Naval engineers said the bomb-damaged USS Yorktown needed three months in dry dock. Admiral Nimitz gave them three days. This episode explores how the first American carrier designed from the keel up, commissioned in 1937 and sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt, went from Atlantic neutrality patrols among U-boats to the strike over the Owen Stanley Mountains, more than 100 days at sea without a port call, and the first over-the-horizon carrier battle at the Coral Sea in May 1942.

We break down the 550-pound bomb that penetrated four decks and wrecked her superheater boilers, the Japanese planes that mistakenly tried to land on her deck, and the 48-hour Pearl Harbor repair frenzy that dimmed Honolulu’s power grid. At Midway her dive bombers helped destroy Soryu while Hiryu’s counterstrikes left her dead in the water twice. The engineering crew relit boilers in the dark to get her moving at 20 knots, but two torpedoes, a 26-degree list, and the submarine I-168’s final attack sent her down on June 7, 1942, taking the destroyer Hammann with her. Robert Ballard found the wreck in 1998, and recent ROV surveys revealed a 1941 Ford station wagon still parked in her hangar.

• Why purpose-built carriers outperformed converted battle cruisers like the Lexington class
• How Atlantic neutrality patrols battle-hardened the crew before Pearl Harbor
• The strategic logic of the Coral Sea: a tactical loss that stopped the Port Moresby invasion
• How JN-25 codebreaking and the AF water trick set the Midway ambush
• Why her sinking still shielded Enterprise and Hornet and secured the victory