A Heritage of Excellence   by Stan Stokes

CV-12 is the eighth USN warship to bear the name Hornet. She was originally laid down as the Kearsarge, but when CV-8 (the seventh Hornet) was sunk, the decision was made to change the name of CV-12 to Hornet. The Grey Ghost, as she was nicknamed, was dispached to the Pacific in early 1944. She participated in numerous combat operations for the last 16 months of WWII., sometimes operating as close as 40 miles from the Japanese mainland. Her pilots downed more than 1,400 Japanese aircraft and destroyed 12 million tons of enemy shipping. While operating in the Far East in support of operations in Vietnam, the Hornet participated in several Apollo recovery missions including that of Apollo 11 in 1969.