19-20 Inch

The eighth USS Hornet (CV/CVA/CVS-12) was originally named USS Kearsarge, but renamed in honor of the CV-8, which was lost in October of 1942. more...

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The contract to build Kearsarge had been given to Newport News Shipbuilding on 9 September 1940, and her keel was laid down 3 August 1942. The seventh Hornet (CV-8) was sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz on 26 October 1942, and the CV-12 hull was renamed Hornet (the name Kearsarge is still stamped into her keel plate). She was launched 30 August 1943 and commissioned 29 November 1943. Her first commander was Admiral Miles R. Browning.

Hornet conducted shakedown training off Bermuda before departing Norfolk 14 February 1944 to join the Fast Carrier Task Force 20 March at Majuro Atoll in the Marshalls. After lending air support to protect the invasion beaches in New Guinea, she conducted massive aerial raids against Japanese bases in the Caroline Islands and prepared to support the amphibious assault for the occupation of the Marianas Islands.

On 11 June 1944 Hornet launched raids on Tinian and Saipan. The following day she conducted heavy bombing attacks on Guam and Rota. During 15 June to 16 June, she blasted enemy air fields at Iwo and Chichi Jima to prevent air attacks on troops invading Saipan in the Marianas. The afternoon of 18 June 1944 Hornet formed with the Fast Carrier Task Force to intercept the Japanese First Mobile Fleet, headed through the Philippine Sea for Saipan. The Battle of the Philippine Sea opened 19 June 1944 when Hornet launched strikes to destroy as many land-based Japanese planes as possible before the carrier-based Japanese aircraft came in.

The enemy approached the American carriers in four massive waves, full of young but inexperienced pilots. Fighter aircraft from Hornet and other U.S. carriers, whose veteran pilots were honed to perfection, broke up and savaged all the attacks before the Japanese aerial raiders reached the task force. Nearly every Japanese aircraft was shot down in the great air battles of 19 June 1944 that became commonly known as "The Marianas Turkey Shoot." As the Japanese Mobile Fleet fled in defeat on 20 June, the carriers launched long-range airstrikes that sank Japanese carrier Hiyō and so damaged two tankers that they were abandoned and scuttled. Admiral Ozawa's own flag log for 20 June 1944 showed his surviving carrier air power as only 35 operational aircraft out of the 430 planes with which he had commenced the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

Hornet, basing from Eniwetok in the Marshalls, raided enemy installations ranging from Guam to the Bonins, then turned her attention to the Palaus, throughout the Philippine Sea, and to enemy bases on Okinawa and Formosa. Her aircraft gave direct support to the troops invading Leyte 20 October 1944. During the Battle for Leyte Gulf she launched raids for damaging hits to the Japanese center force in the Battle off Samar, and hastened the retreat of the enemy fleet through the Sibuyan Sea towards Borneo.

Read more at Wikipedia.org