Twenty battle stars went to the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) for her World War II service, three more than any other ship, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command. NHHC credits her planes and guns with downing 911 enemy planes and her bombers with sinking 71 ships. The command calls her “the most decorated warship of World War II.”
The record covers almost the whole Pacific war. “Of the more than twenty major actions of the Pacific War, Enterprise engaged in all but two,” NHHC says. Her bombers also damaged or destroyed 192 more ships, by the command’s count.
Those figures come from the Naval History and Heritage Command’s “Big E” page on the carrier. NHHC records that she was laid down July 16, 1934, launched Oct. 3, 1936, and “commissioned May 12, 1938, with Captain Newton H. White in command.” Lulie H. Swanson was her sponsor.
A Yorktown-class carrier from Newport News
The Navy’s ship-history entry fills in the hull behind the nickname. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships entry for Enterprise (CV-6) lists her as a Yorktown-class carrier built at Newport News, Va., by Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co.
She was at sea when the war began. DANFS says Enterprise was returning from a mission to Wake Island, delayed by heavy seas, and that the delay “ensured that the ship eluded the Japanese attack on Oahu on 7 December.” Her air group’s reports from that day, including the Scouting Squadron Six report on the Pearl Harbor attack, are among the records NHHC lists for the ship.
Later she sailed with USS Hornet on the Doolittle Raid, which NHHC lists among her engagements. DANFS says Enterprise launched fighters for combat air patrol during that operation, and that her dive bombers “damaged guardboats No. 23 Nitto Maru and Nagato Maru.”
Midway and the battles that followed
At Midway, Enterprise was the flagship. DANFS says Spruance “broke his flag in Enterprise and on 28 May sailed from Pearl Harbor to meet the Japanese.” In the battle that followed in June 1942, the entry says, her dive bombers “dropped at least four bombs into Kaga,” and scored “a single hit and two near misses on Akagi.”
NHHC’s list of her notable battles continues through the Battle of the Eastern Solomons and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, and the command’s selected imagery for the ship includes a kamikaze attack.
Unit honors no other carrier matched
Battle stars were not her only distinction. NHHC says Enterprise received both the Presidential Unit Citation and the Navy Unit Commendation, the only carrier to receive both in World War II.
In 1945 she also received the British Admiralty Pennant, which NHHC says made her “the only ship awarded the prestigious decoration outside the Royal Navy.”
Navy Day crowds and the scrapyard
Peace brought one last public appearance. NHHC says Enterprise docked in New York Harbor for Navy Day on Oct. 27, 1945, drawing “more than a quarter million visitors,” and then made “multiple Magic Carpet voyages” bringing servicemembers home.
The end came slowly. “She was moored at Bayonne, New Jersey, on Jan. 18, 1946,” NHHC says, and she never sailed under her own power again. She was decommissioned on Feb. 17, 1947, and stricken from the List of Naval Vessels on Oct. 2, 1956.
A campaign to preserve her as a national memorial in Washington, D.C., failed; NHHC says “the repairs were deemed too expensive and ultimately doomed the project.” Per the command’s record, “Enterprise was fully scrapped by February 1960.”
Top image: USS Enterprise (CV-6) making 20 knots during post-overhaul trials in Puget Sound, Washington, on Sept. 13, 1945. Image Credit: U.S. Navy — Public domain / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.