USS Wasp (CV-7) and USS Langley (CV-1) were among the first American carrier losses of World War II. Langley, commissioned in 1922 as the Navy’s first aircraft carrier — converted from the collier Jupiter — was sunk on February 27, 1942 by Japanese aircraft south of Java while ferrying Army P-40 fighters to Allied forces in the East Indies. Wasp, a fleet carrier commissioned in 1940, was struck by three torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-19 on September 15, 1942 northeast of Guadalcanal and scuttled after her crew was rescued. This December 1942 tribute published in All Hands remembers both carriers.
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