Hornet was the name of two United States Navy aircraft carriers . USS Hornet (CV-8) was launched in 1940 and sunk in 1942. USS Hornet (CV-12) was named in honor of the earlier ship and launched in 1943. USS stands for United States Ship. CV is the Navy’s designation for an aircraft carrier. Both ships took part in combat during World War II (1939-1945).
USS Hornet (CV-8) was the Navy’s eighth aircraft carrier. The ship was at Norfolk Naval Yard, in Virginia , when the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor , Hawaii , on Dec. 7, 1941. The ship soon was transferred to the Pacific Ocean . On April 18, 1942, it launched the first U.S. bombing raid on Tokyo —the famous Doolittle Raid. In June, Hornet joined with USS Yorktown (CV-5) and USS Enterprise (CV-6) to defeat the Japanese at the Battle of Midway . On October 26, Japanese planes severely damaged Hornet during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The ship was abandoned and sunk early on October 27.
In June 1944, warplanes from the replacement carrier, USS Hornet (CV-12), took part in a lopsided American victory over the Japanese in the Battle of the Philippine Sea . Hornet later supported invasions of Peleliu , Saipan , Guam, Tinian, the Philippines , Iwo Jima (now Iwo To), and Okinawa . Hornet’s planes also raided Tokyo and other targets in the Japanese home islands. On Sept. 2, 1945, Japan signed an official statement of surrender, and World War II ended.
Hornet earned seven battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation for the crew’s heroism in World War II. Battle stars are awarded for a ship’s participation in a military campaign. The Navy decommissioned (retired) the ship in 1947.
In the 1950’s, Hornet was modernized and reactivated. It later took part in the Vietnam War (1957-1975). On July 24, 1969, the ship recovered the spacecraft Columbia and the astronauts of Apollo 11 on their return from the first moon landing. On November 24, Hornet recovered the astronauts of Apollo 12.
The aircraft carrier was again decommissioned in 1970. The ship became a national historic landmark in 1991. In 1998, Hornet became a floating museum at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California . In 2019, the wreckage of the original Hornet (CV-8) was found in deep waters near Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands .
See also World War II (The war in Asia and the Pacific) .
