USS Hornet (CV-12) was built to fight a war, and she arrived just in time to help finish it. Commissioned in November 1943, she joined the fast carrier task forces of the Pacific at a moment when the momentum of the war had already shifted — when Midway had been won, when Guadalcanal had been secured, when the grinding advance across the Central Pacific was well underway. She fought in the final campaigns of the Pacific War, earned seven battle stars, and came home in 1945 to a Navy that was rapidly demobilizing and had no immediate use for so many carriers. Decades later, she became famous for something else entirely: she was the ship that picked up the Apollo astronauts after they splashed down in the Pacific, recovering the crews of Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 from the ocean and delivering them to a waiting world. The carrier that fought the Pacific War became the ship that recovered the men who walked on the moon.
The Ship
USS Hornet (CV-12) is an Essex-class aircraft carrier, commissioned on November 29, 1943, and the eighth ship to carry the name — a name that traces through American naval history from the sloop that fought in the Revolution to the carrier that was sunk at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942. CV-12 was built partly in tribute to her lost predecessor and carried the name into the Pacific campaigns of 1944 and 1945. She is 872 feet long, displaces more than 36,000 tons fully loaded, and represents the Essex class at its operational prime — the ships that won the Pacific carrier war. She was homeported at Alameda, California.
The Pacific War
Hornet arrived in the Pacific in time for the final carrier campaigns of the war. She participated in strikes against the Philippines, Formosa, and the Japanese home islands — the methodical destruction of Japanese air power and industrial capacity that the fast carrier task forces conducted from mid-1944 through the end of the war. She earned seven battle stars for her Pacific War service, fighting in engagements that included the final carrier strikes against Japan before the surrender. She was not present at Midway or the earlier battles that turned the war; she fought in the campaigns that finished it.
Korea and the Cold War
After World War II, Hornet was decommissioned and placed in reserve, then recommissioned for the Korean War, then decommissioned again, then recommissioned again in 1958 after an extensive modernization that included an angled flight deck and an enclosed hurricane bow. The modernized Hornet served through the 1960s as an anti-submarine carrier — a different mission than the fleet carrier role she had been built for, but one that kept her operationally relevant in the Cold War environment.
The Moon Landings
USS Hornet's most enduring role came in 1969, when she was designated as the primary recovery ship for Apollo 11 — the first lunar landing mission. On July 24, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, and Hornet's crew and the recovery helicopters she carried brought them aboard. President Nixon was aboard Hornet for the recovery — the image of the President greeting the returning astronauts through the window of their quarantine trailer on Hornet's flight deck is one of the iconic photographs of the twentieth century. Hornet also recovered the crew of Apollo 12 in November 1969. The carrier that had fought Japan recovered the men who had walked on the moon. No other ship in American naval history holds both distinctions.
If you want to honor the legacy of USS Hornet — the Pacific War, the moon landings, the long career — The Ship's Store carries collections for the ships of the Essex class and the Navy's greatest chapters.
Legacy
USS Hornet was decommissioned on June 30, 1970, and is now preserved as a museum ship at Alameda, California — the USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum. She is one of the best-preserved Essex-class carriers, and her exhibits include not only her World War II and Cold War history but artifacts from the Apollo program that she recovered. The carrier that fought the Pacific War and recovered the astronauts who reached the moon is available to visit, which means that the specific history she carries — the weight of what those two things mean together — is accessible to anyone willing to walk her decks.