The Ship that Held Line: The USS Hornet and the First Year of the Pacific War

by Lisle A. Rose

The American fleet aircraft carrier Hornet is widely acknowledged for the contributions she made to the war effort. The Doolittle Raid, launched from the Hornet's deck, inaugurated America's Pacific counteroffensive and transformed the aircraft carrier into one of the world's prime strategic weapon systems. She was one of three carriers to participate in the victory at Midway and the fighting around Guadalcanal. Through the experiences of this key warship and the eyes of her crew and the aviators who flew from her deck, Lisle Rose recreates the first desperate year of the war in the Pacific. He tells how the Hornet was molded into a deadly weapon of war, how the ship was fought and ultimately lost, and what it was like to live aboard her at a time when the fate of the United States depended on the Navy's tiny carrier fleet. In chronicling the carrier's operational history, the author contends that the fate of the Hornet's air group at Midway remains one of the great controversies in modern naval history and that the ship's importance in helping to keep the Japanese juggernaut at bay during the most critical period of the Pacific war is incontestable. His arguments ring true today as the controversy continues. Rose succeeds both in letting the reader see things the way the men of the Hornet did and in placing their experiences in a broad historical context.

Genres: History, Naval History

328 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

Lisle A. Rose grew up in Champaign, Illinois where his father was on the faculty of the University of Illinois. Rose enlisted in the U.S. Navy in July 1954 and served on three ships making cruises to the Far East, Latin America, and the polar regions. Aboard the icebreaker Staten Island he participated in Operation Deepfreeze II to Antarctica between November 1956 and April 1957. He was honorably discharged from the service in September of that year and obtained a BA in history from Illinois in 1961 and a PHd in American History from the University of California-Berkeley in 1966. Following teaching at various universities between 1966-72, Rose joined the U.S. Department of State's Historical Office from 1972-78 where he was one of a team of professional historians editing the ongoing official series Foreign Relations of the United States. Transferring to the Bureau of Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs, Rose was Polar Affairs Officer from 1978 to 1982 where he prepared an Arctic policy statement, negotiated the annual U.S. scientific program in Greenland with the Government of Denmark, and helped form an Interagency Arctic Policy Group to formulate official U.S. policy on that region. In 1980, he was a member of the United States Delegation to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. In 1982 Rose transferred to the Office of Advanced Technology Affairs where he specialized in the international aspects of the U.S. Landsat earth remote sensing satellite program and was part of a two person negotiating team that with representatives from the Soviet Union, France, and Canada completed the COSPAS-SARSAT intenational search and rescue sattelite system. Rose retired from the Department of State in 1989 in order to resume an active writing career in Cold War, naval, and polar history.

Rose currently resides in Edmonds, Washington with his wife, historian Harriet Dashiell Schwar, and is Library Coordinator and member of the Board of Governors of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society. Rose's professional memberships include the American Polar Society, North American Society of Oceanic Historians, U.S. Naval Institute, other organizations.

Reviews

[Emmanuel Gustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is devoted to the short operational career of CV-8, the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, best known for launching the “Doolittle raid” against Japan and its (controversial) participation in the Battle of Midway in 1942. Hornet, as the youngest ship of its class, had a less dramatic story than USS Yorktown and of course did not survive long enough to build up the legend of the battle-scarred USS Enterprise, but it had an interesting career.

The strength of this book is its use of personal accounts to build a good picture of what life on an aircraft carrier in the 1940s was really like: The difficult life in cramped spaces on a huge ship, the uneasiness of new sailors acquiring new skills under wartime conditions, the exhausting work days required to keep intricate machinery going, the stress of combat. The author takes in an interest in the life of the common cook or fireman, the petty officer, the black stewards, that is rare in WWII naval history. He is straightforward and realistic about the human foibles that came to the surface. Rarely is naval history this open about the effect the traumatic experience of battle had on the men, the conflicts that opened up, the search to relieve stress by any means, whether it was drinking together, heavy gambling, or fighting with bare fists, or all of the above. The chapter on Hornet’s sinking, one year and a few days after it was commissioned, is a gripping patchwork of personal experiences of death and destruction.

Besides recounting personal memories, Rose charts the development of the Hornet as a fighting unit, from the first tentative steps at the battle of Midway, to the efficient carrier that operated in the campaign for Guadalcanal. He probes into the causes of the failure of the Hornet’s air operations at Midway, the serious loss of men and aircraft to very little purpose. His judgment is made with hindsight, and I don't think it is ever wise for a historian to claim that people at the time would have performed better if only they had acted according to an operational plan of the historian’s own invention! But his attempt at analysis of tactics is solid enough to lead to intelligent debate. At least Rose gives a frank analysis which does not eschew controversy. I think his thoughts on WW2 naval strategy have less merit, being too much influenced by "Cold War" thinking and the nuclear age to be useful to the commanders of 1942.

The book has its weaknesses. I regretted its tendency towards patriotic purple prose, full of superlatives and dramatisation. I don’t begrudge an author a few lyrical sentences, but the book occasionally exceeded my tolerance level.

More objectionable, Lisle Rose seems to know his ships but he is less familiar with aircraft, and this results in a few oddities and some major errors. To call the commander of the carrier’s air group CHAG instead of CAG, and to be unaware that the “Zeke” and “Zero” are the same aircraft type (i.e. official and popular names for the Mitsubishi A6M fighter) are oddities. To think that the USN adopted as policy giving pilots limited training ashore and let them learn the rest “in the crucible of combat” is a serious error. As for the Japanese side of the story, Rose’s reconstruction of Japanese strategic thinking in broad brush strokes is tempting, but it is very speculative and I have not seen much to back it up. His account of the battle of Midway is unfortunately strongly influenced by the obfuscating and untruthful account published by Fuchida in the 1950s.

But the flaws don’t detract from the value of the book, even if you are aware of them.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Hornet played an outside role in WWII because it was one of a handful of US Fleet carriers that fought the Japanese until the arrival of the Essex class. Mitscher was also her commander for a turn before he became one of the fast carrier leaders. She fought at Midway and in the Guadalcanal campaigns.
Here's what I liked about the book. It's readable, and it tells an important story about Hornet's role holding the line and how it was a part of developing US Navy carrier doctrine. I think Rose has some good insights. What I particularly enjoyed was Rose's description of airdales and other carrier workers who often don't get pages devoted to them.
What I didn't like was that Rose goes far afield in a couple of areas. I think for any book like this, you need to add context of the larger strategic picture, which Rose adds, but then Rose goes much afield at times. I think Rose would love to write a book on carriers in the Pacific War and the battle of Midway - I think the issue is that Rose takes some very particular views on the conduct of the Midway campaign and some other areas that distract from this book.
Finally, there is the hyperbole and sensationalism that also hurts this book.
This is a good, readable book about an important topic. I think a good editor could have made it a great one.