USS Hornet (CV-12)

On July 24, 1969, the eyes of the world were on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

A few hours earlier, the Apollo 11 command module, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, had plunged back through the atmosphere after the first human landing on the moon and splashed down southwest of Hawaii. A helicopter plucked the astronauts from the sea and flew them to the deck of the USS Hornet, where they walked across the flight deck in biological isolation suits and into a sealed quarantine trailer. President Richard Nixon was there to greet them, speaking to them through a window.

It was one of the proudest moments in American history. And it happened on a ship that, by then, had already seen an extraordinary amount of death.

The Grey Lady

The Hornet that recovered the Apollo astronauts was the eighth American warship to bear the name. It was an Essex-class aircraft carrier, commissioned in November 1943 to replace an earlier Hornet that had been sunk in battle in 1942.

During World War II, the new Hornet was one of the most successful carriers in the Pacific. Its aircraft took part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the battle for Leyte Gulf, the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and raids on the Japanese home islands. Its pilots destroyed more than a thousand enemy aircraft and sank or damaged many ships. The ship earned a reputation as one of the hardest-fighting carriers in the fleet.

It also suffered. Life on an aircraft carrier in wartime was dangerous even when there was no enemy in sight. Planes crashed on takeoff and landing. Sailors were blown overboard, crushed by aircraft, killed by propellers and jet blast, burned in fires and explosions. The ship survived kamikaze attacks and a typhoon that tore away part of its flight deck in 1945.

After the war, the Hornet served in Korea and Vietnam. Over its nearly three decades of service, according to the museum’s estimates, more than three hundred people died aboard the ship — in combat, in accidents, of illness, and in some cases by their own hand.

The Hornet was decommissioned in 1970. In 1998, after a long campaign by veterans and preservationists, it opened as a museum ship at the old Alameda Naval Air Station, across the bay from San Francisco.

The Sailors Who Stayed

Almost as soon as it opened as a museum, staff, volunteers and visitors began reporting strange experiences aboard the ship.

Many of the volunteers are veterans — some of whom served on the Hornet itself, or on carriers like it. They are not, on the whole, people prone to fantasy. But many of them say they have seen or heard things aboard the ship that they can’t explain.

The most common reports are of sailors in old-fashioned uniforms — dungarees, white hats, khaki officers’ uniforms — walking through passageways, climbing ladders, or standing at their stations, and then disappearing. Visitors have asked staff about the “actors” in period uniforms, only to learn that there are no actors.

Others report hearing footsteps on steel decks, hatches opening and closing, tools dropping, voices, and the sound of men talking in empty compartments. Some report that toilets flush by themselves and that objects move. Some say they’ve been touched on the shoulder or had someone brush past them.

Particular parts of the ship are said to be more active than others: the engine rooms, the sick bay, the officers’ quarters, the forecastle.

The Investigators

The Hornet has been featured on several paranormal television programs and has hosted overnight investigations and “ghost hunts.” It also offers overnight programs for youth groups and families, in which visitors sleep in the ship’s original crew bunks.

The museum takes a balanced approach to its ghosts. It doesn’t deny them, and it doesn’t exaggerate them. Its main mission is to preserve the history of the ship and the people who served on it. The ghost stories are part of that history, as told by the people who know the ship best.

Steel and Memory

I find ships haunting in a way that buildings sometimes aren’t.

A warship is a closed world, where thousands of young men lived, worked, ate and slept in cramped steel compartments, for months at a time, far from home. Every surface aboard the Hornet was touched by them: the ladders they climbed, the hatches they opened, the bunks they slept in, the mess tables where they ate. When some of them died, often suddenly and violently, it happened in that same small world, among the people they knew best.

The veterans who volunteer aboard the Hornet today often say that the ship feels alive. They mean it as a compliment.