Yorktown class aircraft carrier

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United States
USS Enterprise
Builders:	Newport News Shipbuilding
Operators:	United States Navy
Preceding class:	Lexington
Following class:	Essex
Commissioned:	30 September 1937
Decommissioned:	17 February 1947
Ships in Class
Ships in class:	3
Sunk ships:	USS Yorktown USS Hornet
Scrapped ships:	USS Enterprise
General Characteristics
Class type:	Fleet aircraft carrier
Displacement:	19,800 tons (20,117 metric tonnes) standard 25,500 tons (25,908 metric tonnes) full load
Length:	761 feet (232 metres), waterline
Beam:	83 feet (25.3 metres)
Draught:	21.67 feet (6.6 metres)
Draft:	26 feet (7.9 metres)
Propulsion and power:	9 boilers 120,000 shp
Speed:	32.5 knots (60.2 km/h)
Range:	12,500 nm (23,150 km)
Complement:	2,217
Armament:	8 dual purpose guns 16 anti-aircraft guns 24 machine guns
Armor:	Belt: 2.5 to 4 inches Tower: 4 inches
Aircraft complement:	90
Aircraft facilities:	2 flight deck catapults 1 hangar catapult 3 aircraft elevators

The Yorktown class aircraft carriers consisted of three carriers built by the USA not long before World War II. They bore the brunt of early action in that war, and the sole survivor of the class was to become the most accomplished ship in the history of the U.S. Navy.

The lessons learned from operations with the large battlecruiser conversion Lexington class in comparison with the smaller purpose-built Ranger had taught the Navy that large carriers, rather than small ones, were more operationally flexible and survivable. As the result of this experience, the U.S. Navy built the Yorktown (CV-5) and Enterprise (CV-6), commissioned in 1937 and 1938 respectively. These were fast and versatile carriers, able to carry and operate over 80 warplanes, almost as many as the much larger Lexington class. With the addition of the 14,700 ton Wasp (CV-7), a smaller version of the class, the U.S. Navy used up its full 135,000 ton Washington Naval Treaty limit of aircraft carrier tonnage. The scrapping of the treaty system in 1937 allowed the US to begin building more carriers, and the first of this new carrier program was another Yorktown class, Hornet (CV-8), commissioned in 1941. Improvements to the Yorktown design brought about the Essex (CV-9) class. Unusually, the ships carried (but seldom used) a catapult on the hangar deck level; this catapult was eliminated on all following carrier classes as it was relatively useless in operation.

Except for Enterprise, the entire class had been lost by the end of 1942, with Yorktown sunk at the Battle of Midway in June; half-sister Wasp torpedoed and sunk in September, and Hornet lost in October at the Battle of Santa Cruz. Orphaned sister Enterprise, for a time the only operational carrier in the South Pacific, soldiered on, and participated in most of the principal actions of the Pacific War. She became the most frequently decorated ship of the war.

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 in (127 mm) 38 DP, 6 quad 40 mm AA, 8 twin 40 mm AA and 50 single 20 mm AA. The Yorktown class had proved to be vulnerable to torpedoes and while undergoing repairs in late 1942, Enterprise received an extensive refit, which included an anti-torpedo blister that significantly improved her underwater protection.

She was put out of action on 14 May 1945 when she was struck in the forward elevator by a kamikaze aircraft flown by the Japanese pilot Tomi Zai, 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. 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