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 Yorktown (CV-5), Enterprise (CV-6), and Hornet (CV-8). They immediately followed Ranger, the first U.S. aircraft carrier built as such, and benefited in design from experience with Ranger and the earlier Lexington class, 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, heavily damaged and scuttled at the Battle of Midway, and Hornet, later heavily damaged by the Japanese, the US then tried to scuttle the ship, but failed and left it to the Japanese to sink in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.

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.^{[1] [2]}

After 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.^[3] 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.^[4] 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.^[5]

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.^[3] The General Board eventually settled on the idea of building two fairly large (c. 20,000-ton/20,321 tonne) carriers incorporating 32.5-knot speed, armor, and substantial underwater protection, and one smaller, c.15,000-ton (15,241-tonne) vessel, broadly similar to the large ones but lacking the protective features. The smaller carrier would eventually become Wasp, while the larger two became Yorktown and Enterprise. General designs for these two classes of ship were chosen from among a common slate of 15 draft designs presented to the General Board in 1931 by the Bureau of Construction and Repair.^[3] All 15 of these schemes included islands, long opposed by the Bureau of Aeronautics, but, thanks to operational experience accumulated with the Lexingtons by 1931, now considered desirable.^[3] Funding for construction of the two larger ships came with the National Recovery Act, passed on June 16, 1933, and Yorktown was laid down on May 21, 1934, two weeks before Ranger was commissioned. Enterprise was laid down on July 16, 1934.^[4] Work on the smaller Wasp was delayed for some time, but was ultimately authorized under the Vinson-Trammel Act of 1934, and construction, to essentially the specification laid out in 1931, began in 1936.

Two days after Enterprise was commissioned, in May 1938, partly in response to the withdrawal of Italy and Japan from the global naval arms limitation treaty structure, Congress passed the Naval Act of 1938, which authorized a major expansion of the Navy, including construction of 40,200 additional tons (40,845 tonnes) of aircraft carriers. After considerable debate and dithering the Navy decided that, in order to get a ship in service as quickly as possible, roughly half of this extra tonnage would be given over to building a third ship to a minimally modified Yorktown design, while time was spent figuring out how best to use the remainder. The third Yorktown-class ship, Hornet, was ordered in March 1939 and commissioned only a month before Pearl Harbor.

The Yorktowns were built with a transverse catapult on their hangar decks; these could launch aircraft in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the ship's motion, or while the ship was at anchor. 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.^[3] Statements that the transverse catapults were intended to be used primarily for the launching of scout planes appear to be unfounded; all readily available photos of these catapults in use depict the launching of fighter aircraft, rather than scouts. In practice the U. S. commanders rarely used the hangar-deck catapults because of the difficulties inherent in controlling a plane launched across a heavy cross-wind, which would inevitably be faced when the ship was moving forward at high speed to allow aircraft to be flown off the axial flight deck at the same time. The hangar-deck catapults were removed from Enterprise and Hornet in late June 1942.^[3]

All three ships of the Yorktown class were built at the Newport News Shipbuilding Company, Newport News, Virginia.^{[citation needed ]}

The three ships of this class are noted for bearing the brunt of the fighting in the early months of the Pacific War, most notably during the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, and the Guadalcanal campaign. During the latter campaign, Hornet and later Enterprise had the distinction of being the only operational carrier in the United States Pacific Fleet.

Enterprise was at sea on the morning of 7 December 1941 (the day of the Attack on Pearl Harbor). That evening, Enterprise, screened by six of her Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters, put into Pearl Harbor for fuel and supplies. The aircraft were fired on by anti-aircraft defenses, and one pilot radioed in, reporting that his aircraft was an American aircraft.^[6] 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 Lexington, she raided bases in New Guinea, then participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Her planes helped sink the Japanese aircraft carrier Shōhō and damaged the carrier Shōkaku. Damaged by Japanese carrier aircraft, Yorktown returned to Pearl Harbor and was hastily repaired in time to participate in the Battle of Midway.^[7]

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.^[7]

All three ships of the class saw action during the Battle of Midway (4–7 June 1942), Enterprise and Yorktown aircraft were responsible for sinking all four Japanese carriers engaged in the battle, while Hornet assisted in the sinking of one heavy cruiser and severely damaging another. All three carriers suffered severe losses among their air groups, most notably Hornet's Torpedo Squadron 8, which lost 15 aircraft with only a single surviving airman. Yorktown was damaged by aerial bombs and torpedoes and abandoned on 4 June. Later re-manned by repair crews, the ship was spotted and torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and eventually sank on 7 June 1942.

Enterprise was assigned to the invasion of Guadalcanal and participated in preliminary strikes on the island. She suffered moderate damage during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons but was repaired in time to join Hornet in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. Hornet was severely damaged during the latter engagement and had to be abandoned. Attempts to scuttle the ship by her escorts failed, and she was left adrift before finally being sunk by Japanese destroyers on 27 October 1942. Enterprise was again damaged during the battle, but was repaired enough to deliver her air group to Guadalcanal, where it participated in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Enterprise aircraft assisted in finishing off the heavily damaged battleship Hiei and were instrumental in destroying the Japanese transport fleet, thereby ending Japan's last serious attempt at reclaiming the island.^{[citation needed ]}

After a lengthy overhaul and repair period at Bremerton, Washington, Enterprise joined the Central Pacific Fleet as part of the Fast Carrier Task Force. She participated in every major invasion of the Central Pacific campaign, including the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Her air groups contributed to the development of carrier night operations, executing a night air raid on Truk Lagoon and operating as a specialized night air group towards the end of the war.^{[citation needed ]}

Enterprise was finally put out of action on 14 May 1945 when she was struck in the forward elevator by a kamikaze aircraft flown by Japanese pilot Lt. Shunsuke Tomiyasu,^[8] 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.^[9]

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.^{[citation needed ]}

With the commissioning of the more advanced Essex and Midway-class 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.^{[citation needed ]}

• List of ship classes of the Second World War

• Naval Aviation news July August 1994
• Builder's Plan USS Yorktown c.1940

Media related to Yorktown class aircraft carriers at Wikimedia Commons

• Aircraft carrier classes
• Yorktown-class aircraft carriers
• World War II aircraft carriers of the United States
• Steam turbine-powered ships

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from August 2021
• Articles needing additional references from September 2008
• All articles needing additional references
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from October 2025
• CS1: long volume value
• Commons category link is on Wikidata