USS Yorktown

The story

The ship tied up at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant, across the harbor from Charleston, was laid down at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Virginia on December 1, 1941, six days before Pearl Harbor. She was meant to be called Bonhomme Richard, but in 1942 the Navy lost the carrier USS Yorktown (CV-5) at the Battle of Midway, and the new hull inherited the name while still on the ways. Builders finished her in about seventeen months, and she was commissioned in April 1943 as the second carrier of the Essex class, a design that eventually ran to two dozen ships.

According to her National Register nomination, written by the museum's own curator and historian, the new Yorktown was the first of the post-Pearl Harbor carriers to go into action in the central Pacific, striking Marcus Island in August 1943. Over the next two years she took part in raids on Wake, the Gilberts and Marshalls, Truk, the Palaus and New Guinea, and supported the invasion of Saipan. During the June 1944 carrier battle known to American pilots as the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," more than 400 Japanese aircraft were shot down in a single day. Later came strikes on the Philippines, Formosa and Indochina, the first sustained carrier raids on Tokyo, and the long spring of 1945 off Okinawa, when kamikaze attacks were constant and the Yorktown herself took a bomb hit in March. In April her torpedo bombers helped sink the battleship Yamato. She ended the war with 11 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation, then spent 1945 and 1946 carrying servicemen home in the "Magic Carpet" operation.

Decommissioned after the war, she was rebuilt for jet aircraft and returned to service in 1953 as an attack carrier. She reached the Far East only after the Korean armistice, then patrolled the western Pacific with Task Force 77. Rebuilds between 1955 and 1958 gave her an angled flight deck and turned her into an anti-submarine carrier, and in that role she served off Vietnam, earning five more battle stars. In December 1968 she recovered the crew of Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon. Film crews used her too: she appears in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), the re-creation of the Pearl Harbor attack, and in the science fiction film The Philadelphia Experiment (1984).

The Navy retired her in June 1970. After five years in the reserve fleet she passed to South Carolina, which had her towed south in June 1975. She was dedicated that October, and the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum opened around her in January 1976. The National Register listed her in 1982, and she is a National Historic Landmark.

The legend

The Yorktown's ghost story is unusual in one respect: it is promoted by the museum itself, yet almost nothing specific has ever been put on the record. Patriots Point sells an after-hours ghost tour and describes it in general terms, as a walk through parts of the ship normally closed to visitors where people have met strange sights and sounds, framed by the "legends of sacrifice and bravery" from her three wars. No named ghost appears in that material, and no dated first sighting, witness account or newspaper investigation has been found to anchor the stories.

What feeds the lore is easy to see. She was designed for a crew of more than 3,400 officers and men, served for nearly three decades, operated through the deadliest phase of the Pacific war, including months of kamikaze attacks off Okinawa, and she carries the name of a carrier lost at Midway. A vessel with that history, its compartments left largely as the crews knew them, is fertile ground for stories told after dark.

According to the museum, Syfy's Ghost Hunters featured its ghost tour, and NBC's Today Show and Family Circle magazine recommended it among Charleston's ghost tours. These claims come from the museum's own page. Wikipedia's episode list confirms the Ghost Hunters one: the team investigated the ship in "Haunted By Heroes" (season 8, episode 10, May 2, 2012).

In short, the haunted Yorktown is best understood as an atmospheric tradition attached to a genuinely historic warship, not a documented case. If you hear a detailed tale of a particular sailor on the tour, it is worth asking the guide where it comes from.

What remains today

The carrier is essentially intact and has been moored in Charleston Harbor since 1975. The nomination file notes that she still reflects the design of the World War II carriers despite her later rebuilds, and that in 1981 she was among just three Essex-class carriers still in existence. She keeps the configuration of her last refit, with the angled flight deck.

Hundreds of compartments survive. For the museum's displays, staff refurnished a long list of spaces to show daily life aboard, among them the sick bay and dental offices, an enlisted berthing compartment, galleys, mess areas, the chapel, the bakery, the laundry, the cobbler's shop, a pilots' ready room, the chart room, the bridge with its pilot house, and the flag bridge. An engine room, a boiler room and the combat information center were being restored when the file was prepared. Today she is the centerpiece of the museum at Patriots Point, owned through a South Carolina state development authority.

Visiting

The Yorktown is a public museum ship, open during regular hours, so there is no need to go anywhere you are not invited. The museum has refurnished dozens of spaces across several decks, so give yourself time if you want to see more than the hangar deck.

For the ghost side, the legal way in is the official after-hours "Haunted Yorktown" tour, which Patriots Point offers with the Charleston company Bulldog Tours; tickets are sold through Bulldog Tours. The tour visits areas that are closed during the day, which is the only proper way to see them. Patriots Point also runs an overnight program for groups aboard the ship; it is not known to include any ghost content. Check the museum's website for current times and prices before you go, and remember that the ship is also a memorial to the men who served aboard.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #82001519 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #82001519) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. Wikimedia Commons category : USS Yorktown (CV-10) — Wikimedia Commons
4. USGS 1:21120-scale Quadrangle for Charleston, SC 1919 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1919 · Public domain (USGS)
5. USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for Charleston, SC 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
6. "Ghost Tours" — Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum (official). — Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum (official).
7. "List of Ghost Hunters episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
8. Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum — home page (official). — home page (official).
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.