USS Yorktown

I don't know if this has been posted before, but here's a great personal account of the Yorktown at Midway by one of her radiomen.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...r-was-sunk-member-crew-told-us-how-73021

It's a great read. Hard to fathom what those folks went through, God bless them all. They truly were the Greatest Generation!

they certainly were!

An historical account and an important read. Its amazing and sobering and almost a ghostly thing to read this man's experiences and what he saw all these many years later from the desperate radio chatter of Navy pilots in combat shouting "Where's my wingman" and "Get that Zero off my tail" to teenagers fresh out of boot camp with only a week of being out to sea under their belts having to participate in the clean up of destroyed humanity in hurried and troubled attempts of burials at sea in between combat. They are an amazing generation.

What gets me about Midway is that the Yorktown almost made it out of there but unfortunately a Japanese sub got too close.

She was probably abandoned too quickly, a crew of volunteers had returned to her and had gotten flooding etc. under control when I-168 found her. Had she never been abandoned in the first place it's conceivable she could have been saved.

Yes, but it's a pity all the same anyway for Buckmaster, her captain. He only failed in that he cared so much for his crew that he wouldn't take the risk of having her capsize on them.
It somewhat ended his combat career - sad story, really.

By the way, if some of you are interested in getting to know Yorktown better (arguably my preferred carrier - probably because she featured all the way into the first two albums of the French-Belgian comics Buck Danny, and I was 7...) don't hesitate to head over there listen to the touching testimony of this gentleman. Blessed be the audio archives.
https://www.ww2online.org/view/william-roy

Don’t forget the destroyer USS Hammann that was also sunk by I-168 at the same time, with the loss of 40% of her crew.

Great read, thanks for sharing.