By Dale Welch
Monterey’s James Robbins sit at “battle stations,” aboard the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Hornet, on April 18, 1942, as 16 B-25 aircraft, commanded by Lt. Col. James Doolittle, took off from the deck headed for Tokyo, Japan. It was America’s first answer to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, HI, on Dec. 7, 1941. Since the Pearl Harbor bombing, the American public had only been receiving sad news as American holdings were falling in the Pacific Theater. But an answer was coming. The Japanese had awakened a sleeping giant.
Twenty-one-year-old Robbins was working in the Wilder Coal Mines when the war started.
“In Wilder,” Robbins said, “sixteen was marrying age. I was 21 and vulnerable. I hadn’t married yet.”
World War I’s most-decorated soldier Alvin C. York was chair of the Fentress County Draft Board at the time, and was pressuring everyone to join the U.S. Army.
“I couldn’t see myself digging a hole to sleep in,” Robbins said. “I wanted a good clean bunk to sleep in, so I joined the Navy.” For him, it was “three hot’s and a cot.”
Robbins was sent to Norfolk VA, where he worked in the pay office until he was assigned to a ship.
“I never had any basic training; never had a gun in my hand or marched my first step when I first started,” Robbins recalled. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked out beautiful.”
Shortly afterward, Robbins was assigned to a brand-new aircraft carrier, the U.S.S Hornet/CV-8. He was assigned the job of “storekeeper.” The canteen he oversaw sold things like hair oil to the sailors, even though, after the Japanese bombing of Peral Harbor, every sailor turned into combat mode on battle stations.
The first aircraft landed on the U.S.S. Hornet on Dec. 25, 1941. Robbins became acquainted with J.T. Reed Jackson, whom it found out was from Monterey, the town he himself had grown up. Robbins said that the two “cried a lot on each other’s shoulders” during those scary times.
Once the initial “shakedown” cruise in the Caribbean was completed, the Hornet’s sailors thought they would get leave upon returning to base. Instead, two B-25 bombers were loaded onboard by crane, and the carrier headed back to sea. Being a new aircraft carrier, sailors thought it was just another “shakedown” experiment.
Once the two B-25’s took off, the U.S.S. Hornet headed back to base. They remained in port for three weeks while adjusting their equipment. The Hornet headed to the Panama Canal in a convoy with a battle group of destroyers, and then, sailing up the Pacific Coast, training with aircraft taking off and landing on other carriers.
By March, the Hornet berthed at Alameda, CA. Almost immediately, B-25 bombers began landing at an airfield near the docks. Sixteen B-25 bomber aircraft were towed onto the Hornet. The aircraft carrier was moved to the bay area and anchored for the night.
Robbins said that sailors were most curious about what was happening. However, on Apr. 2, they were all informed what was about to happen. America was going to make its first major strike upon the Japanese since they were first attacked at Pearl Harbor. America was taking to it their front door.
The U.S.S. Hornet was sailing to rendezvous with another carrier, the U.S.S. Enterprise and a task force of cruisers, destroyers, and tankers to complete the task.
The task force was hoping to launch the B-25’s within 300 miles of mainland Japan, however, they encountered two enemy vessels, on April 16. One they sank; and the other they captured, but not before the enemy vessel tried to send a message back to their superiors.
Thinking their mission may have been compromised, Lt. Col. Doolittle and his men readied their bombers and took off. The aircraft carrier’s position was 823 miles from Tokyo—500+ miles more than originally planned.
Doolittle’s Raiders each had been given primary targets, such as oil refineries, factories and fuel and supply dumps. The bombers mostly hit all their primary targets. Knowing that they could not return to the carrier, Plan B was to bail out of their planes when they reached China. Most of the crews made it to Chu chow, China.
In the raid, the Army Air Corps lost 16 B-25’s; a C-47 and a whole crew; seven men killed; four men taken as prisoners of war; four more were taken as prisoners of war, of those three were executed and one died of starvation; one amputee; and five with minor injuries.
The U.S.S. Hornet made it back to Pearl Harbor, HI, safely, being was being chased by five Japanese carriers but was never discovered.
Arriving back at Pearl Harbor, Robbins and his fellow shipmates had little time to prepare before they had to set sail again. This time, they were dispatched to join the carriers the U.S.S Lexington and the U.S.S. Yorktown in the Battle of the Coral Sea. By the time they arrived, the battle was over. The Hornet escorted the damaged Yorktown back to Pearl Harbor.
On June 6, the Hornet participated in the Battle of Midway Island, which spelled doom for the Japanese.
In August, the Hornet was sent to guard the sea approach to Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands. With the damage to the U.S.S. Saratoga and the U.S.S. Enterprise and the loss of the U.S.S. WASP, the Hornet was the only aircraft carrier left to take the brunt of the aircraft cover for the Solomon Islands until Oct. 24.
On that day, the Hornet teamed up with the Enterprise steaming near Santa Cruz Island to intercept four Japanese carriers; four battleships; 10 cruisers; and 30 destroyers that were in preparation of reenforcing Guadalcanal.
Oct. 26, 1942, was a fateful day for the U.S.S. Hornet. In seven minutes, it was hit by two Kamikaze suicide planes; two bombs; and two torpedoes. The damage was so bad that Robbins and crew were ordered to abandon ship.
The cruiser ship, the U.S.S. North Hampton readied to tow the Hornet away. Robbins was kept on the carrier as part of a skeleton crew to move things along. Word was received that the Japanese were preparing to bomb the Hornet again. Robbins and crew were ordered off the carrier into the water. After about two hours, he was rescued.
“I was getting q little bit worried,” Robins told. “But I was 22 years old and had a lot of fight left in me.”
The U.S. tried to put the U.S.S. Hornet out of her misery. However, it was the Japanese that finally sunk her.
Robbins went on to fight the Japanese on the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Lexington. There were plenty more sea battles in the Gilbert Islands, Marshall Islands, the Marianas, and Guadalcanal and more.
Robbins finally had enough points to ask for a transfer. His superiors finally granted it, and he returned to the states. A couple of days after he arrived back in the states, he learned that the gun that he manned at battle stations on board the U.S.S. Lexington was wiped out by a Japanese kamikaze plane. More than likely, he would have been killed.
He was finally discharged from the U.S. Navy on Oct. 17, 1945. He pointed out that everything big that happened to him happened in the month of October. Every time the month rolls around, he said in an interview that he got a little bit nervous about it.
The long-time Monterey resident went to work at a sawmill for M.N. Hargrove at war’s end. He got married to Abby Morris, of Carthage and had two daughters: Beth and Abbygail. Better yet, the Robbins family wound up with GRAMDCHILDREN!
Both James and Abby, along with daughter, Abbigail have passed.
