Posted on 03/07/2018 9:43:26 PM PST by bitt
Known for deep-sea exploration efforts uncovering military ships in the past, Paul Allen's personal search team has helped to discover a lost aircraft carrier.
The U.S.S. Lexington has finally been found, decades later and thousands of feet underwater.
The crew of Research Vessel Petrel (R/V Petrel), the exploration ship of billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, discovered the wreckage of the World War II-era aircraft carrier Monday. It was found about two miles below the surface of the Coral Sea and more than 500 miles off the eastern coast of Australia.
The Lexington is one of the first aircraft carriers built by the U.S. It went down in 1942 with 216 crewmembers and 35 aircraft on board, and it's finally been found.
WARTIME RELICS Allen is the son of a WWII veteran, and the R/V Petrel team had been planning to locate the Lexington for about six months after they were given coordinates for where the sunken ship might be. For this, they retrofitted their 250-foot vessel, originally deployed to the Philippine Sea in 2017, with subsea equipment that can reach depths up to three and a half miles. (Read: "How Microsoft Billionaire Found Largest Sunken Battleship")
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
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What an awesome find!
Wow, that’s amazing!
“The Lady Lex’’ found at last. She went down with 219 hands on May 8,1942. The following month the US Navy would get revenge at The Battle of Midway and put four Jap carriers at the bottom of The Pacific.
The website has a few pics pertaining to the article and then shows sea life and other nonsense pictures.The aircraft that were found in a debri field were non existant until these photos were released.Hopefully Allen can recover these for the navy museum and for himself as he has quite a collection of WW2 aircraft.What an AWESOME discovery.
That will buff right out.
Are we sure its not a new submarine aircraft carrier?
Most likely nothing will be removed. It is a war grave and still property of the US .
Can Paul Allen remove the aircraft that slid off the deck since they are scattered around the area or does that law just pertain to the wreck itself?
Or is the geographical area considered a war grave? Just wondering.
From what I have read the debri field (where the aircraft came to rest on the sea floor)is excluded from the war grave according to the government.We will just have to see.
It is probably deep enough that nothing will be moved. Some of the WWII ships in shallow water, such as the Repulse, have been mutilated by salvagers using cranes to salvage steel. Do a search on HMS Repulse.
I believe the “Bismarck” debris field indicates where the turrets “fell out” when the ship overturned on her way down; incredible.
How did you make out in the storm?
An incredible aspect of the carrier war in the Pacific in contrast to the battleship encounters of WWI is that no enemy carriers were ever within sight of each other. The distances involved in the Pacific War are mind-boggling; the Japanese could re-supply isolated island garrisons with subs because their subs had to be made so much larger than U-boats (to cover much larger distances).
Amazing. Thanks for sharing.
A little WD40 and some Scotchbrite and I bet I could get that thing to shoot again.
Nice find.
Awesome, the next carrier ship out of the yards was Christened USS Lexington, BIL was a Plank Owner, we just lost him at 91 last year. She too was called the Lady Lex.
Hubby served on carriers like the USS Midway (Nam), Constelation (Missile Crisis), ending 20 yr career on the Enchon.
If Allen will pay for it I doubt the navy would have a problem with him recovering those aircraft. I’m sure they’d love to have aircraft from that battle in Pensacola.
Lately Paul Allen has been the force behind finding these lost WWII ships. He’s doing great work.
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