NavList:

For those still wondering.  I gave up googling 9^th Dec 1941, because Google immediately assumes you meant to write 7^th and gives you pages of Pearl Harbor.  Instead, I decided to start googling likely ship names.  Giving up the temptation to check if there was ever a USS Venus (there was but not until 1943), I googled USS Jupiter and bingo.  She was a USN Fleet Collier converted in 1920 to become the USN’s first aircraft carrier.  She was renamed at the same time USS Langley after the US aviation pioneer and astronomer.  She was later converted to a seaplane tender, and it was while in this guise that on 9^th December 1941 she fired off 300 rounds at the planet Venus mistaking it for a flash of sunlight reflected from a Japanese aircraft.  She was scuttled on 27Feb 1942 following an air attack.  Overall, it’s believed that a total of 319 of her crew and USAAF pilots onboard were killed either in Langley or when rescue ships carrying her survivors were also lost.  DaveP