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Dated May 25 and delivered by plane while the Yorktown was about a hundred miles from Oahu, the report that Nimitz read was sobering...One day ahead of schedule, on May 27, the Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor. The next morning, after Nimitz had cut orders voiding the safety rule of spending a day purging her tanks of stored aviation fuel, the Yorktown eased into Drydock Number One. The caissons closed behind her, and pumps began draining out the water. With at least a foot of water still remaining in the drydock, men in waders gathered to inspect the hull. One...

US NAVY AIRCRAFT CARRIER MUSEUMS (Click map for a high resolution image) Currently (July 2013) there are five US Navy Aircraft Carrier museums. Four are of Essex class carriers commissioned during World War II which underwent the SBC-125 refit in the 1950s to modernize them. All were commissioned in 1943 & served into modern times. The last, the USS Lexington, was decommissioned in 1991 after 48 years service. The other is the USS Midway, namesake of a larger class carrier built at the end of the war. She underwent two major refits, in the 1950s & in 1970 greatly enlarging...

MOUNT PLEASANT -- The aircraft carrier Yorktown played a heroic role in numerous battles for the Navy, from the time it was built in the 1940s until it was decommissioned in 1970. But as the longtime centerpiece of the floating maritime museum at Patriots Point, the inactive warship has been slowly losing a silent, corrosive and very costly war with nature. Officials at the military attraction estimated Tuesday that it would cost more than $100 million to dry dock and repair the ship's deteriorating steel hull. It's money that South Carolina does not have. Patriots Point USS Yorktown naval museums

The seven Medals of Honor listed below were stolen from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Museum located on the USS Yorktown at Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, on the night of June 27-28, 2004 Owen Hammerberg: Navy, World War II John Mihalowski: Navy, Peacetime 1923/1939 John Wilson: Army, Civil War Donald Truesdell: USMC, 2nd Nicaraguan Campaign Brent Woods: Army, Indian Campaign Hans Hansen: Navy, Boxer Rebellion Leslie Bellrichard: Army, Vietnam In the early-morning of June 28th, a custodian noticed that the large class case containing the medals had been broken into and the medals were missing. He alerted museum officials...

  Official U.S. Navy file photo of Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 2. View Larger Download HiRes   USS Yorktown Returns to Pascagoula, Completes Final DeploymentStory Number: NNS040816-18Release Date: 8/17/2004 3:16:00 AMBy Ensign Abbas Bandukwala, USS Yorktown Public Affairs, and Stacey Byington, Naval Station Pascagoula Public AffairsPASCAGOULA, Miss. (NNS) -- USS Yorktown (CG 48) will return home to Naval Station Pascagoula Aug. 17, after a successful six-month deployment with the USS Wasp (LHD 1) Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 2. Yorktown made key contributions to Operations Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and Market Time II in support of the global war on...

MOUNT PLEASANT--Tourists visiting the Yorktown aircraft carrier at Patriots Point are encouraged to take home a variety of souvenirs to remember their visit. Sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning, a thief took some collectibles that aren't offered in the gift shop -- seven Medals of Honor. The Medals of Honor were stolen from the Yorktown's Medal of Honor museum at Patriots Point, and the Mount Pleasant Police Department and FBI are asking for the public's help in finding them. The medals, some of which were donated by widows of the honored servicemen, are thought to have been stolen sometime...

Sailors from the USS Yorktown helped rescue 24 members of a Maltese oil tanker that collided with a fishing vessel and caught on fire Monday. At 7:30 a.m. Monday, the Maltese-flagged Everton made a distress call following the collision about 28 miles off the coast of Oman. The guided-missile cruiser Yorktown, operating about 90 miles away, dispatched its SH-60B helicopter to aid in the search-and-rescue. As of Friday, one Everton crewmember was still listed as missing. Several commercial vessels initially responded and helped pick up 24 of the 25 Everton crewmen who abandoned their 567-foot ship. The Yorktown sent its...

Story Number: NNS040322-10 Release Date: 3/22/2004 3:34:00 PM From Commander, Joint Forces Maritime Component Commander/Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/Commander, U.S. 5th Fleet Public Affairs MANAMA, Bahrain (NNS) -- USS Yorktown (CG 48) aided in the recovery of two dozen mariners March 22, after their tanker collided with a fishing vessel and caught fire off the coast of Oman. At approximately 7:30 a.m. local time, motor vessel Everton made a bridge-to-bridge distress call indicating they had collided with fishing vessel Chun Ying, resulting in a fire amidships and possibly rupturing Everton’s oil tanks, fueling the fire. Several commercial vessels nearby...

USS Yorktown Deploys as Part of Expeditionary Strike GroupStory Number: NNS040218-01Release Date: 2/18/2004 7:16:00 AM By Stacey Byington, Naval Station Pascagoula Public AffairsPASCAGOULA, Miss. (NNS) -- The guided-missile cruiser USS Yorktown (CG 48) and its crew of approximately 400 deployed Feb. 17 from its homeport at Naval Station Pascagoula to be part of the USS Wasp (LHD 1) Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), which is making its maiden deployment as an ESG in support of the global war on terrorism. The ESG concept is centered on the proven flexibility and combat power of a combined Amphibious Readiness Group and Marine...

<p>Senator John F. Kerry has decided to trade "Old Ironsides" for the USS Yorktown, planning to stand before the aircraft carrier on Sept. 2 to publicly declare his candidacy for president.</p> <p>The Massachusetts Democrat had considered using the USS Constitution in Charlestown, the Navy's oldest commissioned warship, as a backdrop for the announcement. But campaign aides said Kerry decided to change the location to the Yorktown, which is docked off Charleston, S.C., both to gain publicity in the politically important state as well as to counter the trip President Bush took to an aircraft carrier May 1 to declare an end to major combat operations in Iraq.</p>

Follow the two "Click Here" links on the home page, captioned "Spectacular Pictures of US Navy in 2003 War in Iraq" and "Spectacular photographs of US Navy flight operations Gulf War, The War in the Middle East 2001". The first takes you to thumbnails, the second to an excellent essay. Our aircraft carriers are this nation's phalanxes, at once frightening weapons and symbols of American freedom. Few countries can build such behemoths; fewer still operate them with any degree of efficiency. Germany in its darkest hours never launched a single one. Japan's were long ago sent to the bottom of...