USS Yorktown (CV-5)

USS Yorktown, lead ship of her class, was badly damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 — a bomb-pierced deck and a damaged boiler that left her limping toward Pearl Harbor. Tokyo's planners estimated three months of repairs; Admiral Nimitz gave her seventy-two hours. Docked on 27 May, she sailed on 30 May with some 1,400 workmen still aboard, welding seams still fresh. At Midway her dive bombers sank the carrier Sōryū on 4 June, but that afternoon aircraft from Hiryū struck her three times and left her dead in the water. Salvage crews restored way overnight, only for the submarine I-168 to slip through the destroyer screen and torpedo her again on 6 June. Yorktown finally sank on the morning of 7 June — one carrier traded for four, the exchange that decided the Pacific War. She fought that morning with a repair crew still aboard, and patch plates over her Coral Sea damage were being ground down even as her planes launched.