the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. At this time, her air group consisted of eighteen Zeros, eighteen D3As and nine B5Ns. At 05:00 on 26 October 1942, she had launched fourteen Zeros and a few D3As to land at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, which had been falsely reported by the Imperial Japanese Army as in their hands, but they were greeted by Marine Grumman F4F Wildcats and all were shot down. At 09:30, Jun'yō launched another air strike that attacked the carrier , the battleship and the light cruiser , scoring hits on the latter two, but inflicting little substantial damage. Three D3As and a B5N were shot down by returning Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers. Kakuta ordered another air strike to be launched at 14:15, using six B5Ns from the damaged and nine D3As from both carriers. Shortly afterwards, more aircraft were launched to attack the American ships, including six B5Ns and six D3As escorted by half a dozen Zeros. All of these aircraft attacked the carrier , which had been badly damaged by the attacks earlier in the day. American damage control measures had been partially successful, but one torpedo hit by a B5N from Shōkaku increased her list from 7.5° to 14.5° and near-misses by the dive bombers started enough seams in her plating that her list increased to 18°. The Americans finally ordered the ship abandoned and the last wave of dive bombers hit Hornet twice more, but inflicted little further damage. In mid-November 1942, Jun'yō was tasked to provide air cover for the convoy bringing reinforcements for the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal during the three-day-long Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The ship had twenty-seven A6M3 Zeros, a dozen D3A2s and nine B5N2s for this task. Six of her Zeros were on Combat Air Patrol when the convoy was discovered by two SBDs from Enterprise and shot down one dive bomber after it had made its spot report. They were unable to protect the convoy against further attacks by aircraft based at Henderson Field; seven transports were sunk and the remaining four transports were damaged before the end of the day. That afternoon, Enterprise had been discovered by a searching B5N and Jun'yō launched an air strike with her remaining aircraft, but they failed to locate the American carrier. In December 1942 and January 1943, the carrier covered several convoys that brought reinforcements to Wewak, New