During her service off Vietnam, the Yorktown spent a total of 192 days "on the line." According to U.S. Navy records, five aircraft were lost operationally and eight aircrew killed by enemy action.

Living and Working in Tonkin Gulf  

 

Yankee Station, 1968. It's 11:45 AM, and somebody is waking you up. You struggle out of sleep--hell, you've only been asleep barely five hours. Your stomach rumbles, informing you it's time to eat, and your sheets are soaked in sweat. Not surprising, since you live in a compartment 30 feet long by 20 feet wide with steel walls, with 97 other men, and it's 115 degrees in here. The fans are on, but all they really do is stir around the hot air. After all, the carrier's an old ship, built in 1943 when your dad was younger than you are now. You gingerly hop out of your bunk, which is second in a tier of three and consists of a mattress over canvas, supported by brass grommets and aluminum tubing, suspended by chains and hooks to the bulkhead. It doesn't seem like much, but it's comfortable, especially when you've been on duty for seven hours watching a radar screen or writing backwards on a plotting board in CIC (Combat Information Center or "Christ I'm Confused"). You pad over the floor-whoops, it's not a floor, it's a deck-and open up your locker, which contains your every possession in a three foot long by three foot high by three foot wide space. Time for a shower.

Toiletries in hand, you head down to the, well, the head, what non-sailors call a bathroom. You get into the shower and turn on the water and get wet. Then you turn it off and soap down. Turn on the water, rinse off, and turn it off. It's a Navy shower: the carrier you serve on can distill 100,000 gallons of fresh water from the saltwater ocean all around you, but 2800 men live on this ship, and that works out to about 25 gallons per man per day. Toweling off, you hum a snatch of song from the Ventures or Booker T and the MGs and head back "home." Putting on fresh dungarees, it's time to go eat---and then go back on watch. You try to ignore the fatigue, knowing you've got five hours to go on watch, then six off--not that you can sleep during then, not with all the people moving around, the heat, the noise of aircraft being launched and recovered. Time enough to write a letter home to the folks or to the girl you just met back in Long Beach, maybe catch a movie or the news on the closed-circuit TV--good old YKTV. Maybe just watch the ocean, or better yet, watch the flight deck operations. That's always exciting. Well, in a week or two, there's a port call in Subic Bay or Hong Kong, or will it be Singapore this time?

Sometimes it's not all stress.

You go on watch, relieving your friend at the radar console. Time to watch green phosphors move around the screen for awhile; thank God it's only for an hour, then they'll rotate you over to the plotting board, so your eyes don't feel like "two mad dog's assholes," as Dad likes to say. Thank God as well that it's cool and air-conditioned in here, too. You watch the air picture as the strikes go in over North Vietnam, and steel yourself for the almost inevitable. Yep, here it comes: the awful, repetitious screech of the beeper, telling you that somebody's had to bail out. They're over Pak Six, over Hanoi, which means they're either dead or about to be a guest of the Hanoi Hilton. No rescue aircraft can live over Pak Six. Somebody else has been hit: you hear the pilot's voice, surprisingly calm as he describes how his F-8 Crusader is coming apart around him. Though you're not talking to the pilot directly-his carrier's doing that-the chief next to you contacts the helicopters orbiting a ways off from your carrier and tell them to get ready. This guy is going to make it to the coast, but probably not to his carrier, so you're going to have to vector Fetch 62-the helicopter-to go pick him up from his impromptu swim. Sure enough, the F-8 finally gives up the ghost, but the guy made it over the water, and ejected okay. Fetch 62 is on the job, and picks him up before he can get too wet. They drop him off on his carrier, and the chief heads them back to their station. You watch the radar to make sure they return without difficulty. Whew! You're sweating with stress. Every decision you make can affect a lot of other people's lives, even the ship itself. That's a lot of pressure for a guy that hasn't turned twenty-two yet. And there's still four and a half hours to go.

Welcome aboard the USS Yorktown at war.

Lt. Ronald Ball of VFP-63 being rescued by a SH-3 of HS-4, 19 April 1966.
My father helped vector the helicopter to Ball's position. US Navy Photo

Dave Donnelly USS Yorktown
Written by Ben Donnelly his son




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