USS
Yorktown (CV/CVA/CVS-10) is one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers
built during World War II for the United States Navy. Initially to have
been named Bonhomme Richard, she was renamed Yorktown while still under
construction, after the Yorktown-class aircraft carrier USS Yorktown
(CV-5), which was sunk at the Battle of Midway. She is the fourth U.S.
Navy ship to bear the name, though the previous ships were named for the
1781 Battle of Yorktown. Yorktown was commissioned in April 1943, and
participated in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations,
earning 11 battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation.
Decommissioned
shortly after the end of the war, she was modernized and recommissioned
in February 1953 as an attack carrier (CVA), and served with
distinction during the Korean War. The ship was later modernized again
with a canted deck, eventually becoming an anti-submarine carrier (CVS)
and served for many years in the Pacific, including duty in the Vietnam
War, during which she earned five battle stars. The carrier served as a
recovery ship for the December 1968, Apollo 8 space mission, the first
crewed ship to reach and orbit the Moon, and was used in the 1970 film
Tora! Tora! Tora!, which recreated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
and in the 1984 science fiction film The Philadelphia Experiment.
Yorktown
was decommissioned in 1970 and in 1975 became a museum ship at Patriots
Point, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where she was designated a
National Historic Landmark.
Starboard side view of the carrier Yorktown (Essex-class) with an F6F-3 Hellcat fighter of VF-1 on the flight deck above the athwartship hangar deck catapult, June 1943. |
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