WAR VEHICLES

Hello ladies and gents this is the viking telling you that today we are talking about

USS ENTERPRISE

File:USS Enterprise (CV-6) in Puget Sound, September 1945.jpg

USS Enterprise (CV-6) was the seventh U.S. Navy vessel named Enterprise. Colloquially called "The Big E", she was the sixth aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. A Yorktown-class carrier, she was launched in 1936 and was one of only three American carriers commissioned before World War II to survive the war (the others being Saratoga and Ranger). She participated in more major actions of the war against Japan than any other United States ship.

These actions included the attack on Pearl Harbor (18 dive bombers of VS-6 were over the harbor; 6 were shot down with a loss of 11 men—she was the only American aircraft carrier with men at Pearl Harbor during the attack and the first to sustain casualties during the Pacific War), the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, various other air-sea engagements during the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

Enterprise earned 20 battle stars, the most for any U.S. warship in World War II, and was the most decorated U.S. ship of World War II. She is also the first American ship to sink a full-sized enemy warship after the Pacific War had been declared when she sank Japanese submarine I-70 on 10 December 1941. On three occasions during the Pacific War, the Japanese announced that she had been sunk in battle, inspiring her nickname "The Grey Ghost".

Construction and commissioning

The second carrier of the Yorktown-class, Enterprise was launched on 3 October 1936 at Newport News Shipbuilding, sponsored by Lulie Swanson, wife of Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson, and commissioned on 12 May 1938 with Captain Newton H. White, Jr. in command. Enterprise sailed south on a shakedown cruise which took her to Rio de Janeiro. Captain Charles A. Pownall relieved White on 21 December. After her return, she operated along the east coast and in the Caribbean until April 1939, when she was ordered to duty in the Pacific.

Service history


Enterprise was one of fourteen ships to receive the early RCA CXAM-1 radar. Captain George D. Murray assumed command of the carrier on 21 March 1941. Based first at San Diego (where she was used in the filming of Dive Bomber, starring Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray) and then at Pearl Harbor after President Roosevelt ordered the Fleet to be "forward based," the carrier and her aircraft squadrons trained intensively and transported aircraft among the island bases of the Pacific. Enterprise was completing one such mission when she left Pearl Harbor on 28 November 1941. It was while returning to Hawaii after delivering Marine Fighter Squadron 211 (VMF-211) to Wake Island when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7.

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