On the night of April 26, 1952, the destroyer-minesweeper USS Hobson turned hard left into the path of the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. The carrier struck her amidships on the starboard side. The Hobson broke in two. Her stern sank immediately. Her bow floated for about four minutes, then went under.
One hundred and seventy-six men died. Sixty-one survived. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander W.J. Tierney, was not among the survivors.
Nobody knows why he turned.
The setup
The task group was steaming through the North Atlantic, roughly 900 kilometers southeast of St. John’s, Newfoundland — position 42°21’N, 44°15’W. They were en route to Gibraltar. The Wasp (CV-18), an Essex-class carrier, was conducting night flight operations, recovering aircraft. The Hobson (DMS-26), a Gleaves-class destroyer converted to a minesweeper, was serving as plane guard — stationed astern of the carrier to pick up any pilots who ditched on landing.
Two other destroyers were in the formation: USS Rodman (DD-456) and USS Ross (DD-563).
The Wasp turned into the wind to recover aircraft. This was routine. The plane guard’s job was to follow astern.
The turn
At 2224, the Hobson made a hard left turn. She crossed directly in front of the Wasp’s bow.
The carrier was making roughly 27 knots. At that speed, a 27,000-ton ship doesn’t stop. She doesn’t turn fast enough either. The Wasp’s bow struck the Hobson on her starboard side, amidships, and cut her nearly in half.
The stern section flooded and sank almost instantly. The bow section stayed afloat long enough for some men to jump clear. Four minutes after the collision, both halves were on the bottom.
The rescue
The Wasp herself was damaged — a 75-foot gash in her hull below the waterline. But she stayed afloat and launched boats. The Rodman closed in and pulled men from the water.
Of the Hobson’s crew of 237, sixty-one were rescued. Some were picked up by the Rodman, others by Wasp’s boats. The water was cold. The North Atlantic in April runs around 4°C. Men who weren’t pulled out quickly didn’t last.
Tierney was seen diving from the bridge into the sea moments before impact. His body was never recovered.
The inquiry
The Navy convened a court of inquiry. The finding was direct: the sole cause of the collision was “the unexplained left turn of the Hobson” and it represented a “grave error in judgment” by her commanding officer.
That was as far as the explanation went. Tierney was dead. He left no orders on record. No one on the bridge who survived could explain what he intended.
The theories
Several possibilities have been discussed in the decades since. None have been confirmed.
One theory: Tierney misread the carrier’s heading and turned the wrong way. During night flight ops, the carrier turns into the wind. The plane guard has to anticipate which way the carrier will swing. If Tierney thought the Wasp was turning to starboard, he might have cut left to reposition. But the Wasp was turning to port.
Another theory: he was trying to avoid the aircraft landing pattern. Planes on approach come in from astern. A plane guard sitting directly behind the carrier could be in the flight path. Tierney may have been trying to clear out of the way.
A third: simple fatigue. Night operations in the North Atlantic. Poor visibility. A moment of confusion on the bridge, and by the time anyone realized the error, the Wasp was already on top of them.
None of these explanations have any evidence behind them. They’re reconstructions, not facts. The Navy’s official position remains what it was in 1952: the cause of the turn is unknown.
What stayed
The Hobson was the largest peacetime loss of life in the U.S. Navy since the sinking of USS Thresher eleven years later — though Thresher was a submarine that imploded at depth, a different kind of disaster. The Hobson’s loss was a surface collision in a routine formation, during a routine operation, in peacetime.
The Navy changed its plane guard procedures after the Hobson. Escorts were repositioned farther astern, with clearer rules about maintaining separation from the carrier during flight operations.
The Hobson’s wreck has never been located. She lies somewhere on the floor of the North Atlantic in roughly 4,000 meters of water. The 176 men who died with her are still there.
A memorial plaque at the Navy Memorial in Washington lists their names. The last line of the court of inquiry report is the closest thing to an epitaph the Navy offered: the cause was an unexplained left turn, and the man who made it didn’t survive to say why.
