Pres. Coolidge Beached, Sinks

MON 26 OCT 1942
Pacific
Battle of Santa Cruz Islands occurs as TF 16 (Rear Adm. Thomas C. Kinkaid) and TF 17 (Rear Adm. George D. Murray) engage a numerically superior Japanese force (Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi). Although the Japanese achieve a tactical victory, the failure of their simultaneous land offensive on Guadalcanal means that they cannot exploit it to its fullest. The dwindling number of Japanese carrier planes cannot eliminate Henderson Field, while fuel shortages compel the Combined Fleet to retire on Truk. Americans control the skies above the sea routes to Guadalcanal.

The victory, however, does not come cheaply in this, the fourth major carrier battle of 1942, for Enterprise (CV-6) is damaged by planes from carriers Junyo and Shokaku; Hornet (CV-8) is damaged by planes from Junyo, Shokaku, and Zuikaku;

battleship South Dakota (BB-57) and light cruiser San Juan (CL-54) are damaged by planes from Junyo; destroyer Smith (DD-378) is damaged by a crashing carrier attack plane; during the operation of fighting Hornet's fires and taking off her survivors, destroyer Hughes (DD-410) is damaged in collision with the doomed carrier (as well as by friendly fire earlier in the action). The attempt to scuttle the irreparably

Aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), severely listing, is abandoned by her crew
at about 17:00 hrs during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942.

damaged Hornet by gunfire and torpedoes from destroyers Mustin (DD-413) and Anderson (DD-411) fails; destroyer Porter (DD-356) is accidentally torpedoed by battle-damaged and ditched TBF (VT 10), and, deemed beyond salvage, is scuttled by destroyer Shaw (DD-373).

SBDs (VS 10) from Enterprise damage carrier Zuiho; SBDs (VB 8, VS 8) from Hornet damage carrier Shokaku and destroyer Terutsuki; TBFs (VT 6) from Hornet damage heavy cruiser Chikuma.

Battle of Henderson Field ends as marines repulse Japanese land and air attacks.

U.S. liner President Coolidge, chartered for use as a troop transport, blunders into U.S. minefield off Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides; the ship is beached to facilitate salvage, but slips into deep water and sinks. Four of the 5,050 Army troops are lost in the accident, as is one of the 290-man merchant complement. There are no casualties among the 51-man Armed Guard.

Submarine S-31 (SS-136) sinks Japanese transport Keizan Maru off Paramushiro, 50°10'N, 155°36'E.

Indian Ocean
U.S. freighter Anne Hutchinson is torpedoed and shelled by German submarine U-504 some 90 miles off East London, South Africa, 33°12'S, 29°03'E; three crewmen are killed in the attack. The rest of the ship's complement (37 merchant sailors and the 17-man Armed Guard) take to two lifeboats (see 27, 28, and 31 October 1942).

Atlantic
British motor torpedo boat rescues 39 merchant seaman and the 10-man Armed Guard from U.S. freighter Reuben Tipton, sunk by German submarine U-129 on 23 October 1942, and are transported to Barbados.

Additional Hornet info:

On this day in 1942, the last U.S. carrier manufactured before America’s entry into World War II, the Hornet, is damaged so extensively by Japanese war planes in the Battle of Santa Cruz that it must be abandoned.

The battle for Guadalcanal was the first American offensive against the Japanese, an attempt to prevent the Axis power from taking yet another island in the Solomon chain and gaining more ground in its race for Australia. On this day, in the vicinity of the Santa Cruz Islands, two American naval task forces had to stop a superior Japanese fleet, which was on its way to Guadalcanal with reinforcements. As was the case in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, the engagement at Santa Cruz was fought exclusively by aircraft taking off from carriers of the respective forces; the ships themselves were not in range to fire at one another.

Japanese aerial fire damaged the USS Enterprise, the battleship South Dakota, and finally the Hornet. In fact, the explosions wrought by the Japanese bombs that rained down on the Hornet were so great that two of the Japanese bombers were themselves crippled by the blasts, and the pilots chose to dive-bomb their planes into the deck of the American carrier, which was finally abandoned and left to burn. The Hornet, which weighed 20,000 tons, had seen battle during the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo (its commander at the time, Marc Mitscher, was promoted to admiral and would be a significant player in the victory over Japan) and the battle of Midway.

While the United States losses at Santa Cruz were heavy, the cost in aircraft to the Japanese was so extensive—more than 100, including 25 of the 27 bombers that attacked the Hornet—that they were unable finally to reinforce their troops at Guadalcanal, paving the way for an American victory.

Footnote: The Hornet lost at Santa Cruz was the CV-8; another Hornet (CV-12) launched August 30, 1943, led a virtually charmed life, spending 52 days under Japanese attack in many battles in the Pacific, with nary a scratch to show for it. That is, until June 1945, when it was finally damaged—by a typhoon.