Yorktown-class aircraft carrier

The Yorktown class was a class of three aircraft carriers built for the United States Navy and completed shortly before World War II, the , , and . They immediately followed , the first U.S. aircraft carrier built as such, and benefited in design from experience with Ranger and the earlier , which were conversions into carriers of two battlecruisers that were to be scrapped to comply with the Washington Naval Treaty, an arms limitation accord.

These ships bore the brunt of the fighting in the Pacific during 1942, and two of the three were lost: Yorktown, sunk on 07 June 1942 after the Battle of Midway, and Hornet, later heavily damaged by the Japanese at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, was unsuccessfully scuttled by the US Navy and left to be sunk by the Japanese.

Enterprise, the sole survivor of the class, was the most decorated ship of the U.S. Navy in the Second World War. After efforts to save her as a museum ship failed, she was scrapped in 1958.

Development

thumb|leftAfter the commissioning of the two 33,000 [long] ton (33,530-tonne) Lexington class ships in 1927-28 there was a strong sentiment within the Navy that the remaining 69,000 tons (70,107 tonnes) of carriers allowed under the Washington Naval Treaties should be built as quickly as possible. The idea that the additional tonnage should come in the form of multiple ships built to a single design was also widely accepted, but different factions advocated for three different packages--either five ships, displacing 13,800 tons (14,021 tonnes) each; or four ships, displacing 17,250 tons (17,527 tonnes) each; or three ships, displacing 23,000 tons (23,369 tonnes) each. The consensus as of the late 1920s was that the largest number of decks would offer the greatest total aircraft capacity, and a decision was therefore made to order the five small carriers. For once government parsimony proved beneficial: Congress, on 13 February 1929, authorized construction of only one of the 13,800-ton carriers, which became Ranger. Years would pass before funding for additional carriers was approved, and by the time it was, experience with Lexington and Saratoga had demonstrated the pronounced advantages of larger carriers, to such a degree that, even before Ranger was commissioned, the selection of such a small, slow, and poorly protected design was widely considered to have been unwise.

The desirability of larger size having been settled on, in the early 1930s the question of exactly how to use up the tonnage remaining under Washington Treaty limits arose once again, leading to the development of a new series of schemes. Factoring in Ranger, designers now had approximately 55,200 tons (56,086) tonnes left to work with. Again, one faction argued for the creation of a uniform class, now to consist of three 18,400-ton (18,695-tonne) carriers, to fill the quota, but a strong opposing faction wanted to incorporate more of the features found on the much larger Lexingtons (high speed, torpedo protection, and an armored belt, any one of which would have been difficult to accommodate on an 18,400-ton displacement) into at least some ships. These catapults were intended as substitutes for the lower-level flying-off decks that had been adopted by the British and Japanese in the 1920s, which allowed aircraft to be launched straight forward off both the upper flight deck and the deck below it at the same time, allowing the launch of more aircraft quickly in a scramble situation. Enterprise later participated in the first offensive actions against Japan, launching attacks against the Marshall Islands, Wake, and Marcus Island.

Yorktown transferred to the Pacific on 16 December 1941 and later raided the Gilbert Islands in the same operation as Enterprise. Along with , she raided bases in New Guinea, then participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Her planes helped sink the and damaged the carrier . Damaged by Japanese carrier aircraft, Yorktown returned to Pearl Harbor and was hastily repaired in time to participate in the Battle of Midway.

Hornet spent the first months of the war training in Norfolk, Virginia, before being assigned to the Doolittle Raid. Loaded with a squadron of B-25 bombers and escorted by Enterprise, the ship launched the first air raids against the Japanese mainland. which destroyed the elevator and severely damaged her hangar deck. She was still out of action on V-J Day but was subsequently fitted out for Operation Magic Carpet, ferrying over 10,000 veterans home from Europe.

thumb|Enterprise laid up in 1958

By the end of World War II, Enterprise had been considerably modified. Her final displacement was 32,060 tons and her final armament was 8 single 5-inch/38 caliber DP guns, 40 40 mm Bofors AA guns, 6 quad and 8 twin (replacing the ineffective 1.1"/75 caliber gun quad mounts which the Yorktown class had initially been fitted with) and 50 single 20 mm Oerlikon AA cannons. The Yorktowns had proved to be vulnerable to torpedoes, and while undergoing repairs at Bremerton, Washington, from July to October, 1943, Enterprise received an extensive refit, which included an anti-torpedo blister that significantly improved her underwater protection.

With the commissioning of the more advanced Essex and carriers, Enterprise was surplus for post war needs. She entered New York Naval Shipyard on 18 January 1946 for deactivation, and was decommissioned on 17 February 1947. Stricken from the list in 1959 after multiple attempts to preserve her as a museum and memorial, ex-Enterprise met her fate in the breaker's yards at Kearny, New Jersey, in 1960, although several artifacts were retained.

Yorktown-class aircraft carrier

Development

See also

Notes

References

External links