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In 1943, the US Navy assigned Commander Edward J Steichen USNR, along with a team of combat cameramen, to document the actions of the newly commissioned USS Yorktown, CV-10. USS Yorktown, second of the Essex class fleet carriers that would form the backbone of the strike force of the Pacific Fleet, was named in honor of the previous Yorktown, CV-5, lost at the Battle of Midway.

Steichen and his men, filming in gorgeous 16mm color, provided some of the best visual documentation of carrier operations of the Pacific war. And in 1944, with some careful editing, and after running the film through Technicolor, a one hour propaganda/documentary film titled The Fighting Lady was released.

Mind you, not all the footage was shot aboard Yorktown. Film from various other Essex class carriers was used. And, likely for wartime operational security reasons, the film is kinda fast and loose with the actual ports of call of the ship.

Yorktown herself would survive the war, and soldier on, being converted to an anti-submarine carrier until her decommissioning in 1970. Since 1975, she’s been a museum ship at Patriot’s Point, North Carolina.