The Anchors Aweigh series was placed in honor of the men of the
US Navy who have served in the defense of our country. Each cache
is dedicated to one of the warships involved in battle. If you find
all the caches in the series, you’ll reveal some nice GeoArt
on your cache map. These are not difficult caches to find. If you
cannot find a cache easily, it’s probably missing. Send me a
picture (by email, not in your log) of where you think the cache
should be, and I’ll accept the find and replace the
cache.
Because of the difficulty in finding suitable locations for some
of the caches, some puzzle caches were used (not this one) so that
the find icon could be in a location separate from the cache. You
should be able to solve the puzzles with information on this cache
page. I suggest you solve the puzzles before you make your cache
run, to help optimize the route.
USS Hornet
USS Hornet, the seventh ship to carry the name Hornet,
was a Yorktown-class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy.
During World War II in the Pacific Theater, she launched the
Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and participated in the Battle of Midway
and the Buin-Faisi-Tonolai Raid. In the Solomon Islands campaign
she was involved in the Capture and Defense of Guadalcanal and the
Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands where she was irreparably damaged
and sunk. Hornet was in service for a year and six days and
was the last US fleet carrier ever sunk by enemy fire. For these
actions, she was awarded four service stars, a citation for the
Doolittle Raid in 1995, and her Torpedo Squadron 8 received a
Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism for the Battle
of Midway.
Doolittle Raid
USS Hornet
The Doolittle Raid, on 18 April 1942, was the first air raid by
the United States to strike the Japanese Home Islands (specifically
Honshu) during World War II. By demonstrating that Japan itself was
vulnerable to American air attack, it provided a vital morale boost
and opportunity for U.S. retaliation after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The raid was planned and led by
Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle. Doolittle would later
recount in his autobiography that the raid was intended to bolster
American morale and to cause the Japanese to begin doubting their
leadership:
The Japanese people had been told they were
invulnerable ... An attack on the Japanese homeland would cause
confusion in the minds of the Japanese people and sow doubt about
the reliability of their leaders. There was a second, and equally
important, psychological reason for this attack ... Americans badly
needed a morale boost.
Sixteen U.S. Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell medium bombers were
launched from the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier USS Hornet
deep in the Western Pacific Ocean. The plan called for them to bomb
military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in
China—landing a medium bomber on the Hornet was
impossible. All of the aircraft involved in the bombing were lost
and 11 crewmen were either killed or captured—with three of
the captured men executed by the Japanese Army in China. One of the
B-25s landed in the Soviet Union at Vladivostok, where it was
confiscated and its crew interned for more than a year. Thirteen
entire crews, and all but one crewman of a 14th, returned either to
the United States or to American forces.
The raid caused negligible material damage to Japan, but it
succeeded in its goal of helping American morale, and casting doubt
in Japan on the ability of the Japanese military leaders. It also
caused Japan to withdraw its powerful aircraft carrier force from
the Indian Ocean to defend their Home Islands, and the raid
contributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's decision to attack
Midway—an attack that turned into a decisive rout of the
Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by the U.S. Navy near Midway Island in
the Central Pacific.
Approximately 250,000 Chinese civilians were massacred by the
Japanese Army in eastern China in retaliation for Chinese
assistance of the attacking American aviators.