From the June 4, 2012, Newport News (Va.) Daily News by Michael Welles Shapiro.
The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown was sunk at the Battle of Midway on June 5, 1942.
However, it and its sister ship, the USS Enterprise, two ships being built because of the new naval warfare strategy based on the use of aircraft carriers and their squadrons of planes instead of battleships, were just what a struggling Newport News shipbuilding company needed.
The two Yorktown-class carriers were big for the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company which had been struggling before receiving the contracts because of the Great depression and the post World War I Naval limits on warships.
The company had resorted to building locomotives, rail cars and even traffic lights in the 1920s to stay afloat.
As war clouds in Europe approached, the U.S. government decided to help jump start the end of the Depression economy with war production.
--GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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