The Navy Brought a Ship Back from the Dead TWICE

In May 1942, the Japanese believed USS Yorktown was already at the bottom of the Pacific after watching the carrier burn during the Battle of the Coral Sea. Instead, the badly damaged ship limped back to Pearl Harbor, where Admiral Chester Nimitz demanded the impossible: get her ready for battle in days, not months. With 1,400 men working around the clock, electricity was diverted from Honolulu to the drydock as crews patched holes, covered damaged seams with steel plates, and left major repairs unfinished so Yorktown could race toward Midway. There, the carrier helped launch the strike that devastated the Japanese fleet, with Yorktown’s dive bombers putting three bombs through Sōryū and helping turn the battle in America’s favor. But Japan repeatedly came back for Yorktown. Three bombs left her stopped, smoking, and powerless, only for her crew to restore steam and get the supposedly finished carrier moving at 20 knots again just 70 minutes later. When a second Japanese strike arrived, its pilots mistook the repaired Yorktown for an entirely different, undamaged American carrier before two torpedoes finally forced her crew to abandon ship. Even then, Yorktown refused to die, remaining afloat long enough for 170 volunteers to return and attempt to save her before a Japanese submarine delivered the final torpedoes. This is the incredible story of USS Yorktown, the “zombie carrier” Japan reported sunk three times in a single month—and the battered American warship that refused to go down until all four Japanese carriers sent to Midway were already gone. -- As images and footage of actual events are not always available, Dark Seas sometimes utilizes similar historical images and footage for dramatic effect. I do my best to keep it as visually accurate as possible. All content on Dark Seas is researched, produced, and presented in historical context for educational purposes. We are history enthusiasts and are not always experts in some areas, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us with corrections, additional information, or new ideas.