About
My father, John T. Ryan (Jack) was born in the early years after World War I and due to heart failure, he passed away before the Vietnam War was in the history books. In between he grew to manhood in Philadelphia, enlisted in the US Navy, went to war serving on the USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier (CV-12), met and married my mom in the late 1950s and fathered five children. Due to my age when he passed away, I never really knew my father and so I never had the opportunity to hear his stories of World War II. In this blog, I attempt to tell his World War II story through the history of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-12). It will lack the personal stories that I just don’t have. I welcome any comments to make it better.
Comments
USS Hornet (CV-12)-A Father's Untold War Story 
My Father also served on the Hornet, https://www.navalaviationfoundation.org/ways-to-give/national-flight-log/national-flight-log-entry/?id=4077
I have extensive information on the Second Combat Tour of VB-11 09/24/43 thru 02/15/45. Please contact me via email.
Great to hear from you. I wish I had more specific details on my father like you have on your father.
I have many pictures, documents and information if you are interested; you will not believe the amount, it is absolutely overwhelming! email me directly and I will share them all.
I don’t see your email address. Mine is mholloway63@gmail.com
Hi, My grandfather was on the CV-12 up until 1945 and was discharged before Operation Magic Carpet. I basically have nothing but a navy record to show his history. He passed away long before I was born. I would love to see anything you may have regarding that ship and pictures as well. Always thought if I could find pictures of people on the ship I may be able to spot him. Would you be able to send copies to my email? It’s CFD241@YAHOO.COM, I would greatly appreciate anything you could share. It’s hard finding any pictures and documents. thank you so much!
Sorry I haven’t been on my blog for a while and hadn’t seen your inquiry. I also have only what I have found online. I do have the cruise book that I downloaded from the military ancestry type site Folde3. Let me see where I have it and email it. UPDATE. I see now that your comment was directed to a person who commented on my site. I hope he responded but I’ll still send you the cruise book when I locate it.
Thanks to Pierre Lagace’s link to this site, I have discovered another wonderful site to follow. A pleasure to meet you.
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Maryann, I am wondering how you got your father’s miltary records. My father, too, passed away at a young age due to a heart attack and I never heard anything about his time in the Navy. All that I know is that he was on a ship guarding the Panama Canal and at the end of the war was in Guam. I have asked two of his brothers who were also in the Navy but they could not remember details. I loved reading your blog.
When you are next of kin as you would be, you can order the records at this website http://www.archives.gov/veterans/
It may ask you questions that you don’t know and I don’t know what difficulty that will result. For me, my mom had some records so I had his ship name and his military number. By having this data, I was able to find him easily on something called WWII Naval Muster Rolls as part of my Ancestry.com subscription so I was able to document when he came on board, what his rank was, if he was still on board quarterly and when he left the ship at the end of the war. Getting the miliary records ordered through the site I listed above gave me very little more but it gave me something and it was a nominal fee (can’t remember but under $100). I could find him for you in Ancestry but I would need his full name and the ship. There may be ways to google search to find out possible ships.
[…] he encouraged me to write my father’s World War II story. Slowly but surely I am doing so in a separate blog linked from my main […]
Thanks for your series of posts on the Hornet. Rear Admiral Ormond Cox, who supervised construction of the Hornet (and several other Essex-class carriers), was my great-grandfather, and it’s always great to hear about the stories of the ships and their sailors.
Wonderful. I have to get back to continuing the story. Thanks for reading
I would like to chat with you in email. Can you shoot me an email with “Hornet CV12” in the subject line? Thanks
I’m glad you are writing this about your dad. My husband and I will enjoy reading this together.
Thanks