loyd Hardin has quite a loss of American lives since
story to tell. World War II to that date.
It was late on a Sat-
urday night, at approxi-
mately 10 p.m., on April 26,
1952.
Hardin, a Villa Ridge resi-
dent, was working as a yeoman
for the U.S. Navy on the USS
Wasp (CV-18), an aircraft car-
rier patrolling the waterways
during the Korean conflict.
“We were like policemen in
the sea,” said Hardin. “We
were in a different country ev-
ery week. We had to keep ev-
eryone happy.”
Wasp-Hobson Collision
On that April evening, the
USS Hobson (DD-464), de-
stroyer-minesweeper, was
steaming in formation with
Wasp.
While most of the crew was
sleeping, the captain of the
Hobson, confused due to the
Navy Veteran
darkness, gave the order to
change course several times,
unknowingly leading her
straight into the path of the
Wasp near the Azores Islands
Was Aboard
in the Atlantic Ocean. The
force of the massive collision
caused the Hobson to roll and
split in half, tossing the crew
into the ocean.
USS Wasp’s
The ship lay beneath a blan-
ket of water, at the bottom of
the ocean within a total of four
minutes.
Of the 176 Hobson crew
Collision
members who lost their lives,
150 were estimated to be sleep-
ing at the time of the collision,
never even given a chance at
survival.
With Hobson
The captain of the Hobson,
the most likely culprit of the
disaster, went down with his
ship.
Following the crash, Wasp
crew members hastened to
pull survivors from the wreck-
age. They managed to rescue
61 American military person-
nel.
The sinking of the USS Hob-
son became one of the great
tragedies of the Cold War. It
led to the greatest amount of
By Craig Vonder Haar
The Missourian Page 10 November 8, 2017
“It’s one of the largest peace-
time tragedies in U.S. history,”
Hardin said. “I was getting a
drink of water when it hap-
pened. The whole ship shook,
which stopped me in my tracks.
I got dressed in a hurry.”
The fact that Hardin said the
entire 32,000-ton ship shook
during the collision speaks vol-
umes of what kind of force was
involved.
“We’re talking about a huge
carrier. The Wasp was like
the city of Washington, Mo.,
floating in the ocean. That’s
how big it was,” Hardin said.
“There were 4,000 men on the
ship. We were carrying around
110 airplanes.
“The first thing I thought
was that he hit a fishnet. It
was dark and difficult to tell
what happened. And then they
told us to abandon ship. That
got my attention. We never
had to abandon ship. That was
canceled.”
Wasp and Rodman (DD-456)
rescued many survivors from
Hobson, but the ship and 176
of her crew were lost.
With no time to don lifejack-
ets, some survivors were left
treading water in the Atlantic
Ocean for up to four hours.
“Just imagine a ship break-
ing in two and sinking in a
four-minute period,” said Har-
din. “Most of the crewmen on
the Hobson didn’t survive.”
Recovery Efforts
With the Hobson destroyed
at sea, the attention turned to
the Wasp, which had gaping
holes torn into its bow.
“We lost the bow of our ship,”
said Hardin. “Engineers took
the bow from another ship and
used a crane to shove it into
place.”
After replacing the bow, it
took a barge to pull the Wasp
backward back to the states.
“It took a little over a week
to get back. We were moving
very slow, about 10 knots,”
said Hardin. “There was no