The Yorktown Fliers play USS Wasp
NCAA’s March Madness has us thinking about basketball on the USS Yorktown (CVA-10). It was during the 1950s that the sport really took off in the Navy, and the crew and squadrons on the Yorktown included some great players.
In 1954, while in Hong Kong, the ship’s basketball team defeated the number one and two teams of the area, adding well over $1,000 (HK) to funds for the Chinese refugees that flocked to Hong Kong since the beginning of Communist aggression in their homeland. At the end of the season the Yorktown Fliers four-on-four team had posted an impressive string of fourteen victories over one loss. Many of the teams defeated were top local teams from the military installations in the area and from other ships.
Joe Norris (RD3, OI Division, 1958 – 1960) also played in Hong Kong. He told about the experience in an oral history we did several years ago on the ship: “We played basketball in several different areas. Of course, it’s a little bit different bouncing a ball on a steel deck. [laughs] But we’d play ball all over the Far East. The team played in Hong Kong and then we were invited to play in China with the Chinese college all stars. They took us over there, and played the game, and they fed us, and sent us back. They had the guards with the machine guns that were on the bus with us, and met us at the gate at Calhoun, and took us in, and that was it. You stayed right there while on the court. I think they won that one. I think we were probably more concerned with the guys with the machine guns standing on the sides. [laughs].”
Jimmie Collums (AT2, VS-37, 1958-59) also played in the late 1950s. He said in his oral history interview: “On the hangar deck forward, we had a basketball court that was a miniature basketball court on a hard floor, if you can imagine a steel deck. We had a squadron team, and we had some pretty good players. I played until I was too old to play, in the service, and enjoyed it. Ships competed against each other and anyone that would setup a game, at port, if they were in port. Ships came to play whoever they could get a challenge from. That was the same way all over. In fact, later when I was stationed in Trinidad, I got the opportunity to play against the Trinidad National Olympic team.”
Originally published in the Spring/Summer 2023 SeaVTen newsletter.