David Doyle Books Review - USS Yorktown CV-10

Legends of Warfare
USS Yorktown (CV-10)
by David Doyle

Reviewed by Martin J Quinn
October 2025

David Doyle Books has released a new title. This one covers the USS Yorktown, CV-10, an Essex-class carrier, which was built during World War II and served until 1970. This book is 176 pages long, and includes a history of the Yorktown, from keel laying - when she was originally named Bon Homme Richard - through World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, to her current status as a museum ship in Charleston, South Carolina. The book has over 350 photos, many in color, including some original World War II color photos.

This book is laid out with an introduction and four subsequent chapters.

- Chapter 1 - To Sea
- Chapter 2 - A Needed Respite Before Rejoining the Battle
- Chapter 3 - Return to Service
- Chapter 4 - Preservation

Not surprisingly, almost 90 pages of this book deal with Yorktown's construction and World War II service in the Pacific, where she became known as "The Fighting Lady", and part of the famous US fast carrier task forces that roamed the Pacific in 1944 and 1945, wrecking havoc on the Japanese.

The subsequent chapters deal with the rest of Yorktown's career - her first modernization, service in the Korean War, a subsequent modernization (where she got her angled deck), service off Vietnam, her role as a movie star in "Tora, Tora, Tora", her participation in the recovery of the Apollo 8 command capsule, and finally, her well deserved retirement and preservation as a museum ship. As a teenager growing up in northern New Jersey, I remember the newspaper article detailing her being pulled out of the reserve fleet in Bayonne NJ to start her journey to South Carolina (I may still have the clipping).

The book is full of great archival photographs - including some in color - from Yorktown's entire career, many of them showing interesting details. The dockyard photos of her undergoing her two modernizations are especially interesting. For modelers, there are a lot of detail shots for those building this famous Essex-class in her World War II configuration.

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Conclusions:

This is another really nice, high quality, hardcover book from David Doyle. It has great info and tons of terrific pictures, including some original World War II color photos. As with previous books in this series, I think both naval history buffs and modelers will really like this book. It might even inspire some folks to go visit her. Highly recommended.

This is USS Yorktown CV-10 - Legends of Warfare, by David Doyle. Published by Schiffer Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7643-7077-9. The book retails for $29.99, and will soon be available to order directly from David's website. Thanks to David Doyle Books for the review sample.