At 10:55am on June 4, 1942, the Imperial Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu began launching an airstrike.
Hiryu was the only Japanese carrier left untouched by the US Navy’s successful morning attack,
which resulted in the loss of three Japanese carriers.
Eager for revenge, forty-two Japanese aviators climbed into their cockpits and roared into
the air.
LT Michio Kobayashi commanded Hiryu’s airstrike.
After an hour’s worth of flying, Kobayashi’s airstrike found its prey.
The aviators intercepted Task Force 17, which consisted of two cruisers, five destroyers,
and the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown.
USS Yorktown’s radar picked up the Japanese airstrike when it was still forty miles out.
The U.S. Navy’s fighter planes rushed to intercept.
Twenty F4F Wildcats charged in at Kobayashi’s planes.
In a few short minutes, the Wildcat pilots shot down three Japanese fighters and eleven
dive bombers.
LT Kobayashi was among those killed.
Seven Japanese dive bombers made it through the American fighter screen.
At 12:11, they began diving on USS Yorktown.
From their battle stations inside their antiaircraft gun tubs on the sides of the flight decks,
Yorktown’s sailors went to work, filling the skies with high-explosive shells.
Just aft of Yorktown’s island structure, dozens of antiaircraft gunners operated the
guns on Mount Three and Mount Four.
Together, they managed to bring down one plane.
But just as that plane disintegrated, its bombs tumbled away from the undercarriage and
landed right on top the antiaircraft gunners.
Lt. John Lorenz was twenty-three years old.
He commanded Gun Mount Number Three, right in the path of the bomb.
Lorenz remembered the grisly scene that followed: "The sky was turning black from anti-aircraft
fire, but on they came.
I glanced over my crews.
It was to be our last fight together but none of us realized it.
I saw those faces, which I had seen so many times behind the battery.
They were grim and determined.
Moments passed, then I heard the word, 'diving attack starboard beam.'
Yes, they were coming straight for us right out of the cloud.
From then on it was smoke, flame, and tracer bullets.
The explosive bullets were blowing our enemy apart.
The Japanese bomb came loose from the plane, it fell towards us!
The plane that dropped the bomb was gone, so we merely shifted our fire to the next plane.
We continued firing.
Then the bomb hit.
I don’t remember much for the next few seconds.
I was stunned, dazed, and knocked down.
I found myself back up against the splinter shield, my legs tangled beneath me, my helmet
and pistol knocked off and my clothes torn open.
It seemed that fire was all around me and the smoke made things worse.
Finally I was able to regain my senses and stood up.
The gun had ceased firing but I heard others faintly.
My ears were ringing.
The sight that met my eyes was appalling.
The complete gun crew was down.
It seemed strange and unbelievable to see them in a heap like this.
I had never expected to see them that way.
One sailor was lying on top the rest, badly hit.
I didn’t want to know who he was."
Putting up a veritable cloud of exploding shells, Yorktown’s antiaircraft gu nners
brought down one more Japanese dive bomber, but the other five released their bombs.
Yorktown suffered two more hits.
The second bomb pierced the flight deck, exploding inside the stack and rupturing several boilers.
The third bomb hit the forward elevator and exploded on the fourth deck, flooding the
carrier’s magazines.
By 12:40, Yorktown was dead in the water.
Yorktown’s repair crews worked quickly, patching the holes in the flight deck and
bringing three boilers back on line.
By 1:30, the carrier was underway again, cruising at twenty knots.
But at 1:55, repairs suddenly ceased.
The carrier’s radar picked up a second Japanese air strike.
The 1MC blared, “STAND BY FOR AIR ATTACK!”
Two cruisers and two destroyers from another task force rushed to Yorktown’s defense.
But it wasn’t enough.
Six Japanese fighter planes and ten Japanese torpedo bombers burst out of the clouds, attacking
Yorktown from the north.
U.S. fighter pilots shot down five Japanese torpedo planes and two fighters, but seven
torpedoes were aimed at Yorktown.
At 2:35, two torpedoes struck Yorktown’s portside, creating a massive hole in the hull.
The generators fizzled out, the lights went dark, and the ship tilted by twenty-six degrees.
At 2:55pm, Yorktown’s captain, Elliott Buckmaster, ordered, “Abandon ship.”
LT Joseph Page Pollard was a twenty-eight-year-old medical officer on board USS Yorktown.
When word of the impending evacuation spread, he worried about what might happen to the
men wounded by the dive bomber attack: "I knew we were completely helpless but did
not want to admit it.
Just then word came over the speaker, 'Prepare to abandon ship.'
I was dumbfounded.
It was incomprehensible.
A man lying beside me with one foot shot away and a severe chest wound turned to me and
asked, 'What does this mean for us?' and turned his head away.
He knew that he would have no chance in the water.
We listed more and more to port until it was impossible to stand on the slick deck.
We searched frantically for life preservers for the wounded, taking some from the dead.
Our stretchers had gone below to the sick bay and we had difficulty finding enough for
our wounded.
All who could possibly walk did so.
I went up on the flight deck and walked along the starboard edge, being very careful not
to slip and slide the width of the ship and off the port side.
The ship rolled slowly with the swells.
I thought a big wave might capsize her.
A bulkhead giving way below might also let her go over.
Our list was about thirty degrees.
The speakers were now dead and when word was passed to abandon ship, it did not get to me.
Several life rafts were in the water but the lines over the side were not long enough to
reach the water.
Lieutenant Wilson and I tied some lines together and lowered some wounded.
Meanwhile the sick bay wounded were being lowered from the hangar deck."
One by one, 2,280 surviving sailors climbed down the slippery ropes and into the water.
Under their own power, they paddled their way to nearby escort ships.
For the next two hours, the destroyers from Task Force 17 began pulling men from the water.
It didn’t take long before they became dangerously cramped.
USS Benham, for instance, saved 725 men.
Choked with additional bodies, these destroyers couldn’t remain in the battle zone for much longer.
The skippers began charting their way back to Pearl Harbor.
Not every sailor from Yorktown made it to safety.
Altogether, fifty-four sailors had perished during the two air attacks.
Two days later, Yorktown took these men to a watery grave.
On the morning of June 6, as Yorktown was being towed back to Pearl Harbor, a Japanese
submarine—I-168—found the damaged carrier and fired a spread of four torpedoes.
Two of them struck the starboard side amidships, opening up another massive hole.
The carrier’s 170-man salvage team abandoned ship as the massive carrier took on more water.
Yorktown went down slowly over the next twenty-four hours.
Finally, with a sudden rush of foam, at 7:01am on June 7, Yorktown capsized and submerged into
16,000 feet of water.
With that, one of the Navy’s most fearsome weapons was lost forever—another reminder
of the high price paid by the fleet in winning the incredible victory at Midway.