page_title: USS Wasp (CV-7)
section_title: Atlantic Fleet
hierarchical_section_title: USS Wasp (CV-7) / World War II / Atlantic Fleet
caption_attribution_description: The U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Wichita (CA-45) at anchor in Scapa Flow, Scotland (UK), in April 1942. The aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CV-7) is in the background.
context_page_description: 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 USS Wasp, 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 Yorktown-class aircraft carrier 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 I-19 on 15 September 1942. The resulting damage set off several explosions, destroyed her water-mains and knocked out the ship's power.
context_section_description: Naval authorities felt considerable anxiety that French warships in the Caribbean and West Indies were prepared to make a breakout and attempt to get back to France. Accordingly, Wasp, the light cruiser Brooklyn, and the destroyers Sterett and Wilson, departed Grassy Bay and headed for Martinique. Faulty intelligence gave American authorities in Washington the impression that the Vichy French armed merchant cruiser Barfleur had gotten underway for sea. The French were accordingly warned that the auxiliary cruiser would be sunk or captured unless she returned to port and resumed her internment. As it turned out, Barfleur had not departed after all, but had remained in harbor. The tense situation at Martinique eventually dissipated, and the crisis abated.
  With tensions in the West Indies lessened considerably, Wasp departed Grassy Bay and headed for Hampton Roads three days before Christmas, in company with Long Island, and escorted by the destroyers Stack and Sterett. Two days later, the carrier moored at the Norfolk Navy Yard to commence an overhaul that would last into 1942.
  After departing Norfolk on 14 January 1942, Wasp headed north and touched at NS Argentia, Newfoundland, and Casco Bay, Maine. On 16 March, as part of Task Group 22.6 (TG 22.6), she headed back toward Norfolk. During the morning watch the next day, visibility lessened considerably; and, at 06:50, Wasp's bow plunged into Stack's starboard side, punching a hole and completely flooding the destroyer's number one fireroom. Stack was detached and proceeded to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where her damage was repaired.
  Meanwhile, Wasp made port at Norfolk on the 21st without further incident. Shifting back to Casco Bay three days later, she sailed for the British Isles on 26 March 1942 with Task Force 39 under the command of Rear Admiral John W. Wilcox, Jr., aboard the battleship Washington. That force was to reinforce the Home Fleet of the Royal Navy. While en route, Rear Admiral Wilcox was swept overboard from the battleship on the morning of 27 March 1942 and drowned. Although hampered by poor visibility conditions, four SB2U Vindicators from Wasp planes took part in the search, and one of them crashed while attempting to land aboard Wasp, killing its two-man crew. Wilcox's body was spotted an hour after he went overboard, face down in the raging seas, but it was not recovered due to the weather and the heavy seas.
  Rear Admiral Robert C. Giffen, who flew his flag in the heavy cruiser Wichita, assumed command of TF 39. The American ships were met by a force based around the light cruiser HMS Edinburgh on 3 April. Those ships escorted them to Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. While there, a Gloster Gladiator flown by Captain Henry Fancourt of the Royal Navy made the first landing of the war by a British plane on an American aircraft carrier when it landed on Wasp.
  While the majority of TF 39 joined the British Home Fleet — being renumbered to TF 99 in the process — to cover convoys routed to North Russia, Wasp departed Scapa Flow on 9 April, bound for the Clyde estuary and Greenock, Scotland. On the following day, the carrier sailed up the Clyde River, past the John Brown Clydebank shipbuilding facilities. There, shipyard workers paused long enough from their labors to accord Wasp a tumultuous reception as she passed. Wasp's impending mission was an important one – one upon which the fate of the island bastion of Malta hung. That key isle was then being pounded daily by German and Italian planes. The British, faced with the loss of air superiority over the island, requested the use of a carrier to transport planes that could wrest air superiority from the Axis aircraft. Wasp drew ferry duty once again to participate in Operation Calendar, one of many Malta Convoys.
caption: Wasp and the heavy cruiser Wichita in Scapa Flow.
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