Where exactly where the US Carriers December 7, 1941?

by readforit

I learned a lot about WWII history and it is known the carriers were not in port but WHERE were they?

How far away from Hawaii? How far away from the IJN fleet? Were they to the east, west, north or south of Hawaii? Did they almost run in the japanese by accident?

Bonus question: Were they just away on training or were they fully armed on patrol?

P.S. I hope military history questions are allowed .. didnt see in the rules that its not but who knows ..

DBHT14

On December 7th the US Navy had 7 carriers in commission, the Ranger, Lexington and Saratoga, Yorktown Enterprise and Hornet, and Wasp.

Assigned to the Atlantic Fleet were Yorktown, Ranger, and Wasp. Hornet was newly commissioned and still working up in Norfolk with Yorktown also in port that day while Ranger and Wasp were at sea.

So that leaves Saratoga, Lexington, and Enterprise in the Pacific. Sara then was just pulling into port in San Diego on the 7th, she had recently completed an overhaul at Bremerton and was on her way to collect her air wing before heading back to Pearl. Saratoga arrived in Pearl on the 15th and was organized into a task force under Frank Jack Fletcher.

Lexington then was about 400mi SE of Midway Island under Wilson Brown's command. In the runup to war it had been decided that the USMC forces on the forward island atolls of Wake and Midway should be reinforced as practicable, additional Marine units had also been sent to American Samoa, and the buildup in Hawaii continued as well. On December 5th Lexington and escorts had left on one such run, carrying a squadron of USMC Wildcats aboard.

The delivery was cancelled and the task force redirected eventually to operate first West of Hawaii then SW between Hawaii and Johnston Atoll. The Marine aircraft made the ship crowded and it resulted in one of the few instances of a WW2 carrier using an old interwar trick. To avoid having to respot his deck park, Captain Sherman actually put his ship into reverse allowing aircraft to land over the bow.

Lexington would return to Pearl on the 13th of December to resupply before being used as a screening force for the aborted Wake Island Relief attempt built around Saratoga, the seaplane tender Tangier, and escorts which was closing on Wake when the island fell on 23rd December.

That just leaves Enterprise in a task force under Halsey, she was returning from a similar supply run to Wake Island, and was about 100mi SE of Oahu on the morning of the 7th. She was actually behind schedule and had been delayed by high seas slowing refueling her escorts. When word of the attack came her Scouting and Bombing squadrons with fighter escorts were used to try to find the enemy task force, including ghost sightings such as IJN ships off Diamond Head outside Pearl Harbor. Several of the aircraft managed to stumble into the Japanese 2nd Wave on trying to land at pearl mid morning, losing 6 aircraft and 8 crewmen. Realistically there was no chance for Enterprise to attack the IJN carriers, several hundred miles away and to the NE with the island of Oahu between them, and realistically for the best as Enterprise would have been very easy lickings for the IJN had they found her.

Wiki actually has a solid map graphic showing the task forces positions relative to each other.

A flight of Wildcats that pushed on to Pearl in the evening suffered a similar fate. Despite word being passed jumpy gunners in Pearl opened up in the evening sky as the Navy pilots approached, of the 6, 5 were damaged on landing or shot down and 3 pilots killed. The next day Enterprise would pull into harbor just long enough to refuel and top off consumables and left early morning on the 9th and patrolled off Oahu and had several days of cat and mouse with IJN subs in the area before also being directed as a screen for the Wake Island Relief.

For more on the operation of the USN carrier force in the early days of the war I would suggest The First Team by John Lundstrom!