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10. The wreck of USS Yorktown was discovered in 1998 three miles beneath the surface of the Pacific
USS Yorktown was one of the seven United States aircraft carriers in commission when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, though the ship was in the Atlantic. By the middle of December Yorktown was steaming for the Pacific and in January the ship was the center of a task force conducting nuisance raids against Japanese held islands as the United States opened offensive operations. In May, 1942, Yorktown was part of the American forces which took part in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Struck by a bomb which caused heavy damage, the ship limped back to Pearl Harbor leaking oil, with serious damage to its engine rooms and boilers. Initial estimates were that it would take three months of shipyard availability before the ship would be ready to resume operations.
Three days after arriving at Pearl Harbor Yorktown was again underway, repairmen still aboard, to assist in the defense of Midway Atoll. During the battle there in the first week of June, 1942, Yorktown’s planes destroyed the Japanese carrier Soryu, but retaliatory Japanese attacks heavily damaged the American carrier. The ship was abandoned, reboarded, and abandoned again. A repair crew was aboard when the ship was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-168. After several hours Yorktown finally sank on June 7, 141 of its crew having died in the battle. In 1998 the wreck was discovered by Dr. Robert Ballard and his team, which reported the ship resting upright on the bottom of the sea, in what was called excellent condition, much of the ship’s gear recognizable to the explorers.