Word: yorktown
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...some 18,000 feet, the Jap planes looked like tiny match sticks. They dived for the Yorktown's heart. Every gun of the carrier and her escort began to blaze. Tiny planes hesitated in their dives, made brief flowers of flame, fell into the sea. But a few kept coming at the Yorktown. The bombs slashed through the decks, started fires over the fuel tanks and magazines. Life rafts, splintered boxes, wrecked planes showered about the ship...
They came in two waves: bombers and torpedo planes. The Yorktown's fighters tore at the Japs. Of more than a dozen torpedo planes, half were shot down before they neared the carrier. But eight came on, 50 feet over the water. The Yorktown tried to twist away, but could no longer dodge the flashing torpedo planes. Two planes roared through the barrage and dropped their fish. The first torpedo hit squarely amidships. The second seemed to strike in the hole made by the first. Thick yellow smoke and flame vomited up with the spray...
...Yorktown went down the lines to hold life rafts against the ship's side. The wounded were lowered on wire stretchers. Gradually the groups of khaki and blue-clad men along the rails thinned. Knots of men lingered, talking, reluctant to leave...
Doom Deferred. Huge and helpless in the slow swells, the hulk of the Yorktown did not sink. Buckmaster ordered tugs and salvage vessels. The next day 160 picked men reboarded the carrier. They worked all night pumping out holds and cutting guns from the lower side. The destroyer Hammann was standing by to furnish power for the pumps. The next noon a Jap sub launched two torpedoes into the carrier's weakened plates and sank the destroyer with two more. The concussion broke several men's feet. Lieut. Commander Ernest Davis was blown overboard. Many men had broken...
...survivors watched her end. Some turned away. Almost all have asked for another carrier assignment. To the men of the Yorktown, the ship was the bravest hero of them...