One negative consequence of the raid may be the negative impact on the combat readiness of the new Hornet and its air wing. It's been argued that Hornet's horrible performance at Midway was a direct result of the 31 days spent with its flight deck locked by the presence of the B-25's (March 20 thru April 18). I expect carrier ops were curtailed for longer by time spent testing the concept and in port. A time line is revealing:
1. 2 September 1941: VF-8 is commissioned with about 17 pilots (8 are nuggets). Lt Cdr. 'Pat' Mitchell is assigned as CO, despite having no time in CV fighters and little CV ops experience, none recent.
2. 6 October 1941: Hornet Air Group os established consisting of VF-8, VB-8, VS-8 and VT-8.
3. 20 October 1941: Hornet CV-8 is commissioned:
4. Early November, 1941: VF-8 has 10 F4F and an SNJ-3 in which 17 pilots will train.
5. Mid December 1941: First CV air operations for VF-8
6. 23 December 1941: VF-8 embarks on Hornet with 19 F4F-3 and 2 F4F-3A, VS VB were equipped with Curtiss SBC-4 Biplane dive bombers, number unknown. Apparently even VT-8 had some biplanes along with its TBD-1s.
7. 28 December 1941: departs Norfolk for one month shakedown cruise in Gulf of Mexico.
8. 2 February 1942. The first two B-25's launched from Hornet's flight deck in a feasibility test
9. 4 March 1942: Hornet departs for San Diego,
10. 20 March 1942: arrives in San Diego where all biplane types are exchanged for more modern a/c.
11. 23 March 1942: departs San Diego for carrier qualifications.
12. 25 March 1942: Hornet returns to San Diego:
13. 30 March 1942: Hornet departs for Alameda NAS to collect B-25s.
14. 31 March 1942: Hornet arrives Alameda NAS
15. 1 April 1942: 16 B-25s loaded aboard Fight deck.
So, it looks like the air wing had extremely limited operational-type flight training prior to departure for the west coast and little opportunity for much training in transit until it returned to PH after the Doolittle raid.
(above info from Lundstrom, First Team)
Here is VB-8 Pilot Clay Fisher's account of the Hornet air group's lack of training.
The Roundtable Forum
"It takes a lot of time to properly train an air group--carrier qualifying each individual pilot in specific aircraft, etc. Due to our accelerated deployment to the Pacific Fleet and the Doolittle mission, most of the dive bomber pilots received only 8 to 10 hours familiarization time in the SBDs at NAS North Island. We didn't get to try field carrier landing practice in the SBDs until the Hornet returned to Pearl Harbor after the Doolittle mission. The wind was very gusty and too dangerous to do simulated carrier landing and we had to stop the operation. Also, no dive bombing practice.
The Doolittle mission robbed the air group of our "spring training."
Within days after the Hornet arrived back at Pearl, we deployed to the south Pacific. On that deployment the fighter pilots got to fly a few CAP flights and the SBD pilots flew just some 200-mile single plane searches. To my knowledge, the torpedo pilots never flew on that deployment. Only a few of the older dive bomber pilots had any experience diving the SBD."
Here is a photo of the Hornet just prior to its deployment to the west coast:
from:
USS Hornet Photo Gallery