Today's classic warship, USS Yorktown (CV-5)
Yorktown class
Displacement. 19,800
Lenght. 809' 6"
beam. 83' 1"
Draft. 28' 0"
Speed. 32.5 kt.
Complement. 2,919
Armament. 8 5", 22 .50-cal mg.
Aircraft. 81-85
Commissioned on 30 September 1937
Sunk by Japanese sub on 7 June 1942
USS Yorktown, a 19,800 ton aircraft carrier built at Newport News, Virginia, was commissioned on 30 September 1937. Operating in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas until April 1939, she then spent the next two years in the Pacific. In May 1941 Yorktown returned to the Atlantic, patrolling actively during the troubled months preceding the outbreak of war between the United States and the Axis powers.
Two weeks after the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Yorktown transited the Panama Canal to reinforce the badly damaged Pacific Fleet. The carrier's first combat operation was the Marshalls-Gilberts raid in early February 1942. Yorktown then steamed to the South Pacific, where she participated in a series of raids and other operations that climaxed in the Battle of Coral Sea in early May. In this action, in which she was damaged by enemy bombs, her planes attacked two Japanese aircraft carriers, helping to sink Shoho and damaging Shokaku.
Quick repairs at Pearl Harbor put Yorktown into good enough condition to participate in the Battle of Midway on 4-6 June 1942. Yorktown was flagship of Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's Task Force 17, which operated independently from the other two U.S. carriers throughout the battle. At dawn on 4 June, she launched ten scouting aircraft to search for Japanese ships. At about 0840, Yorktown launched a striking force of seventeen SBD-3 scout-bombers and twelve TBD-1 torpedo planes, accompanied by an escort of six F4F-4 fighters. These aircraft later attacked the Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu, fatally damaging her. Before noon, Yorktown launched another scouting group, which succeeded in locating the enemy carrier Hiryu about three hours later, making possible the attacks that destroyed the final element of the Japanese carrier striking force. Yorktown also maintained an airborne combat air patrol of other F4Fs throughout the morning and recovered two planes from USS Enterprise that had earlier attacked the Japanese carrier Kaga.
However, successive strikes by dive bombers and torpedo planes from Hiryu seriously damaged Yorktown, causing her abandonment during the afternoon of 4 June. Two days later, while salvage efforts were underway, the Japanese submarine I-168 torpedoed both the damaged carrier and the destroyer Hammann (DD-412), sinking the latter immediately and Yorktown shortly after daybreak on 7 June 1942. USS Yorktown's wreck was discovered and examined in May 1998, in surprisingly good condition after fifty-six years beneath more than three miles of sea water.
