William John Yokes was born n 15 November 1918 in Franklin, Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy at Cleveland, Ohio, on 3 January 1942. Yokes was a seaman second class attached to the Naval Armed Guard detachment aboard the merchant ship SS Steel Navigator, a straggler from Convoy ON 137, in the North Atlantic Ocean in October 1942. For several days, heavy seas and high winds had caused a dangerous shift in ballast in Steel Navigator. Yokes and his shipmates volunteered to go below and perform the physically exhausting task of shifting ballast to trim the ship, working for some 30 hours without rest.
On 19 October 1942, the U-610 attacked Steel Navigator. Lookouts aboard Steel Navigator spotted U-610's periscope, and the Naval Armed Guard unit swiftly manned its guns and opened fire. Soon the gunfire registered several near-misses on the periscope, and U-610 withdrew temporarily. Later that day, U-610 returned and torpedoedSteel Navigator, sinking her immediately. Yokes was among the dead.
Yokes was commended posthumously by the U.S. Navy's Chief of Naval Personnel, who cited Yokes's "courageous and unfailing devotion to duty . . . fortitude, skill and bravery" in conduct "in keeping with the highest traditions of the naval service."[2]
Construction and commissioning
Yokes was laid down as the Buckley-classdestroyer escort USS Yokes (DE-668) on 22 August 1943 at Orange, Texas, by the Consolidated Steel Corporation and launched as such on 27 November 1943,[3] sponsored by Mrs. Charlotte Yokes, widow of the ship's namesake, Seaman Second Class William J. Yokes. Yokes was reclassified as a Charles Lawrence-class high-speed transport and redesignated APD-69 on 27 June 1944. After conversion to her new role, she was commissioned on 18 December 1944.
Departing Manila Bay on 23 January 1946, Yokes steamed via Pearl Harbor to San Diego, which she reached on 15 February 1946. She remained there undergoing repairs through the summer of 1946.
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