This Day in History: Survivors of USS Wasp

On this day in 1939, the aircraft carrier USS Wasp is launched. She is perhaps best known for her stunning end—and the inspired rescue that followed. Nearly 2,000 sailors and aviators were pulled from the water as she went down nearby.

Wasp was with about a dozen other warships on September 15, 1942. She was escorting transports for the Seventh Marine Regiment, then headed to Guadalcanal. She’d been at general quarters all day even as her planes flew antisubmarine patrol missions.

Tragedy struck, without warning. Wasp’s lookout reported “three torpedoes . . . three points forward of the starboard beam” at 2:44 p.m. At 2:45, two torpedoes struck the ship. A third blast hit 20 seconds later, although it was probably a secondary explosion from the other hits.

This had all happened in the blink of an eye.

“[P]eople on the starboard side of the flight deck saw the fish coming,” Lt. Harold E. Brown later wrote his parents. “They yelled to the bridge and ran from that side of the ship. . . . [The torpedoes] had found their mark before the sound of the voices hardly reached the bridge.”

One torpedo hit near the forward gasoline tanks and another near the magazines. The ship shook so much that Brown thought it felt “much the same as a super-super earthquake.”

“[S]hock from the two torpedo hits was considerable,” a War Damage Report later explained. “A ladder on the main deck . . . was torn from its fastenings and hung straight down from the forecastle deck hatch. The four aircraft triced to the overhead forward fell and struck the planes parked on the hangar deck. The landing gears on all aircraft collapsed.”

Aviation fuel was everywhere, and it was feeding a massive inferno. Worse, the water mains in the forward part of the ship had been destroyed, hampering firefighting efforts.

Brown and others leaped to push planes off the flight deck: The planes were dripping fuel that was contributing to the fire.

In the meantime, Captain Forrest Sherman had slowed Wasp down and ordered the rudder put to port. Could he keep the wind blowing against the ship in a helpful direction, keeping the fires forward?

But nothing worked. Sherman gave the order to abandon ship at 3:20.

Aviation Ordnanceman Arles “Bud” Elliott remembered the crew abandoning ship in a calm, orderly manner. The only delays came when men refused to leave before a wounded comrade.

Sherman didn’t leave until everyone was out. It was 4:00.

Two other ships had been hit by the Japanese torpedoes, but the rest of the task force stood ready to help. Some rushed to rescue men in the water, while others circled, dropping depth charges and searching for the sub. Elliott would remember the “painful” concussions that rocked the water as he floated and waited for help.

He could see sailors on flight decks shooting at things in the water. He assumed they were shooting at sharks.

Wasp floated away, rocked by more violent explosions. Finally, USS Lansdowne torpedoed her, standing by as she went down, bow first, at 9:00.

Ultimately 1,946 men were pulled from the water, with 193 lost. All but one of Wasp’s 26 airborne aircraft made safe landings elsewhere, but nearly four dozen planes had gone down with the ship.

Sherman praised the efforts of the rescue destroyers’ commanding officers, but his men thought their captain’s leadership had been invaluable.

“[Captain Sherman] gave a short talk to the survivors,” Brown concluded. “The men were still cheering until his boat had left the ship and was over a mile away. He was a great man and I know that there is not one Wasp survivor that would not love duty with him again.”

Another story of perseverance and courage, courtesy of the Greatest Generation.

Primary Sources & Further Reading:

• Ben Werner, Wreckage Of World War II-Era Carrier USS Wasp Discovered (USNI; March 13, 2019)

• D. Kevin Elliott, Bud Elliott and USS Wasp (The Sextant: Blog of the U.S. Navy; April 17, 2019)

• Ian Toll, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944 (2015) (The Pacific War Trilogy, Vol. 2)

• John Ismay, The U.S.S. Wasp: Torpedoed, Scuttled, Sunk and Now Found (N.Y. Times; March 14, 2019)

• Letter from naval aviator LT Harold E. Brown, U. S. N. to his parents (reprinted HERE)

• War Damage Report: USS Wasp

• Wasp VIII (CV-7) 1940–1942 (Naval History and Heritage Command)