From Yorktown to Essex: designing for rapid construction

The United States answered the end of treaty restrictions by ordering another Yorktown-class carrier, Hornet, because that design already offered much of the capability it wanted. Essex developed the Yorktown pattern with quantity production as a major requirement. Designers sought to retain useful features, improve what they could, and simplify anything that made large-scale construction harder. This approach drew on Yorktown experience and fleet problems conducted with the Lexington-class carriers. The resulting design joined operational lessons to the industrial objective of building many carriers.