Murata's strike group sighted Hornet at 0855 hours. The Japanese pilots did not see Rear Admiral Kinkaid's flagship Enterprise, which was ten miles away and hidden from their view by a rain squall.
Hornet had launched a combat air patrol of fifteen Wildcats to protect the carrier and these pilots were joined by twenty-two Wildcats from Enterprise. Despite the reduction of Zero escorts from the initial twenty-one to twelve, it was never going to be an easy task for the thirty-seven American fighter pilots to block a determined and coordinated attack by Murata's remaining fifty-three strike aircraft. However, the task of the Wildcat pilots was made even more difficult by incredibly inept fighter direction from Enterprise that failed to provide the defending pilots with vital information about the altitude and direction of approach of the Japanese planes. As a result, Hornet was left dangerously exposed to the incoming attack.
This image shows the damage to USS Hornet's signal bridge and smokestack after a Japanese dive-bomber pilot crashed his plane vertically onto the carrier's island structure at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The smoke is from fires started when the Japanese aircraft disintegrated.
In a desperate attempt to save his ship, the fighter director on Hornet took over control from Enterprise and gave the American pilots the accurate information that was needed to place them in the path of the Japanese strike group. However, it was too late! When the defending Wildcat pilots finally sighted the approaching Japanese strike group about twenty-five miles out from Hornet, the Japanese bombers were well above the Wildcats and already entering their high speed attack modes.
Despite the best efforts of the Wildcats, about twenty Val dive-bombers broke through about 0910 and hurtled down on Hornet which was being skilfully manoeuvred inside a tight ring of her escort warships. Plunging through a curtain of steel being thrown up by Hornet and her escort warships, the fiercely determined Japanese pilots were able to drop three bombs that ripped open the flight deck and penetrated deeply into the carrier.
At about 0914, a suicidal Val pilot plunged his dive-bomber vertically into Hornet's island structure and strewed flaming parts of his aircraft across the island structure and flight deck. See photograph above. Lieutenant Commander Homer W. Carter, USN (Ret.) was a Naval Aviation Pilot at the time and nearly lost his life when this Val dive-bomber hit the island structure. He provides a graphic account of this incident:
"During the first attack we had taken cover in the crew shelters along the catwalks. After the first attack, myself and one of my plane handling crew members, an RM3c by the name of Williams stepped up on the flight deck just in time to see the second attack. Just aft of the island structure was a large cargo, aircraft and boat crane. I'm standing behind this crane looking up into the sky at this Val dive bomber about 6000 feet up and in about a 70 degree dive. He was hit and flamed, but dropped his bomb at about 3000 feet. He kept diving at the island super structure. I followed the bomb dropping on the flight deck with my eyesight. It hit the middle of the flight deck about 200 feet from the stern of the ship. I was temporarily blinded and burned on the right side of my face. A few minutes later, when I could see, a corpsman was putting tanic acid on my face, I looked down and saw Willliams lying on the deck motionless. I said to the corpsman, 'I don't see anything wrong with him!' He said to look behind both his ears. A piece of shrapnel had penetrated his head neatly behind one ear and came out behind the other ear without leaving any blood. He was dead. I almost cried, he was such a nice guy and an outstanding worker.
This bomb hit that I watched was a "Daisy Cutter" fragmentation bomb. When it detonated on contact, it sprayed shrapnel upward at a 30 degree angle, and outward 360 degrees, cutting all eleven arresting wires. The crane had saved me. Small bits of shrapnel and paint chips from the crane had cut my right cheek bone and riddled my dungaree trousers lower leg. I looked further around towards the bow, and then I saw what the Val pilot had done with his burning aircraft. He had dived into the signal bridge -cremating the Signal Officer and all seven signalmen. He knocked the ship's whistle and siren off - they were lying on the flight deck - then had crashed through the flight deck into the dive-bomber ready room where a big fire was burning out of control."
[Editor's Note: LCdr Carter's descriptions of the Japanese attack on Hornet at Santa Cruz were kindly provided by Cdr Tom Cheek , USN (Ret.)]
While the Val dive-bombers were still attacking Hornet, they were joined by Kate torpedo bombers. The Kates separated into two formations that came at Hornet simultaneously from both sides in a coordinated torpedo attack that was very difficult for a large ship to avoid. At 0915, two torpedoes struck Hornet on her starboard side. One penetrated the forward engine room which quickly began to fill with seawater.
The final assault on Hornet by Murata's strike group came from another suicidal pilot. This pilot crashed his plane into the Hornet forward of the bridge. The trail of flaming debris ended in the forward elevator shaft. LCdr Carter describes this incident as he saw it:
"I looked to starboard where the guns were concentrating their fire. A Kate torpedo pilot had just dropped his torpedo and it was running crazy, coming up to the surface. It came out of the water, went over the starboard corner of the flight deck and disappeared without hitting the ship. As the torpedo pilot pulled up to clear the ship, he was flamed. Burning fiercely, he pulled up into a beautiful port chandelle and came back at the Hornet. He struck the side of the ship about thirty feet aft of the port hawse pipe and penetrated the ship, plunging through four officers' rooms and bulkheads, and coming to rest on the No. 1 elevator. The fuselage, minus wings and tail section, with the three bodies decapitated and cut in two at the seat belts, was sitting on No. 1 elevator as if waiting to be taken up to the flight deck."
The attack was over at 0925, and it left Hornet dead in the water, without power, and listing eight degrees to starboard. Fires were rapidly spreading through the crippled ship which lacked the means to bring them under control.
The attack on Hornet cost the Japanese forty-two of Lieutenant Commander Murata's original sixty-two plane strike group. The lost airmen were irreplaceable veterans who had been honing their war skills since Japan attacked China in 1937.
As their carrier was about to receive the first Japanese air strike at 0855, Hornet's first attack group sighted the cruisers Tone and Chikuma from Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe's Vanguard Force. The Hornet pilots were only interested in Japanese carriers, and they flew on.
Whereas fighter direction from Kinkaid's flagship Enterprise had been abysmal on this morning, the Japanese performed very efficiently. Lt Cdr Widhelm's Hornet attack group was detected by Shokaku's radar when the SBDs were ninety-seven miles (155 km) out from the Japanese carrier, and the Japanese fighter director expertly placed fourteen Zeros of Shokaku's combat air patrol in a position and at an altitude to intercept the incoming Hornet group effectively. The Zeros scythed through Widhelm's attack group and quickly isolated the four Wildcat fighters from the SBDs they were protecting. Two Wildcats were soon spiralling towards the sea.
The Zeros then turned their full attention to Lt Cdr Widhelm's sixteen SBDs. However, Widhelm had drawn his SBDs into a tight defensive formation that enabled the massed firepower of the SBD rear gunners to create an effective shield. The Japanese then concentrated their attack on Widhelm's plane, and finally struck his engine. Despite trailing smoke from his damaged engine, Widhelm refused to be diverted from his objective - the Japanese carriers.
At 0915, the Japanese carriers were sighted but Widhelm was not fated to take part in the Hornet attack. His labouring engine finally shut down, and he was forced to ditch his aircraft and share with his gunner a view of the attack from sea level. Another SBD was shot down, and two received sufficient damage from the Zeros to force them to turn back.
Lieutenant James "Moe" Vose assumed command when Widhelm's engine failed. Still under constant attack from the swarming Zeros, Vose led the remaining twelve Hornet SBDs on towards Vice Admiral Nagumo's flagship carrier Shokaku. At 0927, Vose was first to push over into his dive on Shokaku. He was closely followed in turn by another eleven SBDs. The Zeros followed them down, desperately trying to intercept the dive-bombers. Ignoring the storm of metal thrown up from the carrier and the Japanese escort warships, the gallant American SBD pilots scored an astonishing four hits on Shokaku with 1000-pound bombs. Having learned their lesson from Midway, the Japanese had not left the flight deck of Shokaku carelessly littered with fuelled aircraft, ordnance and gasoline hoses. Nevertheless, the four 1000-pound bombs tore the great ship's flight deck open, inflicted other serious damage, and forced the withdrawal of Shokaku from the battle.
Although Widhelm had repeatedly broadcast sighting reports after finding Shokaku, the first torpedo attack group from Hornet, the second attack group from Hornet, and the attack group from Enterprise all failed to receive these sighting reports, and all failed to sight a Japanese carrier on this morning. These groups launched attacks on the heavy cruisers of Rear Admiral Abe's Vanguard Force, but only the attack on heavy cruiser Chikuma by Hornet's second attack group achieved success. Chikuma received serious bomb damage and was forced to withdraw to Truk.