USS Lexington

The Vessel

USS Lexington (CV-2) was one of the two Lexington-class aircraft carriers of the United States Navy, converted from the incomplete hulls of the Lexington-class battlecruisers cancelled under the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. She was commissioned on 14 December 1927 at the New York Shipbuilding Company, Camden, New Jersey. She was 270 metres long, 37,000 tons standard displacement, capable of carrying 78 aircraft, and driven by turbo-electric propulsion on four shafts at 34 knots, making her, with her sister USS Saratoga, the fastest American aircraft carrier of her generation.

Her design reflected the American Navy's 1920s bet on the aircraft carrier as the capital ship of the future. She was the largest aircraft carrier in the world at her commissioning; her flight deck was longer and broader than any then in service. Her interwar period was spent developing the operational doctrine of carrier aviation: how to launch and recover aircraft at speed, how to coordinate multi-carrier strikes, how to integrate carrier aviation with fleet operations. The 1932 fleet problem at Pearl Harbor, in which Lexington attacked the defences of Pearl Harbor with surprise aircraft launches, had demonstrated at American naval war-game level exactly what the Japanese would achieve against Pearl Harbor ten years later.

Her commanding officer at the date of her loss was Captain Frederick C. Sherman, 53, a career naval aviator and one of the most experienced American carrier captains of his generation. Her designation "Lady Lex" was a crew nickname that had followed her from the late 1920s; by 1942 it was used throughout the American fleet.

The Voyage

On 7 and 8 May 1942, Lexington was operating with Task Force 17 under Rear-Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher in the Coral Sea, 600 kilometres northeast of Australia. Task Force 17 was the American carrier element attempting to block a Japanese invasion force aimed at Port Moresby in New Guinea. The Japanese force, Operation Mo, comprised the fleet carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku under Vice-Admiral Takeo Takagi, with the invasion convoy and covering forces. The Battle of the Coral Sea on 7-8 May 1942 was the first engagement in naval history in which the two opposing fleets never sighted each other; all attacks were delivered by carrier aircraft.

On the morning of 7 May 1942, American search aircraft located the Japanese Port Moresby invasion force. Lexington and Yorktown launched a 93-aircraft strike that found and destroyed the Japanese light carrier Shōhō at approximately 11:00 on 7 May ("Scratch one flattop", in Lieutenant-Commander Robert E. Dixon's famous signal from the command aircraft). The Japanese main carrier force, Shōkaku and Zuikaku, were further north and did not engage.

On the morning of 8 May 1942, the two principal carrier forces found each other simultaneously. Lexington and Yorktown launched a 75-aircraft strike against Shōkaku and Zuikaku at 09:15; Shōkaku and Zuikaku launched a 69-aircraft strike against Lexington and Yorktown at approximately the same time. The two air strikes crossed in mid-passage without engaging each other.

The American strike damaged Shōkaku severely with three bomb hits and forced her withdrawal from the engagement; the Japanese strike arrived over the American task force at 11:00 on 8 May 1942.

The Disaster

The Japanese attack on Task Force 17 was delivered in a two-wave pattern: high-altitude dive bombers first, followed by low-altitude torpedo bombers. Lexington was the primary target because of her larger silhouette and her position in the American formation. She was struck by two Type 91 aerial torpedoes on her port side (one at 11:20, one at 11:22) and by two 250-kilogram bombs (one on her forward flight deck at 11:27, one on her forward turret at 11:30). Her air group commander, Lieutenant-Commander William Ault, was killed when his aircraft was shot down during the engagement.

By 11:45 on 8 May 1942, Captain Sherman's damage-control teams had largely contained the initial damage. Lexington was listing 7 degrees to port; her flight deck was damaged but operable; her forward gun turret was out of action; her aviation fuel system was intact. Sherman resumed flight operations at 12:15, recovering the returning Coral Sea strike aircraft. The damage control situation seemed under control.

At 12:47 on 8 May 1942, an internal explosion in Lexington's auxiliary generator space initiated a secondary disaster. The torpedo hits had ruptured her aviation fuel tank vent lines; the ruptured lines had been venting aviation gasoline vapour into her compartment spaces for 90 minutes. The accumulated vapour ignited. The resulting explosion propagated through her fuel system and into her forward aircraft hangar.

The secondary fire could not be controlled. Between 12:47 and 17:00 on 8 May 1942, Lexington burned progressively from forward to aft. The ship's company abandoned her at 17:07; the destroyer USS Phelps fired five torpedoes into her at 19:15 to scuttle her. Lexington sank at 19:56 on 8 May 1942 in approximately 3,000 metres of water, 400 kilometres east of Townsville, Australia. 216 of her 2,951 crew died; the vast majority of her complement was evacuated to other task force ships before the abandonment.

The Legacy

The loss of Lexington was the first American aircraft carrier lost in combat and the most significant American naval loss of the early Pacific War prior to Midway. Her destruction and the damage to Yorktown in the same engagement left the U.S. Pacific Fleet with only four operational aircraft carriers entering the Midway campaign three weeks later. The operational consequences of the Coral Sea engagement were, despite the tactical draw, favourable to the Allied strategic position: the Japanese invasion of Port Moresby was aborted, the first operational Japanese setback of the Pacific War, and the Japanese Striking Force carriers Shōkaku (severely damaged) and Zuikaku (carrier air group severely depleted) were absent from the subsequent Battle of Midway.

The American naval lesson of Lexington's loss was not in the initial Japanese damage but in the subsequent aviation-fuel-vapour explosion. The investigation established that ruptured aviation fuel lines had vented gasoline into poorly-ventilated lower compartments for over an hour before ignition. Every subsequent American fleet carrier was retrofitted with improved fuel-system damage-control procedures, including the immediate flooding of damaged aviation fuel system compartments with carbon dioxide to displace gasoline vapour, and the prompt venting of ruptured fuel lines directly overboard rather than into compartment spaces.

The wreck of USS Lexington was located on 4 March 2018 by Paul Allen's research vessel Petrel, at a depth of 3,000 metres, 800 kilometres east-northeast of Cairns, Australia. The wreck is in remarkable condition for a ship of her depth: her hull is intact, her forward flight deck damage is visible, and her aviation fuel-related fire damage is limited to her forward third. The most striking single artifact recovered by the Petrel survey cameras is her preserved painted bow sign "USS LEXINGTON", still legible 76 years after her sinking. Her hangar deck still contains her intact Douglas SBD Dauntless and Grumman F4F Wildcat aircraft, preserved by the cold, low-oxygen deep-ocean water.

She is a protected American war grave. The 216 dead are commemorated on the American Battle Monuments Commission memorial at the Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu. The name USS Lexington has been carried by four subsequent American warships: CV-16 (the Essex-class carrier that served through the Pacific War and into the Cold War); the Army's USS Lexington of the War of 1812; the current Arleigh Burke-class destroyer DDG-138, commissioned 2024, which carries the Lexington name for the fifth time in American naval history. The Lady Lex was the first American aircraft carrier lost in combat; she was the first American carrier to sink an enemy carrier in the same battle; and her wreck is the best-preserved large American warship wreck of the Pacific War.