USS Yorktown

The Vessel

USS Yorktown (CV-5) was the lead ship of the Yorktown-class aircraft carriers of the United States Navy, commissioned at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company on 30 September 1937. She was 246 metres long, 25,900 tons standard displacement, carried 90 aircraft, and designed for 32.5 knots on four shafts. She was the principal American aircraft carrier design of the late 1930s; her successful service record would ultimately produce the Essex-class carriers that would dominate the Pacific War from 1943 forward.

Her commanding officer in the Pacific through 1942 was Captain Elliott Buckmaster, 52 years old, a career naval aviator. Her air group, the Yorktown Air Group, was considered the most experienced carrier air group in the U.S. Navy by mid-1942: they had participated in the January 1942 raids on the Marshall Islands, the February Wake Island raid, the March 1942 raid on the Salamaua-Lae invasion force in New Guinea, and the Coral Sea engagement of 7-8 May 1942.

Her Coral Sea damage of 8 May 1942 had included a bomb hit that had penetrated her flight deck and detonated in a fireroom, killing 66 men. Normal American Pacific Fleet repair estimates for her damage were three months in dry dock. Under the specific pressure of the approaching Japanese Midway operation, Admiral Chester Nimitz ordered that the repairs be completed in 72 hours.

The Voyage

USS Yorktown arrived at Pearl Harbor on 27 May 1942 and entered Dry Dock Number One at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard at 17:10. The dock was pumped out within three hours. Approximately 1,400 civilian Navy Yard workers, joined by her own crew, worked around the clock for 72 hours on emergency repairs to her flight deck, her fireroom, her bulkheads, and her internal fuel and electrical systems. Many of the repairs were improvisational: new flight-deck planking was laid over the damage; structural beams were replaced with shorter cut-to-fit steel; repair parts were taken from the carrier USS Saratoga then in dock for turbine repair.

At 09:00 on 30 May 1942, less than three days after entering dry dock, USS Yorktown departed Pearl Harbor under her own power, operational, and with a combat-ready air group aboard. The repair represented approximately one-third the time that the same work would have required in peacetime. She sailed north-northwest to join Rear-Admiral Raymond Spruance's Task Force 16 (Enterprise and Hornet) at the pre-arranged Point Luck position northeast of Midway Atoll.

On the morning of 4 June 1942 Yorktown and her two sister carriers were in position to receive the Japanese Striking Force attack and to launch their own counterstrike. The subsequent air battle, between approximately 07:00 and 10:30 on 4 June 1942, resulted in the sinking of three Japanese fleet carriers (Kaga, Akagi, Sōryū) by American dive-bombing attacks. A fourth Japanese carrier, Hiryū, remained operational and launched counter-strikes against the American task force through the afternoon.

The Disaster

Hiryū's first counter-strike reached USS Yorktown at 14:15 on 4 June 1942. Eighteen Aichi D3A Val dive-bombers attacked the carrier despite a heavy American combat air patrol. Three bombs struck Yorktown: one on her flight deck, one in her smokestack, one in the auxiliary machinery space. The hits caused serious damage: her smokestack fire knocked out her boilers, her flight deck was unserviceable, and her speed fell to 6 knots. Captain Buckmaster ordered abandon-ship preparations but kept a skeleton crew aboard to attempt damage control.

Her crew's damage-control work was effective. Within two hours of the first attack, her boilers were back on line and she was making 20 knots; her flight deck was partially repaired. At 16:30 on 4 June 1942, Hiryū's second strike (ten Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bombers) reached her. Two torpedo hits on her port side disabled her steering and reopened her flooding; the list increased to 26 degrees. Captain Buckmaster ordered complete abandon-ship at 17:10 on 4 June. 2,270 men were transferred to the escorting destroyers.

Despite the heavy damage and the abandon-ship order, Yorktown did not immediately sink. She floated through the night of 4-5 June 1942, still trimmed on her port side but structurally intact. At dawn on 6 June 1942, a salvage party under Commander Clarence Aldrich returned aboard and began pumping her out. Salvage tug USS Vireo took her in tow at 13:30 on 6 June with the salvage party working aboard.

At 13:35 on 6 June 1942, the Japanese submarine I-168 under Lieutenant-Commander Yahachi Tanabe, which had been searching for the American carrier task force since the previous afternoon, located Yorktown under tow. Tanabe closed to 1,300 metres and fired a spread of four Type 95 torpedoes at 13:36. Two torpedoes struck Yorktown; one passed between her and her escort; the fourth struck the destroyer USS Hammann on her starboard side. Hammann was broken in two by the impact and sank in four minutes; 81 of her crew died.

Yorktown, already weakened by 4 June's damage, could not absorb the two new torpedo hits. She listed further to port through the afternoon of 6 June 1942. At dawn on 7 June 1942, she capsized and sank, in approximately 5,000 metres of water, 800 kilometres northwest of Midway Atoll.

The Legacy

The Battle of Midway, 4-7 June 1942, was the strategic turning point of the Pacific War. The Japanese loss of four fleet carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū) ended Japanese naval offensive capability for the remainder of the war; the American loss of Yorktown, while painful, was not strategically disabling because American carrier production over the subsequent 24 months would produce 17 new Essex-class carriers. The battle is generally considered the moment at which the strategic initiative in the Pacific War passed to the United States.

Yorktown's specific contribution to Midway went beyond her combat role. The 72-hour Pearl Harbor repair of 27-30 May 1942 has been studied by American naval historians and engineering academies as the single most impressive damage-repair achievement in the Pacific War. Admiral Nimitz's decision to order the emergency repair, and the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard workforce's execution of it, meant that Yorktown was available at Midway when otherwise she would have been on the West Coast. In the absence of Yorktown, the Battle of Midway would have been fought by two American carriers against four Japanese; the outcome would have been different.

The wreck of Yorktown was located in May 1998 by Robert Ballard's National Geographic-sponsored expedition aboard the U.S. Navy research vessel Laney Chouest. She lies at 5,060 metres depth, upright on the Pacific abyssal plain, intact except for the damage from her three bomb and two torpedo hits. Her flight deck planking is preserved; her aircraft (still in her hangar deck at the time of her abandonment) are identifiable. The wreck was formally protected as a war grave under the Sunken Military Craft Act of 2004.

The name USS Yorktown has been carried by four subsequent American warships: CV-10 (the Essex-class carrier that served through the Pacific War and into the Cold War, now a museum ship at Patriot's Point, South Carolina); CG-48 (a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, active 1984-2004); and the current USS Yorktown (DDG-136), a Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer commissioned 2025. The Yorktown Sailor's Memorial at Patriot's Point commemorates the 141 dead of CV-5 alongside the crews of CV-10. She was the Fighting Lady. She fought three engagements in 30 days and sank the fourth Japanese carrier at Midway by standing alive long enough for her air group to do its work.