page_title: USS Hornet (CV-12)
section_title: Operation Ten-Go
hierarchical_section_title: USS Hornet (CV-12) / Construction and career / Volcano and Ryukyu Islands campaign / Operation Ten-Go
caption_attribution_description: The bow of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-12) showing damage received in a typhoon on 5 June 1945. The flight deck has been bent downwards over the bow and the plating torn away revealing the control position for the starboard catapult.
context_page_description: USS Hornet is an Essex-class aircraft carrier built for the United States Navy during World War II. Completed in late 1943, the ship was assigned to the Fast Carrier Task Force in the Pacific Ocean, the navy's primary offensive force during the Pacific War. In early 1944, she participated in attacks on Japanese installations in New Guinea, Palau and Truk among others. Hornet then took part in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign and most of the subsidiary operations, most notably the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June that was nicknamed the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" for the disproportionate losses inflicted upon the Japanese. The ship then participated in the Philippines Campaign in late 1944, and the Volcano and Ryukyu Islands campaign in the first half of 1945. She was badly damaged by a typhoon in June and had to return to the United States for repairs.
  After the war she took part in Operation Magic Carpet, returning troops to the U.S. and was then placed in reserve in 1946. Hornet was reactivated during the Korean War of 1950–1953, but spent the rest of the war being modernized to allow her to operate jet-propelled aircraft.
context_section_description: Operation Ten-Go (Ten-gō sakusen) was the attempted attack by a strike force of 10 Japanese surface vessels, led by the large battleship Yamato. This small task force had been ordered to fight through enemy naval forces, then beach Yamato and fight from shore, using her guns as coastal artillery and her crew as naval infantry. The Ten-Go force was spotted by American submarines shortly after it put to sea on 6 April. Reconnaissance aircraft from TF 58 found the force the following morning and TG 58.1 began launching aircraft almost two hours later. Hornet's Avengers put at least one torpedo into the battleship, the first of the ten torpedoes and five bomb hits that sank her less than two hours later. Of Yamato's screening force, the light cruiser Yahagi and four of the seven destroyers were also sunk or scuttled. The Americans lost three fighters, four dive bombers and three torpedo bombers to all causes during the attack.
  On 8 April, TF 58 returned to its previous mission of providing support to the US forces ashore, although continued kamikaze attacks exacted a toll. A week later, Mitscher ordered a fighter sweep over Kyushu to focus Japanese attention on his ships rather the more vulnerable amphibious shipping sustaining the ongoing battle. His pilots claimed to have shot down 29 aircraft and destroyed 51 on the ground. His strategy worked and the kamikazes attacked TF 58 on 17 April, badly damaging Intrepid despite Clark's pilots claiming 72 attackers. The fast carriers returned to Okinawan waters and none of them were damaged by a kamikaze until 11 May. When the weather worsened in late April, Mitscher sent TG 58.1 to Ulithi to refit and rest his exhausted crews on the 27th. After Clark's ships rejoined him on 12 May, Mitscher sent TG 58.1 and 58.3 the next day to attack airfields in Kyushu and Shikoku. Over 13–14 May, their pilots claimed to have shot down 72 aircraft and destroyed 73 on the ground while losing 14 aircraft. The Japanese evened the score when they badly damaged Enterprise on the 14th.
  Halsey and McCain reassumed command and the task force resumed its former designation as TF 38 on 27–28 May, after the pace of aerial combat had slowed down. Bad weather forced the cancellation of air support over Okinawa on 30 May and on 1–3 June. Clark was able to refuel on the following day, despite worsening weather. He took his ships eastwards, hoping to avoid the developing typhoon to his southwest. Halsey, however, ordered him to steer northwestwards shortly after midnight on the 5th to position his ships for the planned airstrikes on Kyushu, which put TG 38.1 right into the path of the typhoon. Despite multiple requests to alter course to avoid the eye of the typhoon, the task group entered the eyewall region, where the most violent weather in a typhoon is located, around dawn when Clark was finally granted the freedom to maneuver. Shortly afterwards a massive wave crashed down on Hornet's bow which collapsed some 25 feet (8 meters) of her forward flight deck. Not long afterwards the same thing happened to Bennington and the bow was ripped off the heavy cruiser Pittsburgh. Only six men were killed during the storm, but 76 airplanes were destroyed or lost overboard and 70 were damaged. Both Hornet and Bennington were unable to launch their aircraft over the bow, as was proved when a Marine Vought F4U Corsair was flown off Hornet and almost immediately flipped over and spun into the sea.
  Clark ordered that the damaged sisters steam backwards at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) and launch their aircraft over the stern on 7 June as they provided the CAP over the task group. He detached Bennington for repairs the next day while Hornet's aircraft participated in the attack on Kanoya Air Field. On 9 April, McCain had Clark's aircraft demonstrate the effectiveness of napalm bombs on the coastal defenses of Okidaitōjima, southeast of Okinawa. The following day, his planes spotted for three battleships as they bombarded Minamidaitōjima. After arriving in Leyte on 13 June, Clark relinquished command of the task group and Hornet
caption: Typhoon damage, 5 June
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