The USS Yorktown is one of the more famous ships in U.S. naval history, though there have been more than one bearing that name. One of them was sunk during the Battle of Midway after crippling two Japanese fleet carriers and saving two other American ships from aerial counterattacks. The wreckage of that USS Yorktown was discovered back in 1998 in Hawaii, but there are still a lot of unknowns pertaining to what, exactly, lies at the bottom of the sea. In fact, NOAA oceanographers recently sent remotely operated submersibles down to the wreckage to take a look, and discovered something that no one would have expected to see – a 1941 Ford Deluxe Woody Wagon.
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NOAA asked for help identifying this particular vehicle, which was found resting inside the Yorktown near an elevator, and got precisely that from Ford archivist Ted Ryan. “Did you see the news that NOAA discovered a car aboard the sunken USS Yorktown? They asked for help identifying it and we know that it was a 1941 Ford Deluxe Woody Wagon,” Ryan said. “I contacted some peers at the National Archives who speculate that it was a shore vehicle left aboard the Yorktown in the rush to get it back into service before the Battle of Midway. This story fascinated me because as a middle schooler, I wrote my first serious historical paper on Midway which made me realize I wanted to spend my life studying history.”
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As for why such a vehicle would be present on a wartime vessel, well, Ford Deluxe models were typically used to transport officers during this time period, as Ryan notes here, so it’s quite possible that’s what this wagon was intended to do. This example has a lot of chrome present, so Ryan doesn’t believe that it’s a C11, which were assembled in Canada. Thus, it seems as if we still have some questions to answer about this mysterious find, but Ryan is clearly interested in providing us with answers about this cool discovery.
Comments
Cant park there.
Did they find any 1941 Packard wagons on the Yorktown ? They also used them to carry Admirals to their ships !