USS Yorktown, Aircraft carrier museum at Mount Pleasant, United States.
USS Yorktown is an Essex-class aircraft carrier moored at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant. Its pointed bow faces the harbor, with an anchor chain running down the port side and six round portholes near the waterline. Above the flat flight deck rises a tall mast carrying radar arrays and antennae; two helicopters marked 540 and another number stand on deck.
Laid down on 1 December 1941 as Bonhomme Richard and renamed for the carrier sunk at Midway, Yorktown was commissioned on 15 April 1943. Decommissioned after the war, she was modernized and recommissioned in 1953, serving in Korea and Vietnam before decommissioning in 1970. She opened as a museum at Patriots Point in 1975.
The ship's nickname, "The Fighting Lady", comes from Edward Steichen's 1944 documentary filmed largely aboard, and the name was later painted on the hull. In May 1956 the carrier called at Kobe and was opened to the public. The Japanese crew of the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! used the ship to stand in for the Japanese carrier Akagi during the Pearl Harbor launch scenes.
The self-guided route crosses the flight deck, hangar and engine rooms, with steep ladders between levels. The ship is moored at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant, across the harbor from downtown Charleston. Interior spaces are not air-conditioned, so carry water on warm days.
The ship served as the recovery vessel for Apollo 8 astronauts in December 1968 after their return from lunar orbit. Today visitors can see the spot where the capsule was brought aboard.
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