USS Wasp (CV-7)

A single-ship class of 14,500 ton U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, purpose-built under treaty restrictions but with some improvements over USS Ranger (CV-4), the USS Wasp (CV-7) was still too small for effective operations, but gave solid service and taught operational lessons. She was commissioned in 1940 and lost in 1942.

Commissioned before the start of WWII in April, 1940, she spent the next two years in the Atlantic area, taking part in exercises, Neutrality enforcement, "short of war" operations and early World War II tasks. In April and May 1942, Wasp assisted the British Home Fleet in the North Atlantic and twice entered the Mediterranean Sea to deliver Royal Air Force aircraft to Malta. Of her performance, Winston Churchill messaged, "Who says a wasp can't sting twice?"

Wasp was dispatched to the Pacific in June 1942 to reinforce U.S. Naval forces there in the wake of the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, and in preparation for offensive operations in the Southern Pacific. In early August, she participated in the Guadalcanal campaign. The remainder of her service life was devoted to the effort to hold that vital island in the face of Japanese attempts to recapture it. On 15 September 1942, while steaming well to the southward of Guadalcanal, USS Wasp was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-19. Uncontrollable gasoline fires forced her abandonment, and she was sunk by torpedoes from an escorting destroyer.