FOLEY, Ala. — Eighty-eight year old George Coaker was 22 when the USS Hornet (CV-8) was sunk 66 years ago this Oct. 26.

He was a Pharmacist Mate Third Class on the aircraft carrier and says today he thinks more of the event now than he did right after it happened.

On Oct. 26, 1942, the Hornet and its complement of approximately 2,800 battle-seasoned crew and pilots was poised for yet another major engagement in the South Pacific. The Hornet (CV-8) was launched Dec. 14, 1940, in Newport News, Va. On April 18, 1942, the aircraft carrier came within 600 miles of the Japanese coast and launched Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle’s “Toyko Raiders,” whom Coaker saw take off in gale-like weather.

A couple of months later the Hornet and its crew took part in the Battle of Midway, one of the decisive battles of the war and a turning point in the conflict. The Japanese lost four large carriers and 258 planes in the battle, but of 41 torpedo planes launched by American carriers during the battle, only six returned. The USS Yorktown was sunk during the engagement.

On that day 66 years ago next week, however, in the Battle of Santa Cruz Island northeast of Guadalcanal, the Hornet and its crew were fighting off a coordinated Japanese dive bombing and torpedo plane attack and sustained such damage that the Hornet went down. Coaker and the rest of the carrier’s crew eventually went into the water.

Coaker said approximately 10 percent of the Hornet’s crew was killed in the battle.

“I was in the Medical Department, so we went down below decks and got mattresses off the bunks and then put a weight in the mattresses and put the bodies in,” he said recently.

“About every 15 sailors that were deceased - the chaplain was there - we put them overboard and they went straight to the bottom so the sharks wouldn’t get them.”

In an interview shortly after the battle took place, Coaker described the events leading up the crew going into the water. He said the crew was on the Hornet’s starboard side and most of the bombs that struck the carrier landed on the port side. He called that a stroke of luck back then.

Coaker was in the water over six hours before being picked up. He was able to right a life raft and, with the help of another sailor, pull nine crew mates from the water. As the Japanese bombed the abandoned ship, sailors in the water were in peril.

Coaker says today the same thing he told a San Diego, Calif., newspaper in December 1942, namely, “If ever I prayed for good Japanese bomb sights, it was then.”

Coaker, a 1939 graduate of Foley High School, was born in Loper, Ala. He lived in Foley when he enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 3, 1941. Eight days later he was in active service.

He worked in Tallahassee, Fla., as a clerk in a drug store before entering the service. As it turned out, that was a line of work he followed in the service and in civilian life.

He was called to active duty at the Naval Hospital in Pensacola, then received order for the Hornet (CV-8), a carrier that was over 809 feet long.

For his military service, Coaker was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Award, American Area Award, Victory Medal, Good Conduct Medal, and American Defense Medal.

He was discharged as a Pharmacist Mate First Class and went on to finish college in Ohio in 1948 with a bachelor of science degree. He became a registered pharmacist in Ohio, Alabama and Florida.

In 1949, Coaker went to work for Eli Lilly and Co. in sales, a position he held with the firm up to 1979 when he retired.

Coaker and his wife, Sandra, live in Foley.