Hornet launched Doolittle's twin-engined B-25 bombers in their sensational raid on Japan on April 18 1942,   and in June she also took part in the Battle of Midway.   Her torpedo-plane squadron - Torpedo 8 - was annihilated in the battle,   all 15 of the squadron's aircraft being shot down,  and only one of its aircrew (the pilot Ensign Gay) surviving.

Hornet went on to play a vital part in the Guadalcanal campaign in late 1942.   She too was sunk  -  at the Battle of Santa Cruz - after being hit by bombs and torpedoes from Japanese carrier-borne aircraft.

Hornet's captain from the time of her commissioning until after Midway was M.A. Mitscher,   who went on to command the Fast Carrier Task Force and to be regarded as the outstanding carrier admiral of the War.

In December 1941 she and Lexington were the only carriers operating out of Hawaii.   Enterprise -  flagship of Vice-Admiral Halsey's Task Force Sixteen  -  was ferrying aircraft to Wake Island at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.   She participated in the earliest US carrier raids in the Pacific,  and in the Doolittle Raidshe escorted her sister Hornet,  with Enterprise again serving as Halsey's flagship.

At Midway she carried the flag of Admiral Spruance (who replaced Halsey when the latter was disabled by illness) and played the most important role of any ship in the battle -  Enterpriseaircraft can probably be credited with hitting three of the four Japanese carriers sunk at Midway,  and can certainly be credited with the destruction of two.

She then went on to play a vital role in the Guadalcanal campaign.   At the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August she received her first battle damage  -  a bomb hit.   In October she was again damaged,  at the Battle of Santa Cruz,   but,  although still not fully repaired,   made an essential contribution to the decisive American victory in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in the following month.

She in fact participated in every carrier-versus-carrier battle of the Pacific War after Coral Sea  (Midway,  Eastern Solomons,  Santa Cruz and Philippine Sea),  and in almost all other actions of the US fast carrier forces including Leyte Gulf.In April 1945,   during the Okinawa campaign,  she was struck three times by kamikaze aircraft and badly damaged.