The research vessel Petrel is perched on a spot in the South Pacific Ocean that was anything but peaceful 77 years ago. Then, it was the scene of a major World War II battle between the U.S. and the Imperial Japanese Navies. For the U.S. aircraft carrier the USS Hornet, it would be her last battle.

Now, researchers are revealing Petrel found the wreckage of the USS Hornet in late January – exactly what they were looking for. The ship was found more than 17,000 feet below the surface, on the floor of the South Pacific Ocean near the Solomon Islands. The USS Hornet is best known for launching the important Doolittle Raid in April of 1942 and its role in winning the Battle of Midway.

Richard Nowatzki, 95 now, was an 18-year-old gunner on Hornet when enemy planes scored several hits, reports CBS News' Mark Phillips.

Richard Nowatzki survived the Japanese attack on the USS Hornet in 1942. CBS News

"When they left, we were dead in the water," Nowatzki said. "They used armor piercing bombs, now when they come down, you hear 'em going through the decks … plink, plink, plink, plink … and then when they explode the whole ship shakes."



With 140 of her crew already dead, the order was given to abandon ship. The Hornet went to the bottom – three and a half miles down – which the crew of the Petrel has been scanning with a deep-sea sonar drone that sends back live pictures.

The drone brought back an image of something down there that's about the right size in about the right place. It looked like her but lots of ships went down around here. To be sure, they needed positive identification, which they got when they saw the Hornet's naval designation: CV-8.

"CBS This Morning" was able to share the discovery in real time with Richard Nowatzki in California – even finding the gun he was on during the attack.

"If you go down to my locker, there's 40 bucks in it, you can have it!" Nowatzki joked.

Nowatzki has enjoyed a long life since that day. Seeing the Hornet again and the evidence of the men who served – a jacket hung on a hatch, somebody's wash kit complete with toothbrush – naturally made him reflect on those who hadn't been as lucky.



"I know I've been a very fortunate man," he said. "The actual fact that you can find these ships is mind boggling to me … I want to thank you for honoring me this way."



But it's the crew of the Petrel who were honored to find the Hornet and the final resting place of so many of her brave crew. Another wreck, and in turn, another war grave has been discovered. Its exact location is kept secret to protect it, but the memory now has a place and the loss has a memorial.</s>(CNN) — On October 26, 1942, the USS Hornet was mortally wounded in a Japanese onslaught during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. It carried 2,200 crew, 140 of whom were lost that day.

When the warship slipped beneath the waves early the next morning, it was the last time a human eye had gazed upon the Hornet’s gray hull.

Late last month a research vessel called the R/V Petrel found the World War II aircraft carrier’s wreckage more than 17,000 feet below the surface of the South Pacific, near the Solomon Islands.

It had lain dormant on the murky ocean floor — some three miles beneath the surface — for more than 76 years.

The ship’s discovery was announced Tuesday by Vulcan Inc., the company founded by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, which owns the Petrel.

To find the Hornet, the expedition team aboard the Petrel used data from the archives of nine other US warships that sighted the carrier in the days before its demise. They plotted out a search grid focused on the warship’s last known location.

The Petrel carries two onboard robotic vehicles which it deploys to plumb nautical depths as much as three miles below the surface.

The researchers sent down one of the robots, which found the Hornet on its first dive mission.

It was yet another success for the Petrel, which over the past few years has uncovered numerous World War II-era shipwrecks, representing vessels from the US, British, Italian, and Japanese navies. Last March, it discovered a different American aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington.

Robert Kraft, who heads subsea operations for Vulcan, said the Hornet was on their list as a key shipwreck of interest due to its “place in history as an aircraft carrier that saw many pivotal moments in naval battles.”

The Hornet was famed for launching the Doolittle Raid against Tokyo and other Japanese sites in April 1942, showing just four months after the Pearl Harbor attack that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American air assaults. Two months later it played a pivotal role in the Battle of Midway, in which it helped sink four Japanese carriers.

That decisive victory turned the tide of the war in the Pacific.

Although the Hornet was highly decorated, its time at sea was brief. After service in Guadalcanal, the warship was bombarded by Japanese dive bombers and torpedo planes in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The Hornet sank, and the Japanese won the battle.

But it came at great cost to Japanese forces.

“About half the Japanese aircraft engaged were shot down by greatly improved U.S. Navy anti-aircraft defenses,” retired Rear Adm. Samuel Cox told CNN. “As a result, the Japanese carriers did not engage again in battle for almost another two years.”

Cox told CNN the Navy’s general rule is to keep shipwrecks untouched. He called the Hornet’s wreckage “hallowed ground,” with 140 sailors finding their final resting place there.

“This is like Arlington (National Cemetery) for us,” he said.</s>For 76 years, the aircraft carrier lay on the ocean floor, a quiet tomb for 140 sailors who died the day it sank.

Now, for the first time since then, humans have laid eyes on the USS Hornet, which was sunk in October 1943 during World War II's Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.

A research vessel discovered wreckage of the aircraft carrier in late January 2019, nearly 17,500 feet below the surface, resting on the floor of the South Pacific Ocean.

“We had the Hornet on our list of WWII warships that we wanted to locate because of its place in history ... that saw many pivotal moments in naval battles,” said Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Vulcan, the company that discovered the World War II warship.

Vulcan was founded by the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, and has found many other shipwrecks of that era.

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The Hornet was involved in many key events of the war, including launching the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. It was also a major part of the Battle of Midway.

Though 140 sailors died when the Hornet sank, over 2,000 were able to safely escape.</s>Wreckage of the World War II aircraft carrier USS Hornet was discovered in late January 2019 by the expedition crew of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Research Vessel, R/V Petrel.

Hornet was found nearly 17,500 feet below the surface, resting on the floor of the South Pacific Ocean around the Solomon Islands.

Hornet was best known for its part in the fateful Doolittle Raid that was launched in April of 1942, which was the first airborne attack of Japanese homeland targets including Tokyo.

Led by US Army Lt. Col. James Doolittle, all the 16 B-25 planes that were launched from Hornet were unable to land at their designated airstrip in China, but the raid provided a boost to American morale and put Japan on alert about our covert air capabilities.

In June, Hornet was one of three American carriers that surprised and sunk four Japanese carriers at Midway, turning the tide of war in the Pacific. The ship was sunk during the exceptionally vicious Battle of Santa Cruz Island that started on Oct. 25, 1943.

Hornet proved an especially determined ship over the next 24 hours. Enduring a relentless, coordinated attack by Japanese dive-bombers and torpedo planes, her crew was ultimately forced to abandon ship due to damage and resulting fires.

She then defied American efforts to scuttle her with 16 torpedoes and 369 rounds of 5-inch shells. When Japanese forces approached shortly thereafter and fired four torpedoes from two Japanese destroyers late in the evening on Oct. 26, Hornet finally succumbed and slipped beneath the surface.

She lost 111 sailors from her crew of nearly 2,200.

“With the loss of Hornet and serious damage to Enterprise, the Battle of Santa Cruz was a Japanese victory, but at an extremely high cost,” said Rear Admiral (Ret.) Samuel Cox, director of Naval History and Heritage Command.

“About half the Japanese aircraft engaged were shot down by greatly improved US Navy anti-aircraft defenses. As a result, the Japanese carriers did not engage again in battle for almost another two years.”

The discovery of Hornet was made during R/V Petrel’s first mission of 2019 after relocating from the Philippine Sea to the Solomon Islands to spend winter months in this arena. Operating out of Guadalcanal, the area is rich in history and prominence in terms of naval engagements.

“We had Hornet on our list of WWII warships that we wanted to locate because of its place in history as an aircraft carrier that saw many pivotal moments in naval battles,” said Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Vulcan.

“Paul Allen was particularly interested in historically significant and capital ships, so this mission and discovery honor his legacy.”

The 10-person expedition team on the 250-foot R/V Petrel was able to locate Hornet’s position by piecing together data from national and naval archives that included official deck logs and action reports from other ships engaged in the battle.

Positions and sightings from nine other US warships in the area were plotted on a chart to generate the starting point for the search grid.

In the case of Hornet, she was discovered on the first dive mission of Petrel’s autonomous underwater vehicle and confirmed by video footage from the remotely operated vehicle, both pieces of equipment rated to dive down to 6,000 meters.</s>
• A sunken World War II US aircraft carrier that had been lost for more than 76 years was found in the South Pacific Ocean.
• The USS Hornet played a key role in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo but sank in October 1942 during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, killing about 140 crew members.
• Its wreckage was found by Vulcan, a company founded by the late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, whose research vessel has located several WWII wrecks.
• The company said it wanted to locate the Hornet “because of its place in history as a capitol carrier that saw many pivotal moments in naval battles.”

The wreckage of a World War II US Navy aircraft carrier was found on the floor of the South Pacific Ocean more than 76 years after it sank.

The USS Hornet sank during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, 1942, killing about 140 of its 2,200 sailors and crew members. It lay on the seabed until this January, when it was discovered more than 17,000 feet (5,000 meters) below the ocean’s surface.

Read more: 10 incredible moments in the storied 108-year history of aircraft carrier aviation

The discovery was announced on Tuesday by Vulcan, a company founded by Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder who died in October. Allen’s estate owns the RV Petrel research vessel that found the Hornet.

Robert Kraft, Vulcan’s director of subsea operations, said in a statement that the mission to find the Hornet was in honor of Allen.

“Paul Allen was particularly interested in aircraft carriers, so this was a discovery that honors his memory,” Kraft said.

He added: “We had the Hornet on our list of WWII warships that we wanted to locate because of its place in history as a capitol carrier that saw many pivotal moments in naval battles.”

The Hornet was commissioned in October 1941, launched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, and played a key role in the US victory in the Battle of Midway with Japan in 1942, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers.

But the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, one year after it was commissioned, was its last fight. On the first day, it was hit by four bombs and two torpedoes in 10 minutes. Most crew members were transferred to another ship, while others tried to repair the damage.

Read more: The sunken WWII cruiser carrying the 5 Sullivan brothers has been found – and there’s incredible video of the discovery

It was attacked again with a torpedo and two bombs, and the rest of the crew abandoned it. It sank the next morning.

Richard Nowatzki, a gunner on the ship who survived the battle, told CBS News that when enemy planes left, “we were dead in the water.”

“They used armor-piercing bombs,” he said. “Now when they come down, you hear ’em going through the decks … plink, plink, plink, plink … and then when they explode the whole ship shakes.”

A 10-person crew on the 250-foot Petrel found the wreck on the first mission of its autonomous underwater vehicle by using data from national and naval archives, Vulcan said.

This isn’t the Petrel’s first discovery of WWII wreckage – in August 2017 it discovered the wreck of the USS Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser involved in the bombing of Hiroshima, and in March it found the USS Lexington, which sank during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942.</s>The wreckage of a World War II US Navy aircraft carrier was found on the floor of the South Pacific Ocean more than 76 years after it sank.

The USS Hornet sank during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, 1942, killing about 140 of its 2,200 sailors and crew members. It lay on the seabed until this January, when it was discovered more than 17,000 feet (5,000 meters) below the ocean's surface.

Read more: 10 incredible moments in the storied 108-year history of aircraft carrier aviation

The discovery was announced on Tuesday by Vulcan, a company founded by Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder who died in October. Allen's estate owns the RV Petrel research vessel that found the Hornet.

An F4F Wildcat aircraft with its wings folded was discovered with the wreckage of the USS Hornet. Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc.

Robert Kraft, Vulcan's director of subsea operations, said in a statement that the mission to find the Hornet was in honor of Allen.

"Paul Allen was particularly interested in aircraft carriers, so this was a discovery that honors his memory," Kraft said.

He added: "We had the Hornet on our list of WWII warships that we wanted to locate because of its place in history as a capitol carrier that saw many pivotal moments in naval battles."

The RV Petrel deployed its autonomous underwater vehicle in the search for the USS Hornet. Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Inc.

The Hornet was commissioned in October 1941, launched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, and played a key role in the US victory in the Battle of Midway with Japan in 1942, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers.

But the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, one year after it was commissioned, was its last fight. On the first day, it was hit by four bombs and two torpedoes in 10 minutes. Most crew members were transferred to another ship, while others tried to repair the damage.

Read more: The sunken WWII cruiser carrying the 5 Sullivan brothers has been found — and there's incredible video of the discovery

It was attacked again with a torpedo and two bombs, and the rest of the crew abandoned it. It sank the next morning.

Richard Nowatzki, a gunner on the ship who survived the battle, told CBS News that when enemy planes left, "we were dead in the water."

"They used armor-piercing bombs," he said. "Now when they come down, you hear 'em going through the decks ... plink, plink, plink, plink ... and then when they explode the whole ship shakes."

Damage on the hull of the USS Hornet. Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc.

A 10-person crew on the 250-foot Petrel found the wreck on the first mission of its autonomous underwater vehicle by using data from national and naval archives, Vulcan said.

This isn't the Petrel's first discovery of WWII wreckage — in August 2017 it discovered the wreck of the USS Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser involved in the bombing of Hiroshima, and in March it found the USS Lexington, which sank during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942.</s>On October 26, 1942, the USS Hornet was mortally wounded in a Japanese onslaught during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. She carried 2,200 crew, 140 of whom were lost that day.</s>Click here if you are unable to view this gallery on a mobile device.

ALAMEDA — More than three-quarters of a century after enemy torpedoes sent it below the waves, the USS Hornet has been found resting on the Pacific Ocean floor near the Solomon Islands.

The World War II aircraft carrier — the seventh U.S. Navy ship to carry the name “Hornet” following the Revolutionary War — was discovered by the research vessel Petrel, funded by the Paul Allen Foundation.

Alameda’s USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum, which was named after the lost carrier, announced the discovery Tuesday.

The same research vessel previously found the USS Lexington, which sank in May 1942, and the USS Indianapolis, torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in July 1945 just as World War II was ending.

The Hornet was lost on Oct. 26, 1942 after sustaining heavy damage during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and abandoned.

According to historians, 140 men died on the ship.

“I never expected that we would ever see that ship again,” Navy veteran Rich Nowatzki said Tuesday after learning the Hornet was found. “It brings back a lot of memories.”

Now 95, the Roseville resident was helping man a 5-inch gun on the starboard side during the battle that led to the sinking of the carrier.

As a sailor assigned to a search-and-rescue team, Nowatzki was among the last to scurry off the stricken vessel after it was hit and began listing to starboard.

“I went back to the fantail, got a lifejacket and went down a rope,” Nowatzki said.

He swam against the wind: It would push the ship away from him, Nowatzki reasoned, and prevent him from getting pulled under when the 770-foot long carrier slipped below the waves.

Repercussions of Japanese bombs finishing off the Hornet cut through the water. For Nowatzki, then a 19-year-old sailor from Chicago, the blow was like something a boxer would endure in the ring.

“It felt like a vice crushing our side,” Nowatzki said. “It didn’t last long. But, boy, it was excruciating.”

Nowatzki reached a crowded lifeboat and clung to the side until the destroyer USS Barton picked him up.

The Petrel found the Hornet nearly 17,500 feet below the surface in January. The discovery was not announced, however, until Tuesday.

Underwater photos show a 5-inch gun at the ready near the carrier’s flight deck, and a Grumman F4F Wildcat, a fighter aircraft, with its wings still folded to save space on the ship. An International Harvester, once used to move aircraft, looks as if a sailor just parked it.

In June 1942 the Hornet was one of three American carriers that surprised and destroyed four Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway, turning the tide of the war in the Pacific. It was sunk just four months later.

“With the loss of Hornet and serious damage to Enterprise, the Battle of Santa Cruz was a Japanese victory, but at an extremely high cost,” retired Rear Admiral Samuel Cox, director of Naval History and Heritage Command, said in a release. “About half the Japanese aircraft engaged were shot down by greatly improved U.S. Navy anti-aircraft defenses. As a result, the Japanese carriers did not engage again in battle for almost another two years.”

Along with its role during the Battle of Midway, the Hornet is best known for launching the Doolittle Raid of April 1942 on mainland Japan, an attack that boosted American morale following Pearl Harbor.

“Although her service was short-lived, it was meteoric,” Admiral Bill Moran, vice chief of Naval operations, said in a statement. “In the dark days following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, she and the Doolittle Raiders were the first Americans to punch back at Japan, giving hope to the nation and the world when things looked bleakest. She was there when the American Navy turned the tide in the Pacific at the Battle of Midway, and she was there when America started the long drive to Tokyo in the Solomon Islands.”

The aircraft carrier that is now a museum in Alameda — also named Hornet — was being built when the Hornet sank and was named in honor of the lost ship. It was initially to be named the USS Kearsarge.

Bob Fish, a museum trustee, said the Doolittle Raid was “a shining example” of innovation because the military dispatched twin-engine Army bombers from the Hornet, helping lay the foundation for overall bombing strategy in World War II.

The Hornet was discovered after Petrel, the research vessel, began operating out of Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands and a legendary battle site of the Pacific war.

The 10-person expedition team on the 250-foot Petrel located Hornet’s position by piecing together data from national and Naval archives that included official deck logs and action reports from other ships.

Positions and sightings from nine other U.S. warships in the area were plotted on a chart to generate the starting point for the search grid.

Researchers wanted to find the Hornet because of the pivotal role it played in Naval history, according to Robert Kraft, the director of subsea operations for Vulcan, the private company established by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to manage his business and philanthropic affairs.

It was not immediately known whether efforts would be made to recover any artifacts from the sunken carrier.

The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation supports technology and efforts to improve the environment, plus it works to locate and preserve historical artifacts, such as ships lost during World War II.</s>The little ship called R/V Petrel is on a roll.

Just last week, the team behind this research vessel said it had found the wreck of the Japanese battleship Hiei, the first one U.S. force sunk during World War II. Now the ship, which is part of an expedition launched by late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, has found an even more famous World War II wreck on the bottom of the sea: the USS Hornet.

The Hornet was an American aircraft carrier involved in the famous air raid on Tokyo early in the war before being scuttled during the Solomon Islands campaign. The ship was found more than three miles under the surface of the Pacific Ocean. R/V Petrel shared imagery of the sunken carrier, including pictures of the ship's five-inch guns (see above).

The USS Hornet was one of the most famous carriers of World War II, but had one of the shortest careers. The ship was ordered 80 years ago, in March 1939, from the Newport News Shipbuilding Company in Virginia and commissioned into the U.S. Navy just two months before Pearl Harbor. A Yorktown-class carrier, she displaced 25,000 tons fully loaded and was 824 feet long. Hornet typically carried a mixed air group consisting of up to 72 aircraft, including Wildcat fighters, SBD Dauntless dive bombers, and TBD Devastator torpedo bombers.

In April 1942, the carrier with a new, secret air group: 16 U.S. Army Air Corps . Hornet and her task force steamed to within 650 miles of Japan when, sighted by a Japanese fishing vessel, she abandoned plans to move closer and launched her bombers. The B-25s flew west and struck targets across a wide arc of Japan, bombing Tokyo, Yokosuka, Yokohama, Kobe, and Nagoya. The attack, just five months after Pearl Harbor, destroyed the myth of Japan’s invulnerability and boosted morale in the United States.

Later that year, during the October 1942 Battle of Santa Cruz, aircraft from Hornet damaged a Japanese carrier and cruiser, but the ship itself was heavily damaged by enemy fire. The Navy gave the order to abandon Hornet and attempted without success to scuttle her. Advancing Japanese forces finally sank the ship with torpedoes.

The Hornet was discovered in 5,330 meters of water, the equivalent of 17,486 feet, "on the bottom of the South Pacific Ocean." The Paul Allen website describes the discovery:

Images on the website detail damage to the carrier’s hull, which may have been from the guns of the destroyers Mustin and Anderson. Together, they pumped a total of 400 five-inch shells into the carrier in an attempt to sink the boat before Japan could reach her. Another image shows an International Harvester tractor still upright in the aircraft hangar.

Hornet isn’t the first U.S. carrier the R/V Petrel has rediscovered. In 2018, the ship , a carrier sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Here’s dive footage of the discovery of the carrier known as “Lady Lex”:

The Petrel team has been a little cagey about Hornet's precise location, and for good reason. Over the years, a number of Pacific war wrecks have been looted or disappeared completely, the victim of black-market scrappers. Although it is in international waters, the Hornet's remains are subject to the U.S. . The act states that “the U.S. Navy's sunken military craft remain property of the U.S. regardless of their location or the passage of time and may not be disturbed without the permission from the U.S. Navy.”</s>After 77 years, the wreck of the USS Hornet has finally been found, lying more than three miles deep in South Pacific waters. The storied aircraft carrier—sunk by Japanese torpedoes in 1942 with the loss of 140 men— played a critical role during the Second World War, most famously in the Doolittle Raid and the Battle of Midway.



Vulcan Inc., an exploration team financed by the Paul Allen estate, discovered the sunken American aircraft carrier near the Solomon Islands in late January, CBS reports. Crewmembers aboard the RV Petrel used a deep-sea sonar drone to detect the ship 17,500 feet (5,330 meters) below the surface.

A remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) was then sent down to investigate further, confirming the wreckage as belonging to the Hornet, which it did by spotting its naval designation, CV-8. The Hornet went down during the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands in 1942 after a fierce fight with ships and planes from the Japanese Imperial Navy.



Videos taken by the ROV showed the aircraft carrier’s 5-inch guns still pointing upward, along with a gaping hole in the ship’s hull. Incredibly, an aircraft tug can still be seen sitting upright—a scene that’s all the more unbelievable given the ship plummeted some 3.3 miles before settling on the seafloor.



The discovery of the USS Hornet is a big deal, given its storied role during the Pacific campaign in the Second World War. On April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers took off from the deck of the Hornet to participate in the legendary Doolittle Raid—the first airborne attack on Japanese cities, including Tokyo. The air raid served as a serious wakeup call for the Japanese military and its civilians, who falsely assumed such attacks were impossible given the reach of its Imperial Navy at the time. Two months later, the Hornet played a critical role at the Battle of Midway—a decisive victory for the the U.S. during the early stages of the Pacific campaign, and just six months after the shocking Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands in late October 1942, however, that the Hornet would meet its end. The ship, along with the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, endured relentless attacks from Japanese dive-bombers and torpedo planes. An account by the Aircraft Carrier Hornet Foundation explains what happened:



When Hornet and Enterprise were just north of the Santa Cruz Islands, search aircraft from the opposing forces found each other’s main fleet. Within ten minutes, Hornet was hit by four bombs and two torpedoes, and sustained significant damage from two Val dive bombers [Japanese Type 99 Aichi D3A1 dive bombers] that crashed into her. Hornet lost her propulsion capability and was dead in the water. After most of the crew was transferred from the ship, a damage control party put out the fires and repaired some of the damage. Later that afternoon, she was attacked again and hit by another torpedo and two bombs. At this time, she was abandoned and sank early the next morning—one year and seven days after being commissioned.

Some 140 sailors were killed before the ship sank, but because orders were given to abandon the listing aircraft carrier, 2,060 sailers out of the ship’s 2,200 were saved.

This latest find by Paul Allen’s team marks another important discovery in its ongoing mission to chronicle the locations of Second World War wrecks in the Pacific Ocean. Previous missions have uncovered the sunken remains of the USS Juneau, the USS Lexington, the USS Indianapolis, and many others.

“We had the Hornet on our list of WWII warships that we wanted to locate because of its place in history as a capitol carrier that saw many pivotal moments in naval battles,” Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Vulcan Inc., said in a statement. “Paul Allen was particularly interested in aircraft carriers so this was a discovery that honors his memory.” Allen, cofounder of Microsoft, died of cancer in October 2018.

The exact location of the USS Hornet will remain a secret, and the site designed an official war grave.
A wreck at the site of the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands is identified as the WWII-era U.S. Naval aircraft carrier USS Hornet.