The Guadalcanal campaign in the autumn of 1942 ranks among the most complex military operations in U.S. history. American forces in the South Pacific were faced with Japan’s experienced armed forces. As a result, a kaleidoscopic series battles occurred on land, and in the air and seas of the Solomon Islands.
(Left) Associated Press correspondent Charles McMurtry types a dispatch on Guadalcanal during World War II. AP Photo. (Right) Headline for Mr. McMurtry’s dispatch from the South Pacific that appeared on page six of the 30 November 1942 issue of the New York Times. Due to censorship rules, he was not permitted to publish USS Hornet’s name.
Monday, October 26th 1942 was a balmy and languid day in the oceanic expanses of the Solomon Sea near the Santa Cruz Islands, 250 miles southeast of Guadalcanal. On that day, American and Japanese carrier task forces met in combat that pitted aircraft against ships. Among the participants was Associated Press correspondent Charles McMurtry.
The battle ended as a technical Japanese victory, albeit a pyrrhic one. Two U.S. fleet carriers were committed to battle that day, USS Hornet (CV-7) and USS Enterprise (CV-6). They and their escorts fought against four enemy carriers and accompanying escorts. Hornet was mortally wounded on the 26th by both bomb and torpedo explosions. She went down at 0135 on the following morning.
Himself wounded, Mr. McMurtry was stationed on Hornet‘s signal bridge during the battle. He filed a dispatch that appeared in the New York Times on 30 November 1942. This was the first eyewitness account that the public read of Hornet’s loss. Using Mr. McMurtry’s dispatch, I will attempt to highlight the human element of that grim day in which 140 of Hornet’s crew were lost.
| Every one of aboard the carrier … had been expecting an attack. But I doubt if even the Admiral looked for such a vicious, all-out assault as the Japanese launched. |
| Charles McMurtry, New York Times 11/30/42 |
tom-leas-war/
Another civilian with a deep connection to Hornet’s crew was noted illustrator Tom Lea, known for his artwork of America’s southwest. He deployed as a combat artist for Life Magazine in World War II. Mr. Lea spent two months aboard Hornet in the autumn of 1942, sketching and documenting the events he witnessed.
While embarked aboard the big carrier, Mr. Lea developed close ties with both Hornet and her crew. He left for Pearl Harbor shortly before the battle and did not learn of the carrier’s loss until arrival at Admiral Chester Nimitz’s office on 27 October.
As a professional artist associated with Hornet and her crew, Mr. Lea created a series of painting on the carrier’s final day, which appeared in Life’s 2 August 1943 issue. These powerful images showed the magazine’s readership a side of the war few had ever seen before. To better illustrate the story of this gallant ship, I have used some of Mr. Lea’s art from that day. Also, a few selected photographs help to set the scene.
| As I started for breakfast, a[n officer] called: “You’d better hurry up and eat. It looks like action soon.” One hour after breakfast, the loudspeaker announced: “Our attack group now being launched to attack an enemy task force consisting of two carriers, plus battleships, cruisers and destroyers. … Be prepared for air attack.” Two minutes later, general quarters sounded. |
| Charles McMurtry, New York Times 11/30/42 |
Prepare for enemy bombing
The battle that long-ago day was one in which ships themselves never came in contact with each other. Instead, their aviation units launched an aerial onslaught. Hornet’s aircrews went against the Japanese carrier Shōkaku and the heavy cruiser Chikuma, delivering a punishing attack.
Into the breach
But the enemy answered with his own assault against the U.S. task force. Fighting for their lives, the big carrier’s crew put up a wall of fire against determined Japanese attackers. Within fifteen minutes, three Japanese bombs hit the ship during the morning attacks.
| Perhaps fifteen dive bombers penetrated that blanket of gunfire. … From my unprotected vantage point on the signal bridge, I picked out [a] damaged plane and watched. The pilot dropped a demolition bomb but it missed. Then, he made an amazingly sharp u-turn, came back toward the ship, but struck the water some thirty-five feet away and disappeared. |
| Charles McMurtry, New York Times 11/30/42 |
Individual Japanese dive bomber pilots launched ferocious attacks, and several crashed into the water. But as depicted in the painting “The Fighting Hornet“, the carrier’s anti-aircraft crews scored a damaging hit on a Val dive bomber. This aircraft slammed directly into the carrier’s island, killing seven sailors and spraying fiery aviation gas through the ship. Meanwhile, a flight of enemy torpedo planes scored at least two hits below the waterline. Power and propulsion ground to a halt as seawater cascaded into the ship. Now the battle was not just against the enemy, but also the encroaching ocean.
| [A second Japanese] plane deflected off our stack. A split second later, a fiery mass, it passed only eight feet from me, sheared off a wing on the signal bridge and burned a hole in the flight deck sixty feet below. I was surprised that my hands and face felt hot. I discovered that they were burned. |
| Charles McMurtry, New York Times 11/30/42 |
| A 500-pound, armor-piercing bomb … glanced off the stack. It bored through to a compartment four decks below, but did not explode. … [A] third bomb went into the flight deck, exploding and spreading fire. The plane’s engine crashed through into a compartment. |
| Charles McMurtry, New York Times 11/30/42 |
O hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea
On a naval ship in combat, the imperatives are the same today as in battles of the distant past; save the ship, save the crew. The guns have to be manned. The engines must provide power to turn the propellers and produce electricity. Damage control parties have to stamp out fires, control flooding and shore up weakened bulkheads. But on that awful day in October 1942, a cascading series of events compromised Hornet‘s survival odds. She lost all power, bringing the ship to a standstill. With no wind, she could not recover her returning aircraft. Hornet and every soul onboard, and those aloft, stood in mortal danger.
| The bombs and torpedoes started fires in various parts of the ship. Four fires were controlled in a reasonably short time, but the conflagration in the center of the ship raged furiously. |
| Charles McMurtry, New York Times 11/30/42 |
The heavy cruiser USS Northampton (CA-26) took Hornet in tow while the carrier’s crew made a last-ditch effort to restore power. They were on the verge of getting propulsion back up when another flight of Japanese torpedo bombers attacked. Although most of the enemy aircraft were destroyed, another torpedo tore a gaping wound into Hornet’s hull, putting an end to any repair attempts. Countless uncontrollable tons of water flooded into the ship, immediately causing a 14-degree list.
| The order was given: “Prepare to abandon ship.” |
| Charles McMurtry, New York Times 11/30/42 |
Hornet’s escorts attempted to sink the tough aircraft carrier, but she refused to die. They finally gave up the task, leaving her abandoned and adrift. Finally, Japanese surface combatants approached that night, and sent Hornet to the watery abyss of Davy Jones’s Locker with Long Lance torpedoes.
Requiem for the Fighting Lady
Admiral Chester Nimitz’s office at Pearl Harbor must have been a somber place when Tom Lea entered on 27 October 1942. Hornet and an escort destroyer lay under the waves in 17,000 feet of water, along with a list of damaged American ships and 266 dead Sailors. Against that toll were Japanese ships damaged, and losses in men aircraft that could not be easily replaced.
In his journal, Mr. Lea recorded the scene as he learned of the Fighting Lady’s loss:1
[Admiral Nimitz] came to a picture I had made of Hornet launching her fighter planes in the first light of dawn. He looked at it in silence. … The admiral broke the silence. “Lea—” he said, with a different tone of voice. “When [Captain] Waldo Drake got the call from Hickam, he didn’t know if you knew or not. We brought you over here to find out if you did. You don’t and I hate to tell you. You are a sensitive man. Something has happened to your ship. We lost Hornet last night.” Chester W. Nimitz had tears in his eyes. I saw them.
There in his office I learned of Hornet’s valiant death. I cried later.
PJF Military Collection/Alamy Stock Photo
The Fighting Lady went down that dark day in the Solomon Sea. Her crew fought valiantly to save their ship, but their struggle was to no avail. Yet courage, sacrifice and leadership were present everywhere on the carrier. Over 2,000 of Hornet’s Sailors and Marines lived to fight another day, leaving 140 of their shipmates entombed forever in the sea’s embrace. Their skipper, Captain Charles P. Mason, was the last man off the carrier.
Never forget, Mark
Note:
- The Two Thousand Yard Stare: Tom Lea’s World War II, Brendan M. Greeley Jr, editor. Texas A&M University Press, 2008.