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 two or 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. Of the 2,139 people aboard, 193 were killed and 366 injured; 46 of her 71 aircraft were lost. 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

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.

During shakedown on 9 July, one of her Vought SB2U-2 Vindicator dive bombers crashed from the ship killing the two crew.

Wasp returned to Hampton Roads 15 July, embarking aircraft from the 1st Marine Air Group for qualification trials at sea, and then returning a week later. The Marines and their planes were disembarked at Norfolk, and the carrier moved to Boston for post shakedown repairs.

She fired a 21-gun salute in honor of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose yacht, , stopped briefly at the Boston Navy Yard on 10 August.

Wasp departed the Army Quartermaster Base on 21 August to conduct steering drills and full-power trials. Late the following morning, she got underway for Norfolk, Virginia. For the next few days, while destroyer operated as plane guard, Wasp launched and recovered her aircraft: fighters from Fighter Squadron 7 (VF-7), and scout bombers from Scouting Squadron 72 (VS-72). The carrier put into the Norfolk Navy Yard on 28 August for repair work on her turbines and Wasp was drydocked from 12 to 18 September.

Wasp ran her final sea trials in Hampton Roads on 26 September 1940. Assigned to Carrier Division 3, Patrol Force, Wasp shifted to Naval Operating Base, Norfolk on 11 October. There, she loaded 24 Curtiss P-40 fighters from the Army Air Corps' 8th Pursuit Group and nine North American O-47A reconnaissance aircraft from the 2d Observation Squadron, as well as her own spares and utility unit Grumman J2F Duck amphibian on the 12th. Wasp subsequently flew off the Army planes in a test designed to compare the take-off runs of standard Navy and Army aircraft. This was the first time that Army planes had flown from a Navy carrier and foreshadowed the use of the ship in the ferry role in World War II.

Wasp then proceeded on toward Cuba in company with the destroyers and . Over the ensuing four days, the carrier's planes flew routine training flights, including dive-bombing and machine-gun practices.

For the remainder of October and into November, Wasp trained in the Guantánamo Bay area. Her planes flew carrier qualification and refresher training flights, while her gunners sharpened up their skills in short-range battle practices at targets towed by the new fleet tug .

Wasp sailed for Norfolk and arrived shortly after noon on 26 November. remaining at the Norfolk Navy Yard through Christmas of 1940. Then, after first conducting degaussing experiments with the survey ship , she steamed independently to Cuba.

Arriving at Guantánamo Bay on 27 January 1941, Wasp conducted a regular routine of flight operations into February. With destroyer as her plane guard, Wasp operated out of Guantanamo and Culebra, conducting her maneuvers with an array of warships— the WWI-era battleship Texas, carrier , heavy cruisers , , and destroyers. Wasp ran gunnery drills and exercises, as well as routine flight training evolutions into March. Underway for Hampton Roads on 4 March, the aircraft carrier conducted a night battle practice into the early morning hours of the 5th.

During the passage to Norfolk, heavy weather sprang up on the evening of 7 March. Wasp was steaming at standard speed, . Off Cape Hatteras, a lookout spotted a red flare at 22:45, then a second set of flares at 22:59. At 23:29, with the aid of her searchlights, Wasp located the stranger in trouble. She was the lumber schooner George E. Klinck, bound from Jacksonville, Florida, to Southwest Harbor, Maine.

The sea, in the meantime, worsened from a state 5 to a state 7. Wasp lay to, maneuvering alongside at 00:07 on 8 March. At that time, four men from the schooner clambered up a swaying Jacob's ladder buffeted by gusts of wind. Then, despite the raging tempest, Wasp lowered a boat, at 00:16, and brought the remaining four men aboard from the foundering schooner.

Later that day, Wasp disembarked her rescued mariners and immediately went into drydock at the Norfolk Navy Yard. The ship received vital repairs to her turbines. Portholes on the third deck were welded over to provide better watertight integrity, and steel splinter shielding around her and batteries was added. Wasp was one of 14 ships to receive the early RCA CXAM-1 radar. After those repairs and alterations were finished, Wasp got underway for the Virgin Islands on 22 March, arriving at St. Thomas three days later. She soon shifted to Guantánamo Bay and loaded maritime supplies for transportation to Norfolk.

Returning to Norfolk on 30 March, Wasp conducted routine flight operations out of Hampton Roads over the ensuing days, into April. In company with , the carrier conducted an abortive search for a downed patrol plane in her vicinity on 8 April. For the remainder of the month, Wasp operated off the East Coast of the United States between Newport, Rhode Island, and Norfolk, conducting extensive flight and patrol operations with her embarked air group. She shifted to Bermuda in mid-May, anchoring at Grassy Bay, Bermuda on the 12th. Eight days later, the ship got underway in company with the heavy cruiser and the destroyers and for exercises at sea before returning to Grassy Bay on 3 June. Wasp sailed for Norfolk three days later with the destroyer as her anti-submarine screen.

After a brief stay in the Tidewater area, Wasp headed back toward Bermuda on 20 June. Wasp and her escorts patrolled the stretch of the Atlantic between Bermuda and Hampton Roads until 5 July, as the Atlantic Fleet's neutrality patrol zones were extended eastward. Reaching Grassy Bay on that day, she remained in port a week before returning to Norfolk, sailing on 12 July in company with heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa and destroyers , , and .

Occupation of Iceland

Following her return to Norfolk on 13 July 1941, Wasp and her embarked air group conducted refresher training off the Virginia Capes. Meanwhile, the situation in the Atlantic had taken on a new complexion, with American participation in the Battle of the Atlantic only a matter of time, when the United States took another step toward involvement on the side of the British. To protect American security and to free British forces needed elsewhere, the United States made plans to take over the occupation of Iceland relieving Canadian forces there. On 23-24 July, 32 Army Air Forces pilots and 30 P-40Cs and three PT-17 trainers from the AAF 33rd Pursuit Squadron, were taken aboard. Four newspaper correspondents – including the noted journalist Fletcher Pratt — came on board.

The carrier had drawn the assignment of ferrying those vital army planes to Iceland because of a lack of British aircraft to cover the American landings. The American P-40s would provide the defensive fighter cover necessary to watch over the initial American occupying forces. Wasp slipped out to sea on 28 July, with the destroyers and Walke as plane guards. The heavy cruiser later joined the formation at sea.

Within a few days, Wasps group joined the larger Task Force 16—consisting of the battleship , the heavy cruisers Quincy and Wichita, five destroyers, the auxiliary , the attack transport , the stores ship , and the amphibious cargo ship . Those ships, too, were bound for Iceland with the first occupation troops embarked. On the morning of 6 August, Wasp, Vincennes, Walke, and O'Brien parted company from Task Force 16 (TF 16). Soon thereafter, the carrier turned into the wind and commenced launching the planes from the 33rd Pursuit Squadron. As the P-40s and the trio of trainers droned on to Iceland, Wasp headed home for Norfolk, her three escorts in company. After another week at sea, the group arrived back at Norfolk on 14 August.

Neutrality patrols