Danville resident Bob Fish feels inspiration each time he walks up the gangplank to work. He’s the chief executive officer on the USS Hornet, now a museum berthed at the former Alameda Air Station, and he has unlimited appreciation for those who lived and worked onboard the 42,000-ton aircraft carrier through its service from 1943 to 1970.
“Imagine the dive bombers maneuvering, pulling out, letting go of the bombs, day in, day out for 15 months,” he said. “It’s hard to understand the valor. The only time they could sleep was at night because the kamikasis didn’t bomb at night.”
The vessel was being assembled in the shipyards under another name in October 1942 when word came that the USS Hornet had been sunk in an enemy air and surface attack. This Hornet had launched the famous Doolittle Raid on Japan in April 1942 and fought in the Battle of Midway. President Roosevelt commanded that the new aircraft carrier be christened with the historic name USS Hornet, to continue a line dating back to the Revolutionary War. When the new Hornet continued service in World War II, she participated in nearly every major action in the Pacific theater; she was attacked 59 times but never suffered a major hit.
As Fish walked through the ship’s passages, he spoke about those shipyards and the women who built the vessels. “They were housewives one minute, and the next minute they had welding torches and masks,” he said, shaking his head in admiration. He said the ship showed signs of being built with loving care, where the workers could have done a quick spot-weld but instead took the trouble to make a joint weld. “It speaks to the American spirit,” he said. “The war pulled everyone together.”
The USS Hornet teaches about teamwork, he explained, and about devotion to duty, and tremendous courage. Its “Live Aboard Youth Overnight Program” lets Scout troops and school groups experience the ship firsthand.
Fish said he loves standing on the forward bow when groups of Scouts arrive. They usually come in SUVs, each youth with a backpack and wired to hear his own music. “The kids get out of their vans and start to look up,” said Fish, and their jaws drop in awe at the majestic size of the ship before them. “They look up and they pull their earplugs out, and I know at that point we will have an opportunity to help them grow in this life.”
Many of the sailors onboard during World War II were only 16 years old, noted Fish, and by the time the Scouts leave they have an appreciation for their dedication and sacrifices. The Hornet was modernized in the 1950s and did combat duty off the coast of Vietnam in the ’60s. During this conflict, she suffered her last fatalities when a reconnaissance aircraft did not return Jan. 22, 1966.
But Fish is quick to point out that the Hornet is also special for its peacetime contributions, most notably for its part in space exploration. Some 15 million people around the world watched on July 24, 1969, and President Nixon watched from the bridge, when a helicopter returned to its flight deck after recovering Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins from the command nodule after the first walk on the moon. Armstrong’s footsteps on the hangar bay of the Hornet are outlined, where he walked from the helicopter to the Mobile Quarantine Facility, which had been designed, built and brought to the Hornet just for this purpose. These were his first footsteps back on planet earth after walking on the moon. The USS Hornet brought the astronauts to Hawaii, 825 miles away, where the unit was offloaded and transported to Houston.
Since Fish joined the USS Hornet Museum five years ago, he has worked on memorializing that part of its history. He was able to obtain the 10-year loan of a command module from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. He also obtained a Mobile Quarantine Facility.
“I spent three years researching the MQF,” Fish said, noting that the units were designed to temporarily house the astronauts after their return from the moon as a precaution against “moon germs.” Fish traced one of the units to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson and went in person to investigate. He was told there was some old trailer covered with a tarp tucked away on the grounds that fit the description and, sure enough, what looked like an Airstream trailer was in fact one of only four such units built. It is now owned by the USS Hornet Museum, is in the original position on the hangar deck, and is open to visitors.
Fish spent two years in the U.S. Marine Corps on active duty during the Vietnam War and helped build and run Marine Corps WestPac resupply data center on Okinawa from 1969-71. After his discharge, he remained in the high-tech career field and was involved in founding five startup companies, most of them in Silicon Valley.
In 1986, his company helped upgrade the White House communications system during President Reagan’s administration with Fish as program manager. “During this time, the space shuttle Challenger was destroyed in its launch explosion,” he said, “and I spent the next several years helping to rebuild America’s national space reconnaissance system.”
Fish has lived in the Danville area since 1971. In 1998, one of his high-tech companies was bought by Cisco Systems and he semi-retired. When he and his fiancÈe Jennifer began to plan their wedding in 2000 he saw something in a newspaper about the Hornet as an events venue and, despite the skepticism of friends, booked it, along with a three-piece band and caterers.
“It has a magnificent view of San Francisco,” he said, ” and I hired two docents to give tours.” He said the women spent longer on their tour than the men and had to be repeatedly called to dinner. “They saw everything,” he said. They tried out the bunks and visualized all that they had only heard about through their men.
But it was after the wedding, when Fish returned the tablecloths to the Hornet office, that he began to chat with Alan McKean, who was then the museum curator. “He was looking for someone with a ‘space’ background to create the Apollo exhibit and train the docents on the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 recoveries,” recalled Fish. He agreed to come onboard as CEO.
“I’ve focused on restoring the ship,” said Fish. “We have hundreds of volunteers. It’s a labor of love, the scraping, painting and polishing. We thrive on volunteers.” Indeed volunteers give the tours and man the gift shop, many of them World War II veterans who are happy to share their stories. The USS Hornet Museum also has 20 fulltime paid staff members. The ship was home to as many as 2,500 people at once during WWII, with all the facilities of a town. Fish said there are parts of the Hornet they have not had a chance to explore yet.
On Halloween the “Gray Ghost” was the site of a Monster Bash, capitalizing on its reputation for “haunted happenings.” Although Fish has never seen a ghost onboard, he told of several incidents that are hard to dispute. One time a group of Boy Scouts was resting in the fos’c’sle by the massive anchor chain anchor – each link weighs 120 pounds. When the guide mentioned ghosts, the boys scoffed. “Then a 50-pound wrench behind them lifted – and dropped,” Fish said. The Scouts – and leaders – raced out of the fos’c’sle double-time.
The USS Hornet was featured on Fox Family’s “Scariest Places,” and once when KRON was filming in the sick bay, suddenly a mattress had an indentation in the middle, as though a ghost had cooperatively claimed his deathbed for the newscasters. “The spirits are very friendly, they’ve never hurt anybody,” said Fish. He conjectured that with all the American pilots killed during the war, it makes sense that their spirits would still be in residence.
The USS Hornet also had quarters for Marines, who were kept separate from the Navy personnel. “The Hornet played a central role in several invasion forces, providing air cover for the USMC assault troops on shore,” said Fish. Both his father and his mother served in the Marine Corps during World War II. Fish said his father spoke very little about his wartime duty and it was only after he passed away in 2001 that Fish did some research.
“All I had were his discharge, a v-mail letter, his shellback card and three photos,” said Fish. Using a magnifying glass he noticed four tiny numbers in the generic postmaster return address – 1230 – that he e-mailed to a stamp collector. He received an e-mail in return: “Your Dad was with the Marine Fighter Unit VMF-124 and on that date they had just landed in Espiritu Santo having crossed the Pacific Ocean aboard the SS Lurline.”
From there Fish said it was easy to uncover information; he found other members of the squadron and learned they had been in Guadalcanal from February to October 1943. In April he and his wife flew to Australia and took a small ship that steamed through the Solomon Islands, with the first port of call Guadalcanal.
“We were joined by just over 100 other tourists, about 20 of whom were WWII veterans returning to the area for the first time since they fought there 60 years ago,” reported Fish. “We landed on the invasion beach just after sunrise.” The tour guide was a former Marine who related details about the hand-to-hand combat that took place.
The group experienced the heat, the humidity, the swarms of black flies by day and mosquitoes by night, and cutting kunai grass, and tried to imagine the experience of the young Marines carrying rifles, packs and hand grenades. Their tour had to be cautious due to rusted barbed wire and old foxholes but they knew it was nothing compared to the fear of having the enemy lying in wait.
“Keep in mind, the average age of these Marines was only 18, although my father was 25,” said Fish. “Yet they turned back every attack and endured almost unbearable conditions. I have gained an overwhelming respect – bordering on awe – for what these teenage soldiers accomplished under such horrid conditions and against such a fanatical foe.”
The USS Hornet was retired from service in 1970. Newer aircraft carriers were designed longer and wider to launch and land jet aircraft whereas those for WWII were for much slower and lighter propeller aircraft. The Hornet was part of a mothball fleet in Bremerton, Wash., until she was towed to Alameda Naval Air Station for a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII. In May 1995, the Aircraft Carrier Hornet Foundation was formed to save her from the scrap pile, and since then volunteers and staff members have worked to make her the living museum she is today, serving to educate the public about the country’s ventures into space, as well as its wartime battles at sea and in the air.
When Bob Fish walks down the gangplank and heads back to Danville, he bears the pride of the Hornet’s history in his head and in his heart. “It’s my way to give back to the community,” he said. “My goal is to see it preserved as a monument to peace.”
Remember the veterans
The USS Hornet Museum is offering free admission to veterans during the week prior to Veterans Day, Nov. 11. It will celebrate Veterans Day on Saturday, Nov. 12, with a ceremony beginning at 1 p.m. to include patriotic music, a benediction, speakers and a wreath-laying ceremony. The museum doors open at 10 a.m., and veterans are free that day. Also, the USS Hornet Museum is teaming up with the East Bay Blue Star Moms to provide morale-boosting “care packages” for troops deployed in the Middle East during the 2005 holiday period, so people who attend the ceremony have this chance to donate something to be shipped to the troops.
Visiting the USS Hornet Museum
The USS Hornet Museum is located at Pier 3, Alameda Point, in Alameda. It is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week. General admission is $14; youths 5-17 are $6. It also offers group tours, as well as community outreach through its youth live-aboard program. A service in the chapel is open to the public at 11 a.m. every Sunday. The Hornet also hosts big band dances, which draw as many as 1,250 people, many of whom dress in 1940s clothes to dance to music by Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and County Basie, as well as events for patriotic holidays. It is also available as a venue for corporate promotions, graduation proms, weddings and public events. For more information, call (510) 521-8448 or visit www.uss-hornet.org.
