USS Yorktown (CV-5) Photo Album 1

USS Yorktown (CV-5) shown shortly after completion in 1937. The three sisters – USS Yorktown, USS Hornet, and USS Enterprise – bore the brunt of the early battles of the war in the Pacific.

 

View of the underside of USS Yorktown’s flight deck structure, showing the impact hole made by the Japanese bomb that struck the ship amidships during the Battle of the Coral Sea. A patch over the flight deck’s broken wooden planking is visible within the hole. Note structural beam in lower part of the photo, distorted by the bomb’s passage.

 

View of damage on the third and fourth decks, amidships, aboard the USS Yorktown. This view looks forward and to starboard from the ship’s centerline at frame 110. The photographer is in compartment C-301-L, shooting down through the third deck into compartment C-402-A. The large hole in the deck was made by the bomb’s explosion. Many men were killed or badly injured in C-301-L, a crew’s messing space that was the assembly area for the ship’s engineering repair party.

 

USS Yorktown (CV-5) in Dry Dock # 1 at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, 29 May 1942, receiving urgent repairs for damage received in the Battle of Coral Sea. She left Pearl Harbor the next day to participate in the Battle of Midway. Note the raised 20-mm/70-cal Oerlikon AA mounts beneath the forward edge of the flight deck. The CXAM radar antenna is in the "down" position, and is therefore out of sight. USS West Virginia (BB-48), sunk in the 7 December 1941 Japanese air attack, is being salvaged in the left distance.

 

Shell bursts and splashes from the guns of the aircraft carrier Yorktown as Japanese torpedo bombers approach during the Battle of Midway.

 

Black smoke pours from the Yorktown on June 4, 1942.

 

A firefighting detail works through a pall of smoke aboard the Yorktown after its bombing by Japanese aircraft.

 

The listing USS Yorktown after being hit by Japanese bombs and torpedoes.

 

The destroyer USS Hammann maneuvers to the side of the fatally-stricken carrier Yorktown at the Battle of Midway. Lashed alongside, Hammann was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine which also put two more torpedoes into the wounded Yorktown.

 

Destroyer Hammann comes to the rescue of the listing Yorktown which was hit by Japanese bombs and torpedoes during the Battle of Midway, June 1942.

 

Battle of Midway, June 1942. Diorama by Norman Bel Geddes, depicting the explosion of depth charges from USS Hammann (DD-412) as she sank alongside USS Yorktown (CV-5) during the afternoon of 6 June 1942. Both ships were torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-168 while Hammann was assisting with the salvage of Yorktown. USS Vireo (AT-144) is shown at left, coming back to pick up survivors, as destroyers head off to search for the submarine. US Navy photograph 80-G-701902.

 

USS Yorktown capsized and sinking, Battle of Midway, June 7, 1942.

 

When the Yorktown was damaged, Fletcher transferred his flag to the USS Astoria (CA 34). Here he is seen boarding the cruiser.

 

The Yorktown transfers crewmen to a destroyer after being damaged by Japanese bombs and torpedoes during the Battle of Midway.