Aircraft Carrier Facts

The French named one of their aircraft carriers after Ferdinand Foch, a man who once said "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value".

Explorers just found a 1940s Ford parked inside the wreck of the USS Yorktown, the aircraft carrier lost at the Battle of Midway. It sits three miles down in the Pacific on the ship's hangar deck, its leather seats and chrome trim barely touched after 83 years underwater. Nobody knows why the crew never threw it overboard while trying to save the sinking ship.

Operation Magic Carpet turned Navy warships into giant floating dorms. The mission: bring 8 million WWII troops home. Nearly 370 Navy ships took part in the Pacific, with bunks stacked up to five tiers high on hangar decks. USS Saratoga alone carried more troops than any other ship in the fleet: 29,204 men. Flight decks built for fighter planes were packed wall to wall with veterans, finally sailing home.