USS Wasp (CV-7) was a United States Navy aircraft carrier commissioned in 1940 and lost in action in 1942. She was the eighth ship named , and the sole ship of a class built to use up the remaining tonnage allowed to the U.S. for aircraft carriers under the treaties of the time. As a reduced-size version of the hull, Wasp was more vulnerable than other United States aircraft carriers available at the opening of hostilities. Wasp was initially employed in the Atlantic campaign, where Axis naval forces were perceived as less capable of inflicting decisive damage. After supporting the occupation of Iceland in 1941, Wasp joined the British Home Fleet in April 1942 and twice ferried British fighter aircraft to Malta.
Wasp was then transferred to the Pacific in June 1942 to replace losses at the battles of Coral Sea and Midway. After supporting the invasion of Guadalcanal, Wasp was hit by three torpedoes from Japanese submarine on 15 September 1942. The resulting damage set off several explosions, destroyed her water-mains and knocked out the ship's power. As a result, her damage-control teams were unable to contain the ensuing fires that blazed out of control. She was abandoned and scuttled by torpedoes fired from later that evening. Her wreck was found in early 2019.
Design
Wasp was a product of the Washington Naval Treaty. After the construction of the carriers and , the U.S. was still permitted to build a carrier.
The Navy sought to squeeze a large air group onto a ship with nearly 25% less displacement than the Yorktown-class. To save weight and space, Wasp was constructed with low-power propulsion machinery (compare Wasps machinery with Yorktowns , the 's , and the 's ).
Additionally, Wasp was launched with almost no armor, modest speed, and more significantly, no protection from torpedoes. Absence of side protection of the boilers and internal aviation fuel stores "doomed her to a blazing demise". These were inherent design flaws that were recognized when constructed, but could not be remedied within the allowed tonnage. These flaws, combined with a relative lack of damage control experience in the early days of the war, proved fatal.
Wasp was the first carrier fitted with a deck-edge elevator for aircraft. The elevator consisted of a platform for the front wheels of the plane and an outrigger for the tail wheel. The two arms on the sides moved the platform in a half-circle up and down between the flight deck and the hangar deck.
Construction and commissioning
Her keel was laid down on 1 April 1936 at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts; launched on 4 April 1939, sponsored by Carolyn Edison (wife of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison), and commissioned on 25 April 1940 at the Army Quartermaster Base, South Boston, Massachusetts, with Captain John W. Reeves, Jr. in command.
Service history
1940
Wasp remained at Boston through May, fitting out, before she got underway on 5 June 1940 for calibration tests on her radio direction finder gear. After further fitting out while anchored in Boston harbor, the new aircraft carrier steamed independently to Hampton Roads, Virginia, anchoring there on 24 June. Four days later, she sailed for the Caribbean in company with the destroyer .
En route, she conducted the first of many carrier qualification tests. Among the earliest of the qualifiers was Lieutenant, junior grade David McCampbell, who later became the Navy's top-scoring ace in World War II. Wasp arrived at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in time to "dress ship" in honor of Independence Day.
A fatal incident marred the carrier's shakedown. On 9 July, one of her Vought SB2U-2 Vindicator dive bombers crashed from the ship. Wasp bent on flank speed to close, as did the plane-guarding destroyer Morris. The latter's boats recovered items from the plane's baggage compartment, but the plane itself had gone down with its crew of two.
Wasp departed Guantánamo Bay on 11 July and returned to Hampton Roads four days later. There, she embarked planes from the 1st Marine Air Group and took them to sea for qualification trials. Operating off the southern drill grounds, the ship and her planes honed their skills for a week before the Marines and their planes were disembarked at Norfolk, and the carrier moved north to Boston for postshakedown repairs.
While at Boston, she fired a 21-gun salute and rendered honors to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose yacht, , stopped briefly at the Boston Navy Yard on 10 August.