PhantomChaos

Ummmmmm....huh? The PT boats and the USS Wasp are supposed to be on the same team!!!!

CAP071

The Wasp was messed up real bad by the Japs. so they scuttled her. It didn't take much for a wooden flight deck carrier to go up fast once you mixed in the fuel and ammo.

CAP071

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PhantomChaos

USS Wasp, a 14,700 ton aircraft carrier, was built at Quincy, Massachusetts. She was commissioned in April 1940 and spent the next two years in the Atlantic area, taking part in exercises, Neutrality enforcement, "short of war" operations and early World War II tasks. In April and May 1942, Wasp assisted the British Home Fleet in the North Atlantic and twice entered the Mediterranean Sea to deliver Royal Air Force aircraft to Malta.

Wasp was dispatched to the Pacific in June 1942 to reinforce U.S. Naval forces there in the wake of the carrier battles of Coral Sea and Midway and in preparation for offensive operations in the Southern Pacific. In early August, she participated in the invasion of Guadalcanal. The remainder of her service life was devoted to the effort to hold that vital island in the face of Japanese attempts to recapture it. On 15 September 1942, while steaming well to the southward of Guadalcanal, USS Wasp was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-19. Uncontrollable gasoline fires forced her abandonment, and she was sunk by torpedoes from an escorting destroyer.

CAP071

My POP was on CVS -18 Wasp

CAP071

His ship picked up several Gemini Astronauts, I have a few autographs put away. I should break them out ands see who they are. He gave them to me 10 years ago .


Japanese submarine I-15, which was lurking nearby, witnessed the sinking of the WASP, and reported this to enemy headquarters at Truk, in the Caroline Islands. Reporting separately, Japanese submarine I-19 claimed to have fired the torpedoes that struck the WASP.

What captures the attention of researchers is that although the skipper of the Japanese submarine I-19 claimed torpedoing the carrier WASP, there is no record of any Japanese submarine commander ever claiming to have fired torpedoes which hit the other two ships!

PhantomChaos

I find it weird that the next commisioned "Wasp" carrier has only 13 months after the CV-7 sunk!

Here is the CV-18 (CVS-18)









Gemini IV Space Flight, June 1965

The Gemini IV space capsule is lifted aboard USS Wasp (CVS-18) on 7 June 1965, after completing a 62 revolution flight around the Earth in 97 hours and 56 minutes. The spacecraft, crewed by Astronauts James A. McDivitt and Edward H. White, landed about 48 miles short of its target and some 400 miles east of Cape Kennedy, Florida, at 12:12 PM Eastern Standard Time on 7 June. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Gemini IV mission covered over 1,600,000 miles in the longest multimanned space flight yet flown.

CAP071

BingO that's her

CAP071

I have in my hand right now limited edition Zipoo lighter's from the recovery of Astronauts Ed White and James McDivitt June 7th 1965. That wasp CVS 18 was also in the Cuban Crisis.


I just got off the phone with my Pop He said he can remember hanging out on the fan tail smoking a cig with the one guy.

CAP071

That ship was sold to be made into razor baldes and toyota's some years later