USS Yorktown (CV-5) was an aircraft carrier that served in the United States Navy during World War II. Named after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, she was commissioned in 1937. Yorktown was the lead ship of the , which was designed on the basis of lessons learned from operations with the converted battlecruisers of the and the smaller purpose-built .
Yorktown was at port in Norfolk during the attack on Pearl Harbor, having just completed a patrol of the Atlantic Ocean. She then sailed to San Diego in late December 1941 and was incorporated as the flagship of Task Force 17. Together with the carrier , she successfully attacked Japanese shipping off the east coast of New Guinea in early March 1942. Her aircraft sank or damaged several warships supporting the invasion of Tulagi in early May. Yorktown rendezvoused with Lexington in the Coral Sea and attempted to stop the invasion of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. They sank the light aircraft carrier on 7 May 1942 during the Battle of the Coral Sea, but did not encounter the main Japanese force of the carriers and until the next day. Aircraft from Lexington and Yorktown badly damaged Shōkaku, but the Japanese aircraft critically damaged Lexington, which was later scuttled, and severely damaged Yorktown.
Despite the damage suffered, Yorktown was able to return to Hawaii. Although estimates were that the damage would take two weeks to repair, Yorktown put to sea only 72 hours after entering drydock at Pearl Harbor, which meant that she was available for the next confrontation with the Japanese. Yorktown played an important part in the Battle of Midway in early June of that year. Yorktowns aircraft played crucial roles in crippling two Japanese fleet carriers. Yorktown also absorbed both Japanese aerial counterattacks at Midway which otherwise would have been directed at the carriers and . On 4 June, during the battle, aircraft from the Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryū crippled Yorktown after two attacks. She lost all power and developed a 23-degree list to port. Salvage efforts on Yorktown were encouraging, and she was taken in tow by . On 6 June, the Japanese submarine I-168 fired a salvo of torpedoes, two of which struck Yorktown, and a third sinking the destroyer , which had been providing auxiliary power to Yorktown. With further salvage efforts deemed hopeless, the remaining repair crews were evacuated from Yorktown, which sank on 7 June. The wreck of Yorktown was located by oceanographer Robert Ballard in 1998.
Early career
Yorktown was laid down on 21 May 1934 at Newport News, Virginia, by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co.; launched on 4 April 1936; sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt; and commissioned at the Naval Station Norfolk (NS Norfolk), Norfolk, Virginia, on 30 September 1937, Captain Ernest D. McWhorter in command.
After fitting out, the aircraft carrier trained in Hampton Roads, Virginia and in the southern drill grounds off the Virginia capes into January 1938, conducting carrier qualifications for her newly embarked air group.
Yorktown sailed for the Caribbean on 8 January 1938 and arrived at Culebra, Puerto Rico, on 13 January. Over the ensuing month, the carrier conducted her shakedown, touching at Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands; Gonaïves, Haiti; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Cristóbal, Panama Canal Zone. Departing Colón Bay, Cristóbal, on 1 March, Yorktown sailed for Hampton Roads, arrived on 6 March, and put into the Norfolk Navy Yard the next day for post-shakedown availability.
After undergoing repairs through the early autumn of 1938, Yorktown moved station from the navy yard to NS Norfolk on 17 October 1938 and soon headed for the Southern Drill Grounds for training.
Yorktown operated off the eastern seaboard, ranging from Chesapeake Bay to Guantanamo Bay, into 1939. As flagship for Carrier Division 2, she participated in her first war game—Fleet Problem XX—along with her sister-ship in February 1939. The scenario for the exercise called for one fleet to control the sea lanes in the Caribbean against the incursion of a foreign European power while maintaining sufficient naval strength to protect vital American interests in the Pacific. The maneuvers were witnessed, in part, by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, embarked in the heavy cruiser .
The critique of the operation revealed that carrier operations—a part of the scenarios for the annual exercises since the entry of into the war games in 1925—had achieved a new peak of efficiency. Despite the inexperience of Yorktown and Enterprise—comparative newcomers to the Fleet—both carriers made significant contributions to the success of the problem. The planners had studied the employment of carriers and their embarked air groups in connection with convoy escort, antisubmarine defense, and various attack measures against surface ships and shore installations. In short, they worked to develop the tactics that would be used when war actually came.
Pacific Fleet
Following Fleet Problem XX, Yorktown returned briefly to Hampton Roads before sailing for the Pacific on 20 April 1939. Transiting the Panama Canal a week later, Yorktown soon commenced a regular routine of operations with the Pacific Fleet. The Second World War started on 1 September 1939, but the USA was not yet involved. Operating out of San Diego into 1940,participated in Fleet Problem XXI that April. Yorktown was one of six ships to receive the new RCA CXAM radar in 1940.) She reached San Diego 30 December 1941 and soon became flagship for Rear Admiral Frank Fletcher's newly formed Task Force 17 (TF 17).
The carrier's first mission in her new theater was to escort a convoy carrying Marine reinforcements to American Samoa. Departing San Diego on 6 January 1942, Yorktown and her consorts covered the movement of Marines to Pago Pago in Tutuila to augment the garrison already there.
Having safely covered that troop movement, Yorktown, in company with sister ship Enterprise, departed Samoan waters on 25 January. Six days later, Task Force 8 (built around Enterprise), and TF 17 (around Yorktown) parted company. The former headed for the Marshall Islands, the latter for the Gilberts, each to take part in some of the first American offensives of the war, the Marshalls-Gilberts raids.
Yorktown was being screened by two cruisers, and and four destroyers. At 05:17, Yorktown launched 11 Douglas TBD-1 Devastators and 17 Douglas SBD-3 Dauntlesses, under the command of Commander Curtis W. Smiley. Those planes hit what Japanese shore installations and shipping they could find at Jaluit, but severe thunderstorms hampered the mission, and seven planes were lost. Other Yorktown planes attacked Japanese installations and ships at Makin and Mili Atolls.
The attack on the Gilberts by Task Force 17 had apparently been a surprise since the American force encountered no enemy surface ships. A single Japanese Kawanishi H6K "Mavis" flying boat attempted to attack American destroyers sent astern in hope of recovering the crews of planes overdue from the Jaluit mission. Antiaircraft fire from the destroyers drove off the intruder before it could cause any damage.
Later, another Mavis, or possibly the same one, came out of low clouds distant from Yorktown. The carrier withheld her antiaircraft fire in order not to interfere with the combat air patrol (CAP) fighters. Presently, the Mavis, pursued by two Grumman F4F Wildcats, disappeared behind a cloud. Within five minutes, the enemy patrol plane fell out of the clouds and crashed in the water.
Although TF 17 was slated to make a second attack on Jaluit, it was canceled because of heavy rainstorms and the approach of darkness. Therefore, the Yorktown force retired from the area.
Admiral Chester Nimitz later called the Marshalls-Gilberts raids "well conceived, well planned, and brilliantly executed." The results obtained by Task Forces 8 and 17 were noteworthy, Nimitz continued in his subsequent report, because the task forces had been obliged to make their attacks somewhat blindly, due to lack of hard intelligence data on the Japanese-held islands.
Yorktown subsequently put in at Pearl Harbor for replenishment before she put to sea on 14 February, bound for the Coral Sea. On 6 March, she rendezvoused with TF 11 which had been formed around Lexington and under the command of Vice Admiral Wilson Brown. Together they headed towards Rabaul and Gasmata to attack Japanese shipping there in an effort to check the Japanese advance and to cover the landing of Allied troops at Nouméa, New Caledonia. The two carriers were screened by eight heavy cruisers (including the Australian warships and ) and 14 destroyers. As they steamed toward New Guinea, the Japanese continued their advance toward Australia with a landing on 7 March at the Huon Gulf, in the Salamaua-Lae area on the eastern end of New Guinea.
Word of the Japanese operation prompted Admiral Brown to change the objective of TF 11's strike from Rabaul to the Salamaua-Lae sector. On the morning of 10 March 1942, American carriers launched aircraft from the Gulf of Papua. Lexington flew off her air group commencing at 07:49 and, 21 minutes later, Yorktown followed suit. The choice of the gulf as the launch point for the strike meant the planes would have to fly some across the Owen Stanley mountains, which provided security for the task force and ensured surprise, at the cost of poor flying conditions.
In the attacks that followed, Lexingtons Douglas SBD Dauntlesses from Scouting Squadron 2 (VS-2) dive-bombed Japanese ships at Lae at 09:22. The carrier's torpedo and bomber squadrons (VT-2 and VB-2) attacked shipping at Salamaua at 09:38. Her fighters (VF-2) split up into four-plane attack groups: one strafed Lae and the other, Salamaua. Yorktowns planes followed on the heels of those from Lexington. VB-5 and VT-5 attacked Japanese ships in the Salamaua area at 09:50, while VS-5 went after auxiliaries moored close in shore at Lae. The fighters of VF-42 flew CAP over Salamaua until they determined there was no air opposition, then strafed surface objectives and small boats in the harbor.
After carrying out their missions, the American planes returned to their carriers and 103 planes of the 104 launched were back safely on board by noon. One SBD-2 Dauntless had been downed by Japanese antiaircraft fire. The raid on Salamaua and Lae was the first attack by many pilots, and, if accuracy was below that achieved in later actions, the fliers gained invaluable experience which helped in the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway.
thumb|The "Jamboree parade" was a morale-boosting celebration held on 10 April 1942
Task Force 11 retired at on a southeasterly course until dark, when the ships steered eastward at and made rendezvous with Task Group 11.7 (TG11.7), three heavy cruisers (, HMAS Australia, and HMAS Canberra) and four destroyers under the Royal Australian Navy Rear Admiral John Crace, which provided cover for the carriers on their approach to New Guinea.
Yorktown resumed her patrols in the Coral Sea area, remaining at sea into April, out of reach of Japanese land-based aircraft and ready to carry out offensive operations whenever the opportunity presented itself. After the Lae-Salamaua raid, the situation in the South Pacific seemed temporarily stabilized, and Yorktown and her consorts in TF 17 put into the undeveloped harbor at Tongatabu, in the Tonga Islands, for needed upkeep, having been at sea continuously since departing from Pearl Harbor on 14 February.
However, the enemy was soon on the move. To Admiral Nimitz, there seemed to be "excellent indications that the Japanese intended to make a seaborne attack on Port Moresby the first week in May". Yorktown accordingly departed Tongatapu on 27 April, bound once more for the Coral Sea. TF 11—now commanded by Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, who had relieved Brown in Lexington—departed Pearl Harbor to join Fletcher's TF 17 and arrived in the vicinity of Yorktowns group, southwest of the New Hebrides Islands, on 1 May. The repairs were made in such a short time that the Japanese Naval Air Commanders would mistake Yorktown for another carrier as they thought she had been sunk during the previous battle. However, one critical repair to her power plant was not made: her damaged superheater boilers were not touched, limiting her top speed. Enterprises planes, meanwhile, hit and , effectively destroying them. The bombs from the Dauntlesses caught all of the Japanese carriers in the midst of refueling and rearming operations, causing devastating fires and explosions.
Three of the four Japanese carriers had been left burning wrecks. The fourth, , separated from her sisters, launched a striking force of 18 "Vals" and soon located Yorktown.
thumb|left|Smoke pours from Yorktown after being hit in the boilers by Japanese dive bombers at Midway
As soon as the attackers had been picked up on Yorktowns radar at about 13:29, she discontinued fueling her CAP fighters on deck and swiftly cleared for action. Her returning dive bombers were moved from the landing circle to open the area for antiaircraft fire. The Dauntlesses were ordered aloft to form a CAP. An auxiliary gasoline tank was pushed over the carrier's fantail, eliminating one fire hazard. The crew drained fuel lines and closed and secured all compartments. "Planes were flying in every direction", wrote Captain Buckmaster after the action, "and many were falling in flames."
Despite an intensive barrage and evasive maneuvering, three "Vals" scored hits. Two of them were shot down soon after releasing their bomb loads; the third went out of control just as his bomb left the rack. It tumbled in flight and hit just abaft the number two elevator on the starboard side, exploding on contact and blasting a hole about square in the flight deck. Splinters from the exploding bomb killed most of the crews of the two gun mounts aft of the island and on the flight deck below. Fragments piercing the flight deck hit three planes on the hangar deck, starting fires. One of the aircraft, a Yorktown Dauntless, was fully fueled and carrying a bomb. Prompt action by LT A. C. Emerson, the hangar deck officer, prevented a serious fire by activating the sprinkler system and quickly extinguishing the fire.
The second bomb to hit the ship came from the port side, pierced the flight deck, and exploded in the lower part of the funnel, in effect a classic "down the stack shot." It ruptured the uptakes for three boilers, disabled two boilers, and extinguished the fires in five boilers. Smoke and gases began filling the firerooms of six boilers. The men at Number One boiler remained at their post and kept it alight, maintaining enough steam pressure to allow the auxiliary steam systems to function.
A third bomb hit the carrier from the starboard side, pierced the side of number one elevator and exploded on the fourth deck, starting a persistent fire in the rag storage space, adjacent to the forward gasoline stowage and the magazines. The prior precaution of smothering the gasoline system with carbon dioxide undoubtedly prevented the gasoline from igniting.
While the ship recovered from the damage inflicted by the dive-bombing attack, her speed dropped to ; and then at 14:40, about 20 minutes after the bomb hit that had shut down most of the boilers, Yorktown slowed to a stop, dead in the water.
At about 15:40, Yorktown prepared to get underway; and, at 15:50, thanks to the black gang<!-- commented that reference because it was in the link blacklist.--> in No. 1 Fireroom having kept the auxiliaries operating to clear the stack gas from the other firerooms and bleeding steam from No. 1 to the other boilers to jump-start them, Chief Engineer Delaney reported to Captain Buckmaster that the ship's engineers were ready to make or better. Yorktown yanked down her yellow breakdown flag and up went a new hoist-"My speed 5." Captain Buckmaster had his signalmen hoist a huge new (10 feet wide and 15 feet long) American flag from the foremast. Sailors, including Ensign John d'Arc Lorenz called it an incalculable inspiration: "For the first time I realized what the flag meant: all of us — a million faces — all our effort — a whisper of encouragement." The remaining destroyers initiated a search for the enemy submarine (which escaped), and commenced rescue operations for Hammann survivors and the Yorktown salvage crew. Vireo cut the tow and doubled back to assist in rescue efforts.
thumb|Yorktown capsizing to port and sinking, 7 June 1942
Throughout the night of 6 June and into the morning of 7 June, Yorktown remained afloat; but by 05:30 on 7 June, observers noted that her list was rapidly increasing to port. Shortly afterwards, the ship turned over onto her port side, and lay afloat for several minutes, revealing the torpedo hole in her starboard bilge- the result of the submarine attack. Captain Buckmaster's American flag was still flying. All ships half-masted their colors in salute; all hands who were topside with heads uncovered came to attention, with tears in their eyes. Two patrolling PBYs appeared overhead and dipped their wings in a final salute.
Wreck
On 19 May 1998, the wreck of Yorktown was found and photographed by oceanographer Dr. Robert Ballard, discoverer of the wrecks of the and the . The wreck of Yorktown, deep, was sitting upright in excellent condition. Despite spending 56 years on the deep-sea floor, much of her paint and equipment were still visible. A more extensive survey of the wreck was conducted by in September 2023. During a livestreamed exploration of the wreck via remotely operated underwater vehicle on 19 and 20 April 2025 by NOAA Ocean Exploration, a car, suspected to be a 1941 Ford Super Deluxe Station Wagon ("Woodie"), could be seen within the ship's hangar along with at least three SBD Dauntless dive-bombers. The ROV also found intact murals on the ship's walls
The wreck is within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
Honors and legacy
Yorktown (CV-5) earned three battle stars for her World War II service, two of them for the significant part she had played in stopping Japanese expansion and turning the tide of the war at Coral Sea and at Midway.