a veritable wall of us navy hellcats including many of hornet's air group the first wave was systematically shot out of the sky with minimal damage to the us navy vessels hornet was recovering and reloading her aircraft whilst the second japanese wave was similarly chewed up but she had some aircraft back up again in time to take out most of the portion of the third wave that had managed to make their way somewhat close to the u.s carriers with the ship's aircraft specifically claiming 21 kills for minimal damage or losses in this phase of the battle a fourth wave of japanese aircraft that tried to reach guam was similarly mauled with the day ending with the japanese navy down about 84 of the almost 400 carrier aircraft they'd committed to the battle not counting a land-based aircraft losses plus two carriers sunk by submarines in exchange for 31 american aircraft losses despite the two carrier losses there weren't enough aircraft left in the japanese navy formation to fill even the hangars of those that had survived the day and whilst the majority of the air battle that made up the great marianas turkey shoot was over the battle as a whole continued into the following day as the retreating japanese forces were spotted and then attacked resulting in the loss of most of their remaining aircraft and another carrier with damage to another four including zuikaku having entered the battle with a fairly formidable on paper nine operational carriers five fleet carriers and four light ones the japanese left the battle area with one operational and one damaged fleet carrier and two operational light carriers the second day also saw considerable american aircraft losses 20 were lost during the attack on the japanese fleet but another 69 went down during the late evening landing operations as they hit the limits for their fuel capacity and weren't very familiar with nighttime landing procedures although unlike the japanese navy's much greater losses many of the american air crew involved in the latter instant would be able to be recovered from the ocean what was left of japanese air power in the region then threw itself bravely but ineffectually against the us navy fighters over the course of the next few days and with enemy air power in the region broken the hornet and other carriers went on the offensive against various japanese bases until it was time to refuel and re-arm once again this accomplished hornet's group was assigned to more preliminary attacks this time aimed at various japanese bases supporting or indeed on the philippines which were the next target for the american amphibious forces a series of attacks that met relatively little resistance followed with a slightly odd pattern emerging in this stage of the campaign u.s carrier pilots vastly overclaimed the number of air-to-air kills which in and of itself was not especially unusual for an air-to-air conflict but they also slightly under-claimed their anti-shipping kills when in that department obviously they'd actually inflicted slightly more damage than they thought they had this ran the ship through to the end of september and then it was time to rearm and refuel again as shooting up japanese airfields and shooting down japanese aircraft and blowing up japanese shipping is busy work it was also time for hornet to swap out air groups something she'd do a couple of times during her deployment as fresh aircraft fresh pilots and equipment all allowed the carrier to keep up a otherwise brutal pace of operations since she'd entered the fight the closest hornet had come to home had been forward operating bases and ports and even then these had been brief visits to stock up and head back out again more strikes on japanese bases followed including heavy strikes on formosa now taiwan with u.s navy forces taking a few nasty blows from the japanese navy's aircraft for the first time in quite a while with the cruisers canberra and houston both like hornet named after ships that had been lost earlier in the war crippled by torpedoes launched from torpedo bombers although this came at a very steep price in japanese aircraft and pilots in canberra actually being victimized by a torpedo that had been aimed for hornet but which the carrier had neatly evaded as october wore on hornet's pilots found themselves running missions in ever closer direct support of the landings on the philippines and by the end of the month they were on their way back to refuel and rearm once again since their ammunition and fuel bunkers were almost depleted when admiral halsey summoned them to what he promised was another great carrier battle as it turned out these were the circumstances surrounding the battle of leyte golf and the distance that hornet had already made heading for resupply meant that she missed out on cape and ghana and only managed a few long-range strikes against the retreating forms of admiral karita's forces who were retreating from taffy 3. although this did manage to claim the light cruiser nashiro it wasn't all that much to show for the hundreds of sorties flown by the combined carriers of hornet's task group this brief interruption aside resupply at ulithi saw mitchell once again move on to better things whilst hornet led her group back to the philippines but over the course of the campaign a number of carriers had been lost and many more damaged by increasing numbers of kamikaze aircraft this led to two major changes firstly the number of fighters was to be increased even further reducing dive and torpedo bomber squadrons to one over strength squadron each the fighter bomber role of most of the fighters now board somewhat compensated for the loss in strike power but this would in any case take some time to implement the more immediate change was that hornet after some more strikes on the philippines was reassigned to a task group which was to go after the japanese airfields outside of the landing area and from which the kamikaze raids were being launched however this was interrupted by typhoon cobra hornet weathered this relatively well compared to some ships but was nonetheless delayed making good any damage to the ship and its aircraft whilst the rest of the fleet reconstituted itself and losses were made good this done the strikes across a wide range of bases around the south china sea commenced deeper into japanese-held territory and attacking heavily defended land-based airfields instead of the more fragile floating kind more u.s navy aircraft were lost in these engagements than had been lost in the last few encounters with japanese navy's major remaining fleets put together whilst a large number of japanese aircraft and several hundred thousand tons of shipping were destroyed it came at the cost of just over 200 us aircraft and the carrier ticonderoga badly hit by kamikazes this mission nonetheless accomplished it was on to support the landings at iwo jima after a brief pit stop at ulithi once more this involved a number of strikes on the japanese home islands first before heading over to the islands under invasion further attempts at suppressing airfields on the home islands would again be made as more and more kamikazes appeared but these were largely foiled by bad weather but once iojima fell and okinawa was next on the list hornet was back off japan again it should be noted that during these operations the u.s navy was taking losses at roughly a one-to-one ratio to the japanese climbing to a slightly better two to one kill ratio on some missions the elite core of the kirobutai may have been mostly gone but the japanese pilots still had skilled flyers in their ranks and massed land-based anti-aircraft guns would also claim many u.s aircraft more strikes were launched but as their numbers dropped the remaining japanese pilots began to get clever very clever exploiting weaknesses in the u.s navy's radar coverage caused by an unfortunate combination of their own iff systems and the air search radars to launch small attacks using single aircraft and occasionally pairs with some startling results uss franklin being the most well-known victim in this series of operations and the carriers fell back to guard their damaged ships and restock their air groups with the damaged vessels sent back to safety and new aircraft loaded this emphasizing just how important a major logistical tale was in the pacific campaign generally but the u.s offensive into the pacific more specifically hornet was back in the area of okinawa by march 1945 taking out reinforcement convoys attacking aircraft and kamikazes and launching direct ground support operations to aid the troops still the kamikazes kept on coming and one after another carriers and other ships left the formation with varying degrees of damage but hornet proved remarkably untouched by the chaos this charmed life meant that her air group would be one of several called upon to stop the battleship yamato as it attempted its own kamikaze run as part of operation tengo the giant battleship and most of its escort were duly sent to the bottom and it was back to the two roles of supporting okinawa's invasion directly and then heading over to japan for indirect support attacking airfields before their kamikaze and other strike aircraft could be launched by now having watched ticonderoga franklin hancock intrepid bunker hill and enterprise amongst others withdraw with heavy damage mostly caused by kamikazes it was finally hornet's turn to be sent home although not directly by japanese action rather at the start of june the fleet was once again sailed into the teeth of a typhoon by admiral halsey the first typhoon hornet had mostly survived this one tried to redress the balance visiting a massive wave on the ship which smashed in the forward part of the flight deck fellow carrier bennington was likewise damaged and the cruiser uss pittsburgh had to bid a fond and hasty farewell to most of her bow as well this didn't immediately stop hornet though us carriers were designed to operate aircraft off of the bow or stern and so she provided a combat air patrol by this method sailing backwards to generate enough wind speed however a week after the typhoon hornet was ordered home for the first time in the war receiving repairs and a small refit that saw the war end while she was still in dock after participation in operation magic carpet in order to get u.s troops home she was placed in reserve an essex class she may have been but with the long hull essexes of late the later production run and the midways coming into service even an early essex class was somewhat superfluous to the us navy's immediate requirements she finished her wartime career with nine battle stars and a claimed score of 1410 japanese aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground over 1.2 million tons of shipping sunk or having assisted in the sinking thereof expending a total of 17 793 bombs 5842 rockets 116 torpedoes and almost 4.9 million rounds of 50 caliber ammunition via her air group along with 7 275 rounds of 5-inch 115 179 rounds 40 millimeter and 409 508 rounds of 20 millimeter ammunition in her own defense by the early 1950s though she was back refitted to the relatively basic scb-27a standard she didn't get an angled flight deck at this point but designated an attack carrier picked up the cva 12 designation taking part in various operations in the western pacific as part of the seventh fleet operating new aircraft and helping look for the survivors amongst other things from a british airliner that had been shot down by the communist chinese her aircraft shooting down two chinese fighters that were prowling the area and may well have been the aircraft responsible for the shoot-down but by mid-1955 she was called back home for the more comprehensive scb-125 upgrade this time it would net her an angled flight deck and shortly after this was completed as more supercarriers entered the fleet she was adapted again into an anti-submarine warfare carrier still assigned to the pacific and in this guys she was allocated as a support vessel for nasa's space program recovering a variety of spacecraft and astronauts from various missions as the 1960s wore on she would also be sent to operate off of vietnam several times with an additional scb-144 upgrade but as vietnamese submarines were somewhat rare combat operations for the carrier were limited hornet and other similarly upgraded carriers being used instead to assist the attack carriers since their large complement of aircraft and helicopters specifically designed for search work was very useful in recovering pilots who had had to ditch away from their home ships due to malfunction or more often combat damage however in between these deployments she would spend considerable time in the nasa support mission and as such was the flagship on hand when apollo 11's command module splashed down recovering neil armstrong buzz aldrin and michael collins to a converted mobile home on the hangar deck for quarantine just in case they'd caught moonitus or other similarly interesting afflictions after it became clear that there was a general absence of these as well as brain slugs face huggers or moon spiders the astronauts could be safely introduced to their natural environment too much public acclaim hornet would also recover their successes on the apollo 12 mission but by the time of the eventful apollo 13 mission hornet was no longer present as she was scheduled for decommissioning and thus ended her career in june 1970. mothballed for two decades before her role in world war ii and the space program netted her national historic landmark status and by 1998 she was restored and opened to the public at alameda california where she offers a unique triple insight into the second world war the vietnam war and of course the apollo space program housing a number of unique artifacts of the latter in particular she has as of the time of this recording been recently reopened to the public and again as of the time of this recording can be visited for general visits at the weekends and all week for specialist tours which are booked in advance these specialist tours can take you from the heights of the ship's island to the depths of the engineering spaces whilst the regular general tours will allow you to tour the flight deck and the hangar deck and one of the lower decks beneath that if you happen to find yourself in or around alameda california i would strongly suggest you go and have a look aboard and of course if you're watching this video sometime in the future after the date of release please obviously do check their website in order to ascertain what the new revised opening hours are as i'm sure they will only get better and better and if you are like me stuck overseas at the moment but you'd still like to have a look around the ship 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 happen to be on social media you can follow them there they also have their own youtube channel link in the description and hopefully appearing above right this minute which has a number of interesting interviews including some interviews with veterans who served aboard her so go and check those out and if you like tell them drak sent you that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 479,909

Rating: 4.9484282 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, USS Hornet, CV-8, CV-12, World War 2, Pacific Campaign, Dolittle Raid, Battle of Midway, Flight to Nowhere, Battle of Santa Cruz, Battle of the Phillpine Sea, Operation Ten-Go, Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, Apollo Space Program

Id: lJauHydQofM

Length: 36min 57sec (2217 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021