Honet Deck Load for the Doolittle Raid

[MIflyer]

It's interesting two SBDs and F4Fs are spotted on deck

Yes, and I wonder why. No room to launch them. Too crowded on the hangar deck?

 

[EwenS]

It's interesting two SBDs and F4Fs are spotted on deck

Yes, and I wonder why. No room to launch them. Too crowded on the hangar deck?

If you study the various photos taken on board Hornet during the Doolittle raid, it becomes clear that there were movements of aircraft between hangar and flight deck and around the flight deck duing the voyage. For example:-

SBD aft, now you see them

Now you don't

Note the movement of the aftermost B-25s between photos 1 & 2. Looks like that created the space on the flight deck to bring up the 2 SBD.


And the F4F Wildcats forward:-
On 2 April 1942 just hours after sailing from San Francisco she had a blimp delivery. No F4F on deck at the forward end of the flight deck.

Later in the voyage:-

Note also how the foremost B-25 has been moved aft a bit. The windbreak was positioned just ahead of the forward lift. Raised in photo 3, but folded flat to the deck in photo 4.

ISTR reading somewhere that Hornet kept some F4F on the flight deck in case she ran across an unidentified intruder and needed to launch a CAP by catapult. The two flight deck catapult tracks are visible ahead of the windbreak. She also had an athwartship catapult on the hangar deck forward, but in practice these catapults were rarely used.

TF18 including Hornet left San Francisco on 2 April but did not hook up with TF16 & Enterprise until 13 April 1942, somewhere north of Hawaii. So having a CAP flight ready to launch might have been seen as a necessary precaution, although I would have thought that subs were a bigger threat. She supposedly took her entire 65 aircraft air group with her on that trip.