USS Lexington (hull number CV-2), nicknamed "Lady Lex",Groom, p. 203 was the name ship of her class of two aircraft carriers built for the United States Navy during the 1920s. Originally designed as a , she was converted into one of the Navy's first aircraft carriers during construction to comply with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which essentially terminated all new battleship and battlecruiser construction. The ship entered service in 1928 and was assigned to the Pacific Fleet for her entire career. Lexington and her sister ship, , were used to develop and refine carrier tactics in a series of annual exercises before World War II. On more than one occasion these included successfully staged surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The ship's turbo-electric propulsion system allowed her to supplement the electrical supply of Tacoma, Washington, during a drought in late 1929 to early 1930. She also delivered medical personnel and relief supplies to Managua, Nicaragua, after an earthquake in 1931.
Lexington was at sea when the Pacific War began on 7 December 1941, ferrying fighter aircraft to Midway Island. Her mission was canceled and she returned to Pearl Harbor a week later. After a few days, she was sent to create a diversion from the force en route to relieve the besieged Wake Island garrison by attacking Japanese installations in the Marshall Islands. The island surrendered before the relief force got close enough, and the mission was canceled. A planned attack on Wake Island in January 1942 had to be canceled when a submarine sank the oiler required to supply the fuel for the return trip. Lexington was sent to the Coral Sea the following month to block any Japanese advances into the area. The ship was spotted by Japanese search aircraft while approaching Rabaul in New Britain, but her aircraft shot down most of the Japanese bombers that attacked her. Together with the carrier , she successfully attacked Japanese shipping off the east coast of New Guinea in early March.
Lexington was quickly refitted in Pearl Harbor at the end of the month and rendezvoused with Yorktown in the Coral Sea in early May. A few days later the Japanese began Operation Mo, the invasion of Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, and the two American carriers attempted to stop the invasion forces. They sank the light aircraft carrier on 7 May during the Battle of the Coral Sea, but did not encounter the main Japanese force of the carriers and until the next day. Aircraft from Lexington and Yorktown badly damaged Shōkaku, but the Japanese aircraft crippled Lexington. A mixture of air and aviation gasoline in her improperly drained aircraft fueling trunk lines (which ran from the keel tanks to her hangar deck) ignited, causing a series of explosions and fires that could not be controlled. Lexington was scuttled by an American destroyer during the evening of 8 May to prevent her capture. The ship's wreck was located on 4 March 2018 by , which was part of an expedition funded by Paul Allen.
Description and construction
Lexington was the fourth US Navy ship named after the 1775 Battle of Lexington, the first battle of the Revolutionary War. She was originally authorized in 1916 as a , but construction was delayed so that higher-priority anti-submarine vessels and merchant ships, needed to ensure the safe passage of personnel and materiel to Europe during Germany's U-boat campaign, could be built. After the war the ship was extensively redesigned, partially as a result of British experience.Friedman 1984, pp. 88, 91, 94, 97–99 Given the hull number of CC-1, Lexington was laid down on 8 January 1921 by Fore River Shipbuilding Company of Quincy, Massachusetts.
Before the Washington Naval Conference concluded, the ship's construction was suspended in February 1922, when she was 24.2 percent complete. She was re-designated and re-authorized as an aircraft carrier on 1 July 1922. Her displacement was reduced by a total of , achieved mainly by the elimination of her main armament of eight 16-inch (406 mm) guns in four twin turrets (including their heavy turret mounts, their armor, and other equipment).Friedman 1984, p. 471 The main armor belt was retained, but was reduced in height to save weight.Stern, p. 82 The general line of the hull remained unaltered, as did the torpedo protection system, because they had already been built, and it would have been too expensive to alter them.Stern, p. 28
The ship had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draft of at deep load. Lexington had a standard displacement of and at deep load. At that displacement, she had a metacentric height of .
Christened by Helen Rebecca Roosevelt, the wife of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Douglas Robinson, Lexington was launched on 3 October 1925. She was commissioned on 14 December 1927 with Captain Albert Marshall in command. By 1942, the ship had a crew of 100 officers and 1,840 enlisted men and an aviation group totaling 141 officers and 710 enlisted men.
Flight deck arrangements
The ship's flight deck was long and had a maximum width of . When built, her hangar "was the largest single enclosed space afloat on any ship"Anderson & Baker, p. 310 and had an area of . It was long and wide. Its minimum height was , and it was divided by a single fire curtain just forward of the aft aircraft elevator. Aircraft repair shops, long, were aft of the hangar, and below them was a storage space for disassembled aircraft, long. Lexington was fitted with two hydraulically powered elevators on her centerline. The forward elevator's dimensions were and it had a capacity of . The aft elevator had a capacity of only and measured . Avgas was stored in eight compartments of the torpedo protection system, and their capacity has been quoted as either or .Anderson & Baker, p. 311
Lexington was initially fitted with electrically operated arresting gear designed by Carl Norden that used both fore-and-aft and transverse wires. The longitudinal wires were intended to prevent aircraft from being blown over the side of the ship while the transverse wires slowed them to a stop. This system was authorized to be replaced by the hydraulically operated Mk 2 system, without longitudinal wires, on 11 August 1931. Four improved Mk 3 units were added in 1934, giving the ship a total of eight arresting wires and four barriers intended to prevent aircraft from crashing into parked aircraft on the ship's bow. After the forward flight deck was widened in 1936, an additional eight wires were added there to allow aircraft to land over the bow if the landing area at the stern was damaged.Stern, pp. 113–115 The ship was built with a , flywheel-powered, F Mk II aircraft catapult, also designed by Norden, on the starboard side of the bow. This catapult was strong enough to launch a aircraft at a speed of . It was intended to launch seaplanes, but was rarely used; a 1931 report tallied only five launches of practice loads since the ship had been commissioned. It was removed during the ship's 1936 refit.Stern, p. 115
Lexington was designed to carry 78 aircraft, including 36 bombers,Anderson & Baker, pp. 310–311 but these numbers increased once the Navy adopted the practice of tying up spare aircraft in the unused spaces at the top of the hangar.Stern, p. 109 In 1936, the fighter component of her air group consisted of 18 Grumman F2F-1 and 18 Boeing F4B-4 fighters, plus an additional nine F2Fs in reserve. Offensive punch was provided by 20 Vought SBU Corsair dive bombers with 10 spare aircraft and 18 Great Lakes BG heavy dive bombers with nine spares. Miscellaneous aircraft included two Grumman JF Duck amphibious aircraft, plus one in reserve, and three active and one spare Vought O2U Corsair observation aircraft. This amounted to 79 aircraft, plus 30 spares.
Propulsion The Lexington-class carriers used turbo-electric propulsion; each of the four propeller shafts was driven by two electric motors. They were powered by four General Electric (GE) turbo generators rated at using steam provided by sixteen Yarrow boilers. Six electric generators were installed in the upper levels of the two main turbine compartments to provide power to meet the ship's hotel load (minimum electrical) requirements.Stern, p. 58
The ship was designed to reach ,Friedman 1983, p. 390 but Lexington achieved from during sea trials in 1928.Anderson & Baker, p. 312 She carried a maximum of of fuel oil, but only of that was usable, as the rest had to be retained as ballast in the port fuel tanks to offset the weight of the island and main guns. Designed for a range of at a speed of , the ship demonstrated a range of at a speed of with of oil.Anderson & Baker, p. 313
Armament
The Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair was not convinced when the class was being designed that aircraft could effectively substitute as armament for a warship, especially at night or in bad weather that would prevent air operations.Friedman 1983, p. 44 Thus the carriers' design included a substantial gun battery of 8 Mk 9 guns in four twin-gun turrets. These turrets were mounted above the flight deck on the starboard side, one superfiring pair before the superstructure, and another behind the funnel, numbered I to IV from bow to stern.Stern, p. 96 In theory the guns could fire to both sides, but it is probable that if they were fired to port (across the deck) the blast would have damaged the flight deck.Stille 2005, p. 17
The ship's heavy anti-aircraft (AA) armament consisted of a dozen Mk 10 guns which were mounted on single mounts, three each fitted on sponsons on each side of the bow and stern.Stern, p. 98 No light AA guns were initially mounted on Lexington, but two sextuple .30-caliber (7.62 mm) machine gun mounts were installed in 1929.Friedman 1983, p. 47 They were unsuccessful, and they were replaced by two .50-caliber (12.7 mm) machine guns by 1931, one each on the roof of the upper eight-inch turrets. During a refit in 1935, platforms mounting four .50-caliber machine guns were installed on each corner of the ship, and an additional platform was installed that wrapped around the funnel. Six machine guns were mounted on each side of this last platform. In October 1940, four Mk 10 AA guns were installed in the corner platforms; they replaced two of the .50-caliber machine guns which were remounted on the tops of the eight-inch gun turrets. Another three-inch gun was added on the roof of the deckhouse between the funnel and the island. These guns were just interim weapons until the quadruple gun mounts could be installed in August 1941.Stern, pp. 101–103
In March 1942, Lexingtons eight-inch turrets were removed at Pearl Harbor and replaced by seven quadruple 1.1-inch gun mounts. The eight-inch guns and turrets were reused as coast defense weapons on Oahu.Berhow, pp. 118–119, 217–219 In addition twenty-two Oerlikon AA guns were installed, six in a new platform at the base of the funnel, 12 in the positions formerly occupied by the ship's boats in the sides of the hull, two at the stern, and a pair on the aft control top. When the ship was sunk in May 1942, her armament consisted of a dozen single 5-inch guns, 12 quadruple 1.1-inch mounts, 22 Oerlikon guns, and at least two dozen .50-caliber machine guns.Stern, pp. 98, 103
Fire control and electronics