USS Yorktown (CV-5) was an aircraft carrier that served in the United States Navy during World War II. Named after the 1781 Battle of Yorktown, she was commissioned in 1937. Yorktown was the lead ship of the three-ship . These large vessels were the first American carriers whose design was informed by actual experience with carrier operations, involving both larger vessels (the converted battlecruisers of the ) and, to a lesser extent, a smaller one (the primitive, experimental Langley; a newer small carrier, , had recently been completed, but not yet commissioned by the time Yorktown was laid down, and contributed nothing to the latter vessel's design).
After her commissioning Yorktown spent two years operating in the Atlantic before, in April 1939, transferring to the Pacific. Two years after that, in April 1941, she was one of a large number of major combatants that were transferred back to the Atlantic to take part in Neutrality Patrols, aimed primarily at monitoring German activity off America's east coast. The attack on Pearl Harbor took place while she was in port at Norfolk. Shortly after the attack she was sent back to the Pacific, arriving at San Diego in late December 1941. In January 1942 she escorted a troop convoy to Samoa; having completed this task she met up with her sister-ship, Enterprise, and in early February the two vessels collaborated on a series of raids on Japanese facilities in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. They then separated, with Yorktown proceeding on to Pearl Harbor, where she dropped off a consignment of much-needed spare aircraft for the base.
In late February 1942 she was back at sea, meeting up with the carrier , with the intention of participating in raids on the towns of Rabaul and Gasmata, on the island of New Britain. Plans were changed, however, and the two carriers instead launched, on 10 March 1942, a successful attack on Japanese shipping off the north coast of New Guinea, from a launch point just off the south coast. Following this strike Lexington returned to Pearl Harbor, while Yorktown stayed on in the South Pacific for another two months, ultimately spending 100 days away from a major port.
In early May, while awaiting Lexingtons return, Yorktown aircraft sank or damaged several small warships supporting the invasion of Tulagi, an administrative center in the Solomon Islands. Yorktowns intervention tipped off the Japanese as to the American presence in the area and helped precipitate, a few days later, the Battle of the Coral Sea, when Japanese carrier forces escorting a landing force intent on taking Port Moresby, on the south coast of New Guinea, confronted a task force built around Yorktown and Lexington in history's first carrier-versus-carrier battle. American carrier planes sank the light aircraft carrier on 7 May, and badly damaged the fleet carrier Shōkaku the following day, but Lexington was sunk and Yorktown severely damaged in the exchange.
Despite the damage, Yorktown was able to make it back to Hawaii, entering drydock at Pearl Harbor during the last week of May and being patched up well enough in only three days to be more-or-less combat-ready. This rapid repair job was important because American intelligence had determined that a major Japanese force was already heading toward Midway Atoll, a thousand miles west of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese hoped to draw the Americans into a decisive battle at Midway, but tipped off, the U. S. Navy made plans to ambush the Japanese fleet. Repaired, Yorktown was available to join her two sister-ships, Enterprise and Hornet, in executing this plan.
On the morning of 4 June 1942 aircraft from Yorktown and Enterprise inflicted ultimately fatal damage on three Japanese fleet carriers. Later in the day Yorktown absorbed the full force of two counterattacks launched by the sole surviving Japanese fleet carrier, which left Yorktown crippled. Salvage efforts on Yorktown were encouraging, but on 6 June she was struck by two torpedoes fired by a Japanese submarine, and sank the next day.
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. At the same time her signal bridge atop the tripod foremast was enclosed, and several 50 caliber machine guns were fitted in galleries along the edges of the flight deck.
Fleet Problem XXI—a two-part exercise—included some of the operations that would characterize future warfare in the Pacific. The first part of the exercise was devoted to training in making plans and estimates; in screening and scouting; in coordination of combatant units; and in employing fleet and standard dispositions. The second phase included training in convoy protection, the seizure of advanced bases, and, ultimately, the decisive engagement between the opposing fleets. The last pre-war exercise of its type, Fleet Problem XXI contained two exercises (comparatively minor at the time) where air operations played a major role. Fleet Joint Air Exercise 114A prophetically pointed out the need to coordinate Army and Navy defense plans for the Hawaiian Islands, and Fleet Exercise 114 proved that aircraft could be used for high altitude tracking of surface forces—a significant role for planes that would be fully realized in the war to come.
With the retention of the Fleet in Hawaiian waters after the conclusion of Fleet Problem XXI, Yorktown operated in the Pacific off the west coast of the United States and in Hawaiian waters until the following spring, when the success of German U-boats preying upon British shipping in the Atlantic required a shift of American naval strength. Thus, to reinforce the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, the Navy transferred a substantial force from the Pacific including Yorktown, Battleship Division Three (the s), three light cruisers, and 12 accompanying destroyers.
Neutrality patrol
Yorktown departed Pearl Harbor on 20 April 1941 in company with destroyers , , and ; headed southeast, transited the Panama Canal on the night of 6–7 May, and arrived at Bermuda on 12 May. From that time until the United States entered the war, Yorktown conducted four patrols in the Atlantic, ranging from Newfoundland to Bermuda and logging steamed while enforcing American neutrality.
Although Adolf Hitler had forbidden his submarines to attack American ships, the men who manned the American naval vessels were not aware of this policy and operated on a wartime footing in the Atlantic.
On 28 October, while Yorktown, the battleship , and other American warships were screening a convoy, a destroyer picked up a submarine contact and dropped depth charges while the convoy itself made an emergency starboard turn, the first of the convoy's three emergency changes of course. Late that afternoon, engine repairs to one of the ships in the convoy, Empire Pintail, reduced the convoy's speed to .
During the night, the American ships intercepted strong German radio signals, indicating submarines probably in the vicinity reporting the group. Rear Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, commanding the escort force, sent a destroyer to sweep astern of the convoy to destroy the U-boat or at least to drive him under.
The next day, while cruiser scout planes patrolled overhead, Yorktown and the cruiser fueled their escorting destroyers, finishing the task as dusk fell. On 30 October, Yorktown was preparing to fuel three destroyers when other escorts made sound contacts. The convoy subsequently made 10 emergency turns while the destroyers and dropped depth charges, with assisted in developing the contact. Anderson later made two more depth charge attacks, noticing "considerable oil with slick spreading but no wreckage".
The short-of-war period was becoming more like the real thing as each day went on. Elsewhere on 30 October, torpedoed the destroyer , sinking her with a heavy loss of life, the first loss of an American warship in World War II. After another Neutrality Patrol stint in November, Yorktown put into Norfolk on 2 December.
World War II