HORNET USS CV12 aircraft carrier

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aukepalmhof
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Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

HORNET USS CV12 aircraft carrier

Post by aukepalmhof » Sun Dec 22, 2013 9:03 pm

Built as an aircraft carrier under yard No 395 by Newport News Shipbuilding, Newport News for the USA Navy.
03 August 1942 keel laid down.
30 August 1943 launched as the USS HORNET (CV-12). Christened by Mrs Frank M. Knox wife of the Secretary of the Navy. One of the Essex class of aircraft carriers.
She was the eight vessel in the USS navy that carried the name HORNET.
Displacement 27,100 ton standard and 36,380 tons full load. Dim. 265.8 x 28.3 x 10.41m, length bpp. 249.9m.
Powered by four Westinghouse geared steam turbines, 150.000 shp., four shafts, speed 33 knots.
Range by a speed of 15 knots, 20,000 mile.
Armament: 4 – 5 inch, 8 – 40mm and 46 – 20mm guns.
Carried 90 – 100 aircraft.
Crew 2,600.
29 November 1943 commissioned under command of Captain Miles M Brown,.
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 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. But fighter aircraft from HORNET and other carriers did a magnificent job and broke up 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 HIJI 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.
In the following months HORNET attacked enemy shipping and airfields throughout the Philippines. This included participation in a raid that destroyed an entire Japanese convoy in Ormoc Bay. On 30 December 1944 she departed Ulithi in the Caroline s for raids against Formosa, Indo-China, and the Pescadores Islands. In route back to Ulithi, HORNET planes made photo reconnaissance of Okinawa 22 January 1945 to aid the planned invasion of that "last stepping-stone to Japan."
HORNET again departed Ulithi 10 February for full-scale aerial assaults on Tokyo, then supported the amphibious landing assault on Iwo Jima 19-20 February 1945.
Repeated raids were made against the Tokyo plains industrial complex, and Okinawa was hard hit. On 1 April 1945 HORNET planes gave direct support to the amphibious assault landings on Okinawa. On 6 April her aircraft joined in attacks which sank the mighty Japanese battleship YAMATO and her entire task force as it closed Okinawa. The following 2 months found HORNET alternating between close support to ground troops on Okinawa and hard-hitting raids to destroy the industrial capacity of Japan. She was caught in a howling typhoon 4 to 5 June 1945 which collapsed some 25 feet of her forward flight deck.
HORNET was routed back to the Philippines and from there to San Francisco, arriving 7 July 1946. Her overhaul was complete by 13 September 1945 when she departed as a part of the "Magic Carpet" operation that saw her return home troops from the Marianas and Hawaiian Islands. She returned to San Francisco 9 February 1946. She decommissioned there 15 January 1947, and Joined the Pacific Reserve Fleet.
HORNET recommissioned 20 March 1951, then sailed from San Francisco for the New York Naval Shipyard where she decommissioned 12 May 1951 for conversion to an attack aircraft carrier (CVA-12). She recommissioned 11 September 1953 and trained in the Caribbean Sea before departure from Norfolk 11 May 1954 on an 8-month global cruise.
After operations in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, HORNET joined the mobile 7th fleet in the South China Sea where 25 July, search planes from her task group shot down two attacking Chinese Communist fighter planes. She returned to San Francisco 12 December 1954, trained out of San Diego, then sailed 4 May 1955 to join the 7th fleet in the Far East.
HORNET helped cover the evacuation of Vietnamese from the Communist controlled north to freedom in South Vietnam, then ranged from Japan to Formosa, Okinawa, and the Philippines in readiness training with the 7th fleet. She returned to San Diego 10 December 1965 and entered the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard the following month for conversion that included a hurricane bow and the installation of an angled flight deck which permits the simultaneous launching and recovery of aircraft.
Following her modernization overhaul, HORNET operated along the California coast. She departed San Diego 21 January 1957 to bolster the strength of the 7th fleet until her return from the troubled Far East 25 July. Following a similar cruise, 6 January-2 July 1958, she was converted to an Antisubmarine Warfare Support Carrier (CVS-12) in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. On 3 April 1959 she sailed from Long Beach to join the 7th fleet in antisubmarine warfare tactics ranging from Japan to Okinawa and the Philippines. She returned home in October, for training along the western seaboard.
In the following years, HORNET was regularly deployed to the 7th fleet for operations ranging from the coast of South Vietnam, to the shores of Japan, the Philippines and Okinawa. On 25 August 1966 she was on recovery station for the unmanned Apollo moonship that rocketed three-quarters of the way around the globe in 93 minutes before splashdown near Wake Island. Scorched from the heat of its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, the Apollo space capsule, designed to carry American astronauts to the moon, was brought aboard Hornet after its test.
HORNET t returned to Long Beach 8 September, but headed back to the Far East 27 March 1967. She reached Japan exactly a month later and departed Sasebo 19 May for the war zone. She operated in Vietnamese waters throughout the remainder of spring and during much of the summer of 1967 aiding in the struggle to keep freedom alive in Southeast Asia.
HORNET recovered the astronauts from the first moon landing mission, Apollo 11, on 24 July 1969. President Nixon was on board to welcome the returning astronauts back to Earth, where they lived in quarantine aboard HORNET prior to transfer to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Houston. The first steps on Earth of returning moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, are marked on her hangar deck, as part of her Apollo program exhibit.
Hornet once again served in the space program with the recovery of Apollo 12 on 24 November. Returning astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr., Alan L. Bean, and Richard F. Gordon, Jr ., were picked up from their splashdown point near American Samoa.
HORNET was decommissioned 26 June 1970 and mothballed at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility. HORNET was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 25 July 1989. In 1991, she was designated a National Historic Landmark.
On 17 October 1998, she was opened to the public as an aircraft carrier museum in Alameda, California. She was designated a California State Historic Landmark in 1999. She is listed on the National Register of Historic places, #91002065.
Building on her status as an authentically restored aircraft carrier, HORNET has featured in a number of film and television shows. Several TV shows, including a number of phantom-themed shows, have been recorded on board; and in 1997 she was the subject of an episode of the TV series JAG. In 2004 she was the set for scenes from the movi exXR: State of the Union, which starred Ice Cube, and portions of the 2007 film Rescue Dawn, which starred Christian Bale, were shot on board. Hornet was both the subject and the setting of the independent film Carrier (2006).[12][14]

Hornet received the Presidential Unit Citation and seven battle stars for service in World War II.
Gambia 2013 D110 sgMS?, scott?
Niue 1979 60c sgMS 303, scott?
From: Dictionary Of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol. III, 1969, p. 369 and Wikipedia.
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Attachments
Uss_hornet_cvs-12.jpg
tmp1B2.jpg
1979 hornet _10th-Anniversary-Apollo-11-Moon-Landing.jpg
Last edited by aukepalmhof on Wed Dec 16, 2020 10:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

aukepalmhof
Posts: 7771
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

Re: HORNET USS CV12 aircraft carrier

Post by aukepalmhof » Thu Nov 22, 2018 7:07 pm

Aitutaki issued in 1994 a se-tenant $2 stamp for the recovery of the USA Apollo 11 capsule on 24 July 1969.
On the right stamp you can see an aircraft carrier.
The aircraft carrier used for the recovery was the USS HORNET and most probably she is depict on the stamp.

Aitutaki 1994 $2 sg 676/677, scott 506/07
Central African Republic 2019 850f sg?, scott? and 3300f sgMS?, scott?
Maldives 2019 MVR 20 sg?, scott?
Attachments
1994 aitutaki.jpg
2019 hornet (CV12) aircraft carrier.jpg
2019 hornet (CV12) margin.jpg
2019 Hornet.jpg

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