Is a guardian of US history
Dementia had taken hold of my Uncle Harold when I last visited him. He was still himself, commenting on my weight (he could make a fence picket feel obese) and teasing me about whatever else about which I might be sensitive.
But then he lapsed into storytelling. Though many of his other memories had slipped away, he repeated stories from his World War II days as a pilot in the Pacific theater. He had wanted to be a commercial pilot until the war. But once it was over, he didn’t fly again.
Harold explained the terror of landing on an aircraft carrier for the first time. “You had to get it perfect the very first time. There was no margin of error,” he remembered.
He told of a time he was flying a bombing mission. As the planes got close to their target, they armed the bombs so that they were ready to drop. But when they arrived at their target, they couldn’t see well enough to risk dropping their payload because of fog. Their only alternative was to turn around and scuttle the bombs into the open ocean. There was no way to disarm a bomb once it was ready to drop.
But one pilot forgot to scuttle his bombs. By the time the conning tower on the aircraft carrier saw that the bombs were still on the incoming plane, it was too late. The bombs exploded on contact, killing the pilot and a number of men on the deck.
I don’t remember which aircraft carrier he flew from. But I remember visiting the USS Yorktown at Patriots Point Museum in the Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. Standing on the shore, it’s hard to conceive of a structure as mammoth as the Yorktown floating, let alone clipping along at 33 knots. It routinely made the run between Pearl Harbor and San Francisco in fourdays. The Yorktown fully loaded weighed 36,380 tons. It was 872 feet long, (think three football fields!) before being remodeled into an angled launch ship when it gained about 8 feet. It is about 50 yards wide.
The USS Yorktown has C-10 after her name to indicate that three earlier US ships also bore her name. All four were named to commemorate the Revolutionary war battle of Yorktown.
Touring the ship was more like touring a military base than anything mobile. There were multiple cafeterias, vast barracks with bunks stacked like storage bins and expansive belowdeck hangars where not-in-use airplanes (and later, jets) were stored.
Other than the captain’s quarters, there’s nothing much cozy on an aircraft carrier, or any other military ship for that matter. Painted metal in shades of white and gray are standard.
Though the mammoth ship has become a museum piece, her military career spanned 40 years. The giant ship served as a mobile launch for crippling airstrikes. Such a deadly advantage was an important enemy target. Consequently, she didn’t stay in any one place for long. Her missions were intense and incisive, but then she would withdraw to safer waters.
Such tactics didn’t always protect her. Though several direct attacks, including Japanese suicide missions were thwarted by her guns or overshot their target and landed in the water beyond her decks, one bomb found its target near the conning tower, penetrated the deck in the hangar deck and exploded, blowing a hole in her hull. Yet other than the loss of American life that resulted from the incident, the Yorktown continued on her mission, still fully operational.
The Yorktown was started just a few days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and commissioned in 1943. She was later refitted as a submarine defending ship. She served in both World War II and Vietnam and earned 11 battle stars. She even recovered the command module from the Apollo 8 moon mission.
With such a long career as an invincible ship, it’s no wonder that she was chosen as the set for the movie about the Pearl Harbor bombing, “Tora, Tora, Tora.”
Now, decommissioned and disabled, the USS Yorktown is the star of the show at the Patriot’s Point Museum. She is a national historic monument and serves to safeguard the memories of many Americans who lived and died in the defense of freedom.
Only in America. God bless it.