Ford Woody car found in shipwreck of USS Yorktown

A remotely operated vehicle exploration of the wreck of the USS Yorktown, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sunk in the Battle of Midway, has found a 1940-41 Ford automobile on the aft hangar deck. This is remarkable for several reasons, first and foremost that it wasn’t thrown overboard in the crew’s attempts to save the ship after it was disabled by a torpedo attack on the battle’s first day, June 4th 1942. Also, motor vehicles were not typically kept aboard ships at sea, especially ones headed into battle. Furthermore, this was a full-featured Ford Super Deluxe Woody civilian model, not the pared-down military model of this Ford wagon, dubbed the C11, that you’d expect to see in active military use.

Commissioned in 1937, the USS Yorktown had taken heavy damage just a month before Midway in the Battle of the Coral Sea, so much so that the Japanese navy had counted it as lost, but it was patched up to battle-ready standards in just 72 hours at the Pear Harbor Naval Shipyard. It played a vital role at Midway. Its planes were the first in the air scouting for the Japanese fleet, and once battle was engaged and it was bombed, its crew repaired damage so rapidly that Japanese flyers thought it was a different ship, so when it was struck again with two torpedoes and crippled, the Japanese thought there was only one functioning American aircraft carrier left when in fact there were two. The Japanese forces were unprepared for the strength of the American counterattack and lost. At the end of the battle, the US had lost only the Yorktown of its three carriers. Japan lost all four of its carriers, and the Japanese navy never recovered.

After the June 4th torpedo strike, Yorktown was left without power and a severe 23-degree list to port, but it was still believed to be salvageable and the crew made every effort to counter the list and keep it floating. On June 6th, the carrier was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and this time there was no salvaging it. The crew was evacuated and the ship sank on June 7th, 1942. Forty men were lost; 2,270 survived.

The wreck was discovered in 1998 by deep-sea explorer Dr. Robert Ballard, co-leader of the expedition that had found the wreck of the Titanic in 1985. Found at a depth of 16,650 feet (three miles, a mile deeper than Titanic), Yorktown was upright and in excellent condition, with anti-aircraft batteries still raised and steel shiny. Several explorations of the Yorktown wreck by National Geographic Society and the U.S. Navy followed.

Since 2006, Midway Atoll is part of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, one of the world’s largest protected environments that is rich in pre-European archaeological remains, marine life and traditional Native Hawaiian cultural significance. Papahānaumokuākea is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and in 2024, NOAA Ocean Exploration began conducting sonar mapping expeditions of the monument on its ship Okeanos Explorer. Its mission was to map unexplored waters deeper than 656 feet, and in three expeditions, the team mapped an extraordinary 52,774 square miles.

This spring, mapping operations resumed, adding remotely operated vehicle (ROV) dives to the sonar scanning. On April 19th and 20th, the Okeanos Explorer team explored the wreck of the USS Yorktown. The ROV’s camera was able to capture for the first time the hand-painted 42 by 12-foot mural, “A Chart of the Cruises of the USS Yorktown,” in one of the elevator shafts. While the mural had never been imaged before, its existence was well-known.

The automobile, on the other hand, came as a complete surprise.

During the dive on April 19, we noticed a faint outline of an automobile while peering into the aft hangar deck from the port side of USS Yorktown. The team aboard Okeanos Explorer and contributors ashore analyzed diagnostic features of the vehicle observed during the follow-up April 20 dive and tentatively identified the car as a 1940-41 Ford Super Deluxe ‘Woody’ in black. With “SHIP SERVICE ___ NAVY” written on part of its front plate, this car is hypothesized to have been used for Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, Captain Elliott Buckmaster, or other ship crew while USS Yorktown was conducting business in foreign ports.

Why, though, did the car remain stowed in the hangar deck after a brief 48-hour repair period in Pearl Harbor, when the ship’s officers knew it was heading to the Battle of Midway? During the valiant efforts to right Yorktown’s list, why too wasn’t this car jettisoned like the anti-aircraft guns and the aircraft? Did this automobile carry any particular importance to crew and officers who hoped it could be saved?

My vote is Rear Admiral Fletcher, just because whoever loved this car so much had to be very high-ranking to secure the precious hangar space in the first place, to keep it there even headed into battle and then to prioritize it over aircraft and artillery in the struggle to save an entire aircraft carrier.

Here’s a beautiful example of a 1941 Ford Super Deluxe Woody in pristine unrestored condition to give an idea of what it looked like when it was driving the Rear Admiral (?) around.