HGB Ep. 545 - USS Yorktown

Moment in Oddity - Henry "Box" Brown (Suggested by Dennis Gibbons)

Back in the early 1800's there was a man by the name of Henry Brown who was born enslaved on a Virginia tobacco Plantation. When the owner of the plantation died, Henry's family including his parents and seven siblings, were divided up among several slaveholders. At the time, he was 15 years old and was sold to work in a tobacco factory in Richmond. Brown was allowed to attend the First African Baptist Church where he met his future wife, Nancy who was enslaved at a neighboring plantation. Nancy was controlled by an abusive man who sold her and the couple's 3 children while Nancy was pregnant with their fourth child. Henry was shattered by the loss of his family and was determined to escape his enslavement. He enlisted the aid of friend and free Black man, James C.A. Smith Jr. Henry Brown wanted to flee north and a plan was devised to build a crate that Brown would hide inside of while being shipped to Pennsylvania, where slavery was almost non-existent at the time. On March 23rd, 1849, Henry crawled into the crate which was around 3 feet long, 2 1/2 feet deep and 2 feet wide. The wooden crate had three air holes drilled into it by which Henry could breathe. He was taken to a shipping company where his travels began. The uncomfortable expedition took a total of 27 hours by wagon, steamboat and train, eventually being released from the confines of the crate at the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Upon exiting the box, Henry sang a hymn he had written, based upon Psalm 40 of the Old Testament. Following his escape from slavery, Henry received the nickname, Henry 'Box' Brown. There were many methods enslaved people attempted to escape to a better life, but a method of being shipped in such a small box over many miles certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Death of Jean Moulin

In the month of July, on the 8th, in 1943, French Resistance leader Jean Moulin (Mulan) died while being transported to a concentration camp. Moulin was considered the face of the French Resistance. He stood up to the Germans during the occupation of France during World War II. The Gestapo arrested him in June of 1940 as a suspected communist and they tortured him. He attempted to cut his own throat and was taken to a hospital and then released. Moulin smuggled himself out of France in September 1941 and headed to London where he met up with Charles de Gaulle who lead "Free French." He parachuted back into France in 1942and organized the resistance movement. Moulin was betrayed by one of his people and the Gestapo arrested him again. They interrogated and tortured him. He was nearly dead from the torture when he was loaded on a train to be taken to a camp in Germany. He died from his injuries. The French consider him a hero and have named many streets, schools and universities for him.

USS Yorktown

We just returned from a road trip through the Outer Banks of North Carolina and along our way, we stopped in Charleston, South Carolina. We've seen the USS Yorktown from afar before, but on this trip, we boarded this magnificent aircraft carrier twice. She was one of twenty-four Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II. Today, the carrier is a museum that not only houses the museum of the Medal of Honor Society and artifacts from her service, but there are rumored to be several spirits on board. Join us as we share the history, hauntings and our experiences on board the USS Yorktown.

Charleston Harbor sits between Charleston and Mount Pleasant and is bordered by Daniel Island, James Island and Sullivan's Island. In 1670, a colonial expedition set sail from England and wound up in present-day Charleston Harbor. They founded the city and called it Charles Town in honor of the King of England, Charles II. The town was originally settled on the west bank of the Ashley River on Albemarle Point and then it relocated in 1680 to Charleston Neck, which was a peninsula formed by the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. These two rivers joined to form Charleston Harbor with an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean. Charleston has seen its share of pirates, sailors and slave traders as a port city. The dark waters hold many tales. Dolphins are plentiful and the buildings and ships that border the bay hold a vast amount of history.

The first thing one notices at the harbor is the USS Yorktown. This is the “Fighting Lady,” a legendary WWII aircraft carrier and she is massive and impressive. Patriots Point opened in 1976 after the Patriots Point Development Authority was established. The grounds feature the Patriots Point Museum, Cold War Memorial, Medal of Honor Museum, Vietnam Experience Exhibit, the USS Laffey (a destroyer) and the USS Yorktown. This USS Yorktown wasn't the first aircraft carrier to hold that name. As a matter of fact, five ships have had the name Yorktown, which was inspired by the Revolutionary War Battle of Yorktown. The 1781 battle was decisive and led to Cornwallis' humiliating surrender. The first Yorktown was built in 1839 and was a 16-gun sloop. She wrecked in 1850 on a reef near the Cape Verde Islands. A steel-hulled gunboat was the second Yorktown. She was decommissioned in 1919. The next Yorktown would be the first aircraft carrier to hold the name and this was commissioned in 1937 and she served gallantly through to World War II. 

The carrier was described as invincible as it managed to outmaneuver many torpedo attacks. The Yorktown also managed to survive a Japanese dive bombing attack. Multiple bombs were dropped and none hit their mark...except for one of them and it was a devastating result. That bomb went through the Flight Deck and exploded below deck, killing and injurying many sailors. The carrier went to Pearl Harbor for repairs and quickly turned around and headed to the Battle of Midway. The success of the Pacific Fleet was high at the beginning, but the USS Yorktown would be hit by three massive bombs that caused her to stall movement. She finally got going later, but another attack came in and two torpedoes hit her port side. She lost power again and began to list and she was abandoned. There was an effort to save her later, but that didn't work and she now sits on the ocean floor.

And that brings us to USS Yorktown (CV-10), which had her keel laid in December 1941 at Newport News, Virginia with plans to name her Bonhomme Richard, after John Paul Jones' frigate from the Revolutionary War. Jones had named it thus to honor Benjamin Franklin and his pen name from Poor Richard's Almanac. After the loss of the other Yorktown carrier, it was decided to rename this carrier USS Yorktown and that took place on September 26, 1942. The USS Yorktown was commissioned in April of 1943. She was an Essex-class aircraft carrier and measured 872 feet in length and able to displace 36,380 long tons. The carrier was propelled by four steam turbines and four screw propellers. She could carry up to 100 aircraft. It was decided to have Eleanore Roosevelt christen the ship and she at first refused because She had christened the other Yorktown and obviously it had sunk so she figured they wouldn't want her to christen this one too. But they did and they convinced her to do it. So there is this long speech going on before the christening and all of a sudden, the Yorktown launched itself. This was seven minutes before it was scheduled to do that and it had no help. There were several cables holding the carrier that don't let go by themselves and no one could explain how this happened. Eleanor jumps up when she sees this and hurls the bottle of champagne at the ship and it proceeds to bounce off of the ship, but she is quick and adept and catches the bottle. She throws it at the ship again and this time it busted like it was supposed to, averting any future bad luck.

The Yorktown performed some shakedown exercises and then headed for Pearl Harbor via the Panama Canal and arrived on July 24, 1943. Life on board was like being on a floating city. Sailors were served four meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight rations. The Navy recommended a diet of between 3500 and 4500 calories a day since these were fighting men. Most sailors put a lot of weight on while they were out to sea. Our tour guide shared with us all that was needed to make chocolate chip cookies for the entire crew. About 10,000 cookies took 112 pounds of chocolate chips, 165 pounds of flour, 500 eggs, 100 pounds of granulated sugar, 87 pounds of shortening, 12 pounds of butter, 3 pounds of salt, 3 cups of vanilla, a quart of water, 1.5 pounds of baking soda and 75 pounds of brown sugar. There were usually three or four dentists on board. Same for barbers. There were a couple of stores where sailors could buy snacks or toiletries. The Yorktown won awards for its food and was one of the few ships to have ice cream Savannah shared this fun story about George Bush Sr. (Savannah Ice Cream)

Joseph "Jocko" Clark was the first Captain of the Yorktown and he was the first Native American to graduate from the Naval Academy. USS Yorktown's first assault operations took place at the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. In January, she was fighting at the Marshall Islands and then off for four months of Central Pacific raids. In June of 1944, Yorktown took part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. This battle was the largest aircraft carrier battle in history. The US Fleet had 15 carriers with 900 aircraft. US Navy fighters shot down down nearly 400 Japanese aircraft in what was called the Marianas Turkey Shoot. The Yorktown herself destroyed 37 enemy planes and dropped twenty-one tons of bombs on Guam. At the end of 1944, a typhoon sank three of the American destroyers and the USS Yorktown took part in the rescues of their crews. In January of 1945, the USS Yorktown was able to break through to Japan's inner defenses and soon she was launching strikes on the Tokyo area. 

In March, the Japanese managed an assault on the Yorktown and while most of it was rebuffed, a bomb did get through and hit the signal bridge and passed through the first deck and exploded near the ship's hull. This punched two large holes in her side and killed five men and wounded twenty-six others. She continued on though with her raids. She spent several weeks bombing Okinawa. Then she pounded Tokyo some more. August 13, 1945 was the last day she bombed Tokyo. Two days later, Japan said they would surrender and it did so on September 2, 1945. The USS Yorktown earned eleven battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation.

After the war, the Yorktown sailed for San Francisco Bay and dropped off her crew and then went to Guam to pick up more sailors to bring home and she returned again to San Francisco Bay. In 1947, the Yorktown was decommissioned. She would be reactivated again in 1952 and conduct training operations rather than combat missions during the Korean War. The carrier was modified throughout the latter 1950s and was reclassified as an antisubmarine warfare aircraft carrier. She conducted special operations during the Vietnam War and concluded her last tour of duty in July of 1966. Yorktown's next big assignment was recovering Apollo 8 after it splashed down from its mission of being the first human spaceflight to reach the moon. It orbited the moon 10 times before returning to earth. The USS Yorktown was officially decommissioned in 1970 and donated to the Patriot's Point Development Authority and today is a museum.

Also at Patriot's Point was the Allen M. Sumner-class, USS Laffey, which was known as "the ship that would not die." This destroyer was named for Seaman Bartlett Laffey who received the Medal of Honor for risking his own life in March 1864. He took a 12 pound howitzer mounted on a field carriage with him and his crew into a heated battle and stood by his gun, despite the enemy fire which cut the gun carriage and rammer. The enemy was turned back. The destroyer was launched in 1943 and had a crew of 336. The Laffey was part of the D-Day invasion at Normandy. She resisted the most intense kamikaze attack in history on April 16, 1945, which is how she got her nickname. The Laffey managed to shoot down several fighters, but she was hit by four bombs, six kamikaze crashes and strafing fire. Thirty-two of her sailors were killed and 71 wounded. Many of the deaths came from one of the 40 mm gun mounts. We got the experience what it was like to be a part of that moment with an interactive exhibit with sights and sounds. It's amazing to think of 11 men standing in this very cramped space loading up bullets and this one took a direct hit from a kamikaze, which killed them all. There have been reports of a shadow patrol aboard the destroyer, which people have seen from the Yorktown at night.

There were a couple of strange incidents on board. Somewhere between the Fighter Pilot Ready Room and the Bomber Pilot Ready Room, a pilot named Lieutenant Hummel disappeared aboard the Yorktown in 1944. The entire ship was searched and he was never found. And a pilot named Smokey Stover seemed to predict his death. He was worried as he gathered his things for a large battle called "Operation Hailstorm. He stopped a chaplain and explained what was so heavy on his mind. He said, "I had this peculiar dream. Last night the dream was all about the mission and in the mission, I actually fly, but I get shot down by the Japanese. They find me, they take me back to the island where they marched me around the island, interrogated me, and then executed me." The chaplain said, "That's a dream, not a premonition. If you stick to what you do best, you'll be fine." Stover flew the mission and he was right. he got shot down and bails out in the water. Nobody could rescue him because of the ongoing battle. No one knows what happened to Stover, but at the end of the war, the Japanese Center reported to the United States that at that battle, they took seven Americans out of the water and marched them around the island, interrogated them and then executed them.

The Yorktown seems to have several spirits hanging around. For years, people have reported strange activity and shadow figures. There were 141 deaths on the Yorktown with only five of them a result of direct enemy fire. The first death was an assistant pharmacist who died from a lice infestation. He had an allergic reaction and all the scratching killed him. There was another death in the Catapult Room. In the 1960s the cable of the catapult snapped. One sailor heard the snap and he jumped down from his bunk and that saved his life because the cable went right through where he had been. Another sailor wasn't as lucky. He ran to the phone to report the issue and the cable hit him and well, the cable went through the phone and through him.

Brian Parson was an electrician who worked on the ship after it became a museum. He was staying in a designated room for people working on the ship where they could have privacy as scouts regularly had sleepovers on the carrier. One night, Brian was lying in his bunk when the door to the room slammed open and hit the wall. He figured it was some scouts pranking him, so he jumped up quick to catch them and when he looked out into the hall, he saw no one. Keep in mind that he also hears no one running away, which would be something one could clearly hear on a metal ship. There were also chains on either side of the hallway to bare anyone from coming down the hall and those chains weren't moving. If some scouts had ducked under them or jumped over them, they certainly would have been swinging. Even stranger, a tour guide was telling this same story to a group outside the door and they heard a loud banging on the door even though no one was in the room.

Brian also had experiences with a shadow figure that everyone has nicknamed Shadow Ed. (p.84) And a visitor to the Yorktown shared this experience with Shadow Ed. (p. 85)

And then there is Shadow Sam in the pea coat. (Shadow Sam)

We went to a dark area of the ship where many people have felt a heavy feeling and that they are not welcome. Women in general feel unwelcome on the ship. Occasionally people have heard an audible voice say "move" and felt cold spots in this area. A couple years ago, some investigators set up a ghost grid pointing down the hallway. They heard a loud bang and see nothing. They were filming everything and the next day they were looking at the video and noticed that something passed through the grid. What was interesting is that this seemed intelligent because the bang came from another direction and distracted them from watching the grid. So they didn't see the movement at the time. Very much a military tactic.

Scrappy was a dog that became the mascot of the carrier. The crew found the Airedale wandering around Pearl Harbor and adopted him. They named him Scrapper Shrapnel or Scrappy for short. He had a custom made helmet and life jacket. There is this cute picture of him in a Grumman F6F Hellcat in 1943. Our guide tells us about Scrappy haunting the carrier. (Scrappy)

Bruce Orr wrote "Ghost of the USS Yorktown and in there he shares the experiences of a docent named Lori. (p. 65-66)

There are various planes and helicopters on the Flight Deck. One of these was the SH-3G Sea King, which was an anti-submarine helicopter that served during the Vietnam War. The Sea King was also the type of helicopter that recovered the Apollo 8 crew. One day, a female visitor to the Yorktown looked inside that helicopter and saw a man wearing a World War II uniform. She mentioned this to a nearby docent who rushed over to the helicopter because no one was supposed to be inside the aircraft. He too saw the World War II pilot and he noticed that he was translucent. As to why a World War II pilot would be in a Vietnam War era helicopter is anyone's guess.

At one time there was another ship moored here at Patriot's Point called the USCGC Comanche. The Comanche was a cutter that had been commissioned in 1934. She mainly served as an escort through the waters of Greenland. During World War II, the Comanche was part of an escort group when one of the ships was hit by a torpedo from a German U-Boat. This was a former merchant ship called the Dorchester. It quickly sank, within 20 minutes. The blast had killed many men and those that survived were now in the icy waters, many without life jackets. The captain had told them to sleep in life jackets and they hadn't listened because they were hot. Of the 902 aboard the Dorchester, 672 died. The Comanche rescued 97 survivors and the rest of the survivors were picked up by other ships. Four of the dead were two Protestant reverends, a Catholic priest and a Rabbi. They all sacrificed their lives by giving away their life jackets to sailors and keeping everyone calm. They were all given Purple Hearts and Distinguished Service Crosses posthumously. That wasn't the end of the story for this tragic event. The Comanche seemed to have carried spirits to Patriot's Point with it and this was paranormal activity was witnessed by a Boy Scout troop. (p. 67) Those red lights, of course, were on all the life jackets. This bathed the Comanche in an eerie red glow. The Comanche was destroyed in 1989 by Hurricane Hugo as she was sunk as an artificial reef. Divers sometimes still see the red lights.

Military ships see a lot of death through accidents and war. The Yorktown was considered the Lucky Y because she didn't see many deaths. 141 deaths isn't many considering the action she saw. Other ships could lose as many as 600 crew in just one battle. Some attribute this luck to Jocko having the ship blessed by shamans. They claimed that this ship wouldn't see any more deaths than its predecessor and that number was exact. CV-5 had 141 deaths, just like this Yorktown. But even with that luck it seems that spirits do linger. Is the USS Yorktown haunted? That is for you to decide!