Yorktown Class (Aircraft carriers)

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. As Ranger was not commissioned until two weeks after Yorktown was laid down, experience with that vessel did not influence the design of the Yorktowns; rather, the design was influenced most strongly by experience with the Lexington class ships, built on the partially completed hulls of two battlecruisers and commissioned in 1927, and the early experimental carrier Langley, commissioned in 1924. The Yorktowns bore the brunt of the fighting in the Pacific during 1942, and two of the three were lost: Yorktown, sunk on 07 June 1942 after the Battle of Midway, and Hornet, heavily damaged by the Japanese at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, survived attempts at scuttling by the US Navy, but was finally sunk by the Japanese. 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.