USS Hornet (CV-8) was the third and last of the Yorktown-class carriers, and she had very little time. Newport News laid her down on 25 September 1939, launched her on 14 December 1940, and commissioned her on 20 October 1941. Captain Marc A. Mitscher had her. She was the same treaty ship as Yorktown and Enterprise: a wooden flight deck, light armor, and an air group large enough to matter, on a hull the treaty had kept small. She is not the later Essex-class Hornet that took the name after this one was gone.
She was still working up in the Atlantic when the war opened. On 2 February 1942 two Army B-25s flew off her deck in a test. They got off. In April, at Alameda, sixteen of the bombers were parked on a flight deck that had never been built for them.
Enterprise met her at sea. Vice Admiral William F. Halsey was in Enterprise. Mitscher still had Hornet. On 18 April a Japanese picket found the force, hundreds of miles short of the intended point. Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle took off first, into a high wind and a rough sea, with water coming over the bow. All sixteen launched. None of them came back to the ship. Hornet was not hit.
At Midway she was with Enterprise. She was not hit. Her dive bombers did not find the Japanese carriers that morning. Her torpedo squadron did. Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron took fifteen planes in. Fighters and anti-aircraft fire wiped the squadron out. Ensign George H. Gay, shot down and left in the water, was the only man of that attack still alive at the end of the day. Hornet did not sink those carriers. American carrier aircraft did, and no one ship is credited with the four. On 6 June her dive bombers were in the attack that sank Mikuma, with planes from Enterprise. No one ship is credited with that sinking.
Through September and into October she was the only American fleet carrier still operating in the South Pacific. Enterprise was under repair. A submarine had torpedoed Saratoga and sent her out of the area. Wasp had been sunk. Hornet carried the air cover until Enterprise came back.
On 26 October 1942, off the Santa Cruz Islands, the two carriers met a Japanese carrier force. The ships never came in sight of one another. That morning Hornet's planes wrecked the flight deck of Shokaku. Chikuma was hit by American carrier planes in the same fight, Hornet's among them. Neither ship was sunk. Japanese carrier aircraft then found Hornet. Bombs and torpedoes hit her, and two bombers crashed into the ship. She was left burning and dead in the water. Captain Charles P. Mason was the last man off. She was abandoned, and she sank that day. The loss is not credited to one Japanese ship. About 140 of her men were killed. Enterprise was hit the same day and was not sunk.
She had been in commission one year and six days.
