USS Yorktown CV-10

 The crew of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-10) stands at attention as the National Ensign is raised, during commissioning ceremonies at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia (USA), on 15 April 1943. Yorktown is freshly painted in Camouflage Measure 21. Two steel-hull submarine chasers (PC) are at right, on the other side of the pier.
 

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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