CV-12 is the eighth USN warship to bear the name Hornet. She
was originally laid down as the Kearsarge, but when CV-8 (the
seventh Hornet) was sunk, the decision was made to change the
name of CV-12 to Hornet. The Grey Ghost, as she was
nicknamed, was dispached to the Pacific in early 1944. She
participated in numerous combat operations for the last 16 months of
WWII., sometimes operating as close as 40 miles from the Japanese
mainland. Her pilots downed more than 1,400 Japanese aircraft and
destroyed 12 million tons of enemy shipping. While operating in the
Far East in support of operations in Vietnam, the Hornet
participated in several Apollo recovery missions including that of
Apollo 11 in 1969.
