Colour photo Hornet

GMorrison

Yes, maybe not intact, but floating.

 

When not in dry dock getting holes in her hull patched... Poor Sara was a torpedo magnet... and a tough old girl

GMorrison

"Thirty Seconds Over Toyko" is the classic book to start with. It was written by Ted Lawson, who flew the seventh bomber to take off; "Ruptured Duck". It was also a pretty good movie.

Follow with "The First heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid". And Doolittle's autobiography "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again", which IMO (see also Boyington, Fosse) illustrates the point that it's hard to be good at more than one thing at a time.

It's a long and complicated story, what the painting shows is the USS Hornet, CV-8 which was a Yorktown Class carrier (along with Yorktown and Enterprise), leaving San Francisco Bay at 8.30 in the morning on April 2, 1942 enroute on the mission.

The ship in the background is an escort, I suppose USS Nashville. Actual photos taken while under way show the sixteen bombers, as well as a group of Wildcats up at the bow.

 

Thanks for taking the time to suggest a reading list. I'll hit a library when I'm back at home base.

That bridge birthday party pic is pretty neat.

stikpusher

 

 

GMorrison

Yes, maybe not intact, but floating.

 

 

 

 

When not in dry dock getting holes in her hull patched... Poor Sara was a torpedo magnet... and a tough old girl

 

And survive the war only to suffer the indignity of being at Bikini for the atomic tests, and still wouldn't go down.

I wouldn’t call it an indignity. More of a “donating her body to science”. The atomic bomb was a big unknown where it came to naval warfare applications. The USN has far more ships than she truly had use for, even without mass demobilization. A fleet of  brand new Essex class on hand, with some being cancelled, and the new Midway class entering fleet service. Sara and Lexington‘s 1920’s era flight deck elevator designs were inefficient for the latest generation of aircraft. She truly was of no real future use to the fleet in battle. 

But the unknown of the A-Bomb vs. ships at sea... a 20kt bomb vs stationary ships at known distances... survivability in  proximity to the blast... the roots of new fleet doctrine for the  Atomic age.... Sara (and the others) gave one last duty to the fleet and showed that a ship could survive. I would not rate that as an indignity. 

I will grant that she and Enterprise (along with Ranger, the last of the pre-war carriers) were more or less obsolete after the end of the war.  The advent of bigger and heavier aircraft, and the coming of the jet age saw to that.

While I meant the indignity of being nuked as a target, it was better than going to the scrapper's torches or rusting away in some backwater as a member of the reserve fleet, never to feel salt water again.

I have some photo prints taken by my F-in-L of CV-3 at anchor in San Francisco Bay during the 1939 Fair. She is distinctive with the black band up the stacks.

In fact now that I think about it, she's pretty much where CV-8 is moving through in the painting, west of Treasure Island. 

It's germane to remember that international communications were very different 78 years ago than today.  Especially in wartime.

Trans-oceanic communications were largely by telegraph in those days, there was not really enough conductor cross section to support voice communication.  (Most undersea cable is now used for data, satellites have taken up voice.)

So, it was pretty easy to "lock down" the oceanic cable juctions, and monitor telegraph hubs.  International mail was also monitored and subject to review by both intel and counterintel agencies.  Western Union would get, and send, encrypted and encoded messages, but logged the sources and destinations, which was reviewed by a number of US agencies.

Even diplomatic communications were watched, if not necessarily read. 

Now, it was possible to have agents use various cut-outs, and linked drops.  Which got complicated quickly.  Like having to send something via the Paraguyan embassy to Spain, to be routed elsewhere.  Which meant a lot of links, which kills speed.

We occasionally forget that Rural Electrification was not completed until the late 50s, that telephones were not universal until the 60s (and plenty of places on shared--aka "party"--lines until the 70s.  "Named" interchanges (like "Belmont 5", e.g. BE5-nnnn) with a human operator were common until the late 60s.  So, if you needed to call more than 20-25 miles away, you dialed an operator, who then connected you, manually, to a circuit.  And, you were billed by the minute for using those lines (remember, it was American Telephone & Telegraph, they were using those same wires to run telegraph and telex communications when there were no voice messages online).

If you planted a person from 1942 in a modern house, they would be very confused.  There would be no phone on the wall.  No radio set to listen to.  Very likely not a single book to read.
All while sittign right next to a cell phone, the remote for the tv, and a kindle/nook on the coffee table.  And, heaven help our poor time traveler if the house has a "packet/cup" coffee maker.

Also, there was the War Department, and the Navy Department, thank you very much.  The two squabbling Departments were merged into the DoD as part of the 1947 Defense Authorization Act.  Which created the Air Force.  And Neither party wanted AF to be an "equal" partner in arguning over Congressional funding.

It was very contentious at the time.  And the conflict had a long history.  The military Departments would ask Congress for a Dollar, and Congress would budget 70¢.  The Departments would lobby to get more.  And the Army (e.g. War Department) got 74¢ and the Navy only 72¢, it was considered a major "win."  And vice versa as well.

And to really close the loop;  LtCol Richard Cole, Jimmy Doolittle's co-pilot in B-25 #1 aircraft died yesterday April 8, 2019.  LtCol Cole was 103  and was the sole surviving member of the Doolittle Raider air crews.  

https://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20190409/last-doolittle-raider-dies-lt-col-richard-cole-passes-at-103

Internment will be at Arlington National Cemetery, a fitting honor.

I met LtCol Cole several years ago.  I have his autograph on a Squadron B-25 book.  He was a very humble man.   He totally downplayed thoughts of being a hero for his part in the raid.   He spoke rather of his time flying the 'hump' in the CBI theatre.

Sounds like there is going to be a racous reunion party upstairs about now...

77 years after the last time that they were all in the same location at once...

Someone recently posted a photo of him on another thread, taken recently at an airshow.