Saturday April 4, 1936 was a brisk bright day in Newport News, Virginia and thousands of people gathered at the famous shipyard named for the city. The occasion was the launch of a new aircraft carrier, Yorktown CV-5, the first new ship built under President Roosevelt's naval construction program. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, christened the ship and she slid down the ways into the James River as majestically as any ship ever did. The cheering crowd and the whistles from the attending tugs and other ships gathered in the river, greeted the great ship as she took to the water for the first time. Named after the Revolutionary War Battle of Yorktown, she would be lost in another epic battle, the Battle of Midway in June of 1942.