page_title: USS Wasp (CV-7)
section_title: 1940
hierarchical_section_title: USS Wasp (CV-7) / Service history / 1940
caption_attribution_description: The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CV-7) on 27 December 1940.
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: 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 Morris.
  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.
  A fatal incident marred the carrier's shakedown. On 9 July, one of her Vought SB2U-2 Vindicator dive bombers crashed 2 nautical miles (2.3 mi; 3.7 km) from the ship. Wasp bent on flank speed to close, as did the plane-guarding destroyer Morris. The latter's boats recovered items from the plane's baggage compartment, but the plane itself had gone down with its crew of two.
  Wasp departed Guantanamo Bay on 11 July and returned to Hampton Roads four days later. There, she embarked planes from the 1st Marine Air Group and took them to sea for qualification trials. Operating off the southern drill grounds, the ship and her planes honed their skills for a week before the Marines and their planes were disembarked at Norfolk, and the carrier moved north to Boston for postshakedown repairs.
  While at Boston, she fired a 21-gun salute and rendered honors to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose yacht, Potomac, 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 Ellis 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 – alterations which kept the ship in dockyard hands into the following month. Drydocked from 12–18 September, Wasp ran her final sea trials in Hampton Roads on 26 September 1940.
  Now ready to join the fleet and assigned to Carrier Division 3, Patrol Force, Wasp shifted to Naval Operating Base, Norfolk (NOB Norfolk) from the Norfolk Navy Yard 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 flying boats on the 12th. Proceeding to sea for maneuvering room, Wasp flew off the Army planes in a test designed to compare the take-off runs of standard Navy and Army aircraft. That experiment, the first time that Army planes had flown from a Navy carrier, foreshadowed the use of the ship in the ferry role that she performed so well in World War II.
  Wasp then proceeded on toward Cuba in company with the destroyers Plunkett and Niblack. Over the ensuing four days, the carrier's planes flew routine training flights, including dive-bombing and machine-gun practices. Upon arrival at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Wasp's saluting batteries barked out a 13-gun salute to Rear Admiral Hayne Ellis, Commander, Atlantic Squadron, embarked in battleship Texas on 19 October.
  For the remainder of October and into November, Wasp trained in the Guantanamo 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 Seminole.
  Her work in the Caribbean finished, Wasp sailed for Norfolk and arrived shortly after noon on 26 November. She remained at the Norfolk Navy Yard through Christmas of 1940. Then, after first conducting degaussing experiments with the survey ship Hannibal, she steamed independently to Cuba.
caption: Wasp on 27 December 1940
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