The USS Yorktown (CV-10)was the tenth aircraft carrier to serve in the US Navy. Commissioned in April 1943, she saw action in the Pacific, replacing CV-5 (also named USS Yorktown) lost at the Battle of Midway. She was build in just sixteen-and-a-half months! After WWII she underwent several modifications to keep pace with the changes in naval aviation.
In addition to serving off Vietnam, the Yorktown also recovered the Apollo 8 capsule (Borman, Lovell, Anders). Apollo 8 was the first craft to travel beyond low earth orbit and the crew were the first to see the earth as a whole planet and the first to see the dark side of the moon.
The USS Yorktown was decommissioned in 1970 and moved to the Patriots Point museum in Charleston, SC in 1975.
I took this shot from the ferry that runs out to Fort Sumter (I missed the timing on the outbound leg but was more successful on the inbound leg). I just love the way the bow flares out to support the flight deck as opposed to the traditional knife-edge bow. The rust along the water line and running down the sides of the ship lend an air of decay that would never have been permitted during her operational days. Like the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi, Texas, it's great that these monstrous ships are available to us as museums, but sad that there's never enough money or time to preserve them as they deserve.
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Production Data
Lens: Canon EF17-35mmf/2.8L USM
Processing: Lightroom 3.6
Processing: Photomatix 4.02
Processing: Photoshop CS5
Processing: Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 (Nik Software)
