Despite the undisputed significance of the USS Hornet's wartime experience in the Pacific, until now there has never been a serious study of this aircraft carrier's remarkable career. This book tells how the Hornet was molded into a deadly weapon of war, how the ship was fought and ultimately lost, and what it was like to live and fight aboard her at a time when the fate of the United States depended on the Navy's minute carrier fleet. Through the experience of this key ship and the eyes of her crew and the aviators who flew from her deck, Lisle Rose recreates the first desperate year of the war in the Pacific. As one of the few fleet aircraft carriers in the world, the Hornet - and her contemporaries in the U. S. and Japanese navies - shaped the brief golden age of carrier warfare and defined carrier doctrine down to this day.