USS Enterprise 1941-1945
In the war against Japan from 1941 to 1945, the aircraft carrier Enterprise took part in all the great air-sea battles of the war between Japan and the United States in the Pacific.
THE GREAT SURVIVOR
At the outbreak of war in the Pacific, the US Navy mustered seven aircraft carriers. At the end of hostilities, just two of them the Saratoga and the Enterprise were left afloat. Both the other members of the Yorktown class succumbed early on. Absent from Pearl Harbour for the surprise attack of 7 December 1941, The Big E first went to war in April, 1942, when she escorted the Hornet on the famous Doolittle Raid, when the latter launched 16 US Army Air Corps B-25 bombers for an attack on Tokyo. She next took part in the battle of Midway in early June, 1942, when along with her sister-ships the Yorktown and the Hornet she accounted for the Japanese carriers Akogi, Hiryu, Kaga and Soryu, together with all the 250 aircraft they carried, Yorktown also being lost. Enterprise lost many of her own attack air craft at Midway, but in the broadest terms the loss was worth the gain, for the battle left the way open for the American campaign to regain control of the Pacific islands from the Japanese.
FROM GUADALCANAL TO OKINAWA
Off Guadalcanal in August 1942, early in the sequence of battles around the Solomon Islands, the Enterprise was hit by several Japanese bombs, and was forced to retire to Pearl Harbour, where she was hastily repaired in time to return to the theatre for the fifth round off Santa Cruz in October. Hit again, sand again rapidly repaired, she took part in the battle of Guadalcanal itself, disposing of the battleship Hiei and sinking the cruiser Kinugana. During 1943 she took part in the invasion of Kwajalein and Tarawa, before undergoing a major and much-needed refit, when her flight deck was lengthened and her buoyancy and stability increased by bulges. In 1944 she was present at the celebrated Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, which accounted for much of what was left of Japanese naval air power, and her aircraft participated in the sinking of the battle ships Fuso, Mosashi and Yamoto, the destruction of those two latter, in particular, proving that the days of the capital ship were gone. A kamikaze strike in May 1945 put her out of commission for the rest of the war; she was repaired, but never saw operational service again, being decommissioned in 1947 and scrapped in 1958 despite a campaign to preserve her.
