Posted on 03/06/2018 11:54:59 AM PST by nickcarraway
Lying on the floor of the Coral Sea some 500 miles (800 kilometers) off the eastern coast of Australia, the wreckage from the USS Lexington, a U.S. aircraft carrier used in WWII, appears frozen in time, covered in the detritus of the sea.
An expedition aboard the research vessel Petrel funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's company, Vulcan Inc. discovered the huge wreck about 2 miles (3,000 meters) below the sea surface. It had been lying there for 76 years.
"Lexington was on our priority list because she was one of the capital ships that was lost during WWII," Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Vulcan Inc., said in a statement from the company. "Based on geography, time of year and other factors, I work with Paul Allen to determine what missions to pursue. We've been planning to locate the Lexington for about six months and it came together nicely."
The carrier, nicknamed Lady Lex, was commissioned as a battlecruiser (similar to battleships but built for speed), though in 1925 it was launched as an aircraft carrier. From May 4 to 8, 1942, Lady Lex and the USS Yorktown faced off against three Japanese carriers in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. carriers delivered a serious blow to the Japanese forces advancing on New Guinea and Australia, according to the statement.
Even so the USS Lexington and 216 of its crew did not survive the clash.
On May 8, Lady Lex was damaged when hit by multiple torpedoes and bombs, though the final blow came from a secondary explosion that led to out-of-control fires. The conflagration caused the crew to abandon ship. That evening, to prevent its capture, the USS Lexington was scuttled;
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Incredible photo!
Paul Allen has used his billions to do some really cool stuff. The computer museum being one of them. And this.
I wonder who the pilot was that already recorder 4 Japanese planes shot down? One more for an Ace.
That’ll buff right out.
Place a bunch of inflatable balls in the compartments where they expand after time. Make them expand to a size too big for the hole they went into. The ship will then rise. How to make the balls inflate? Those are details.
First I am totally against disturbing the ship.
Place oil in your floats add a Bactria that will break the oil down into methane.
Brings forth the question: Do sailors/troops buried at sea get a headstone somewhere? Thanks mc
I know that some lost USN ships have memorials with those lost listed on them such as the USS Indianapolis Memorial .
https://www.visitindy.com/indianapolis-uss-indianapolis-memorial
It’d be easier to lower the Pacific.
Substitute Atlantic and you get the sentiment of the movie Raise The Titanic.
Thanks, bud...I really appreciate it when you ping me to these things...this is amazing.
Good ol’ Lex. Her crew loved her, that much is plain.
Many families of those buried at sea will often have a service and a memorial stone places. Not uncommon, I am told.
I’ll have my ashes buried at sea. It would be honorable if I could have an honor guard , but they don’t do that for you unless you have made the appropriate sacrifices of time or blood in a state of war, or are retired...none of which I am.
So I will be content to have my ashes cast at sea...:)
welcome as always...
that much abuse, and they still had to scuttle her out of fear she’d be captured and made useable!
She was one hell of a tough ship (with a design that exceeded what she needed as a carrier due to her conversion) but even though we were far ahead of the Japanese on damage control design and techniques at that point in the war, we still had a lot to learn at that point.
We learned, and applied lessons to both design and technique, especially after the disaster at Savo Island.
The Japanese did not.
There was an excellent book recommended to me by a Freeper, “Shattered Sword” about the Battle of Midway, and it very much told the tale from the perspective of the IJN, and it was extremely interesting to me.
The design of their damage control systems on their ships was horrible across the board. Our ships were designed in a way that fire mains could be more readily isolated if battle damage made that necessary, but their ships could have half the ships fire mains knocked out with a single bomb. Two well placed bombs could take out the entire firefighting apparatus.
That was a shock to me, I had no idea.
i always appreciate your insight and learn something every time
here’s a white paper i found i will read later
Great link...thanks.
Boy, we had soooo much to learn, and paid for those lessons in blood.
Didn’t know tactics, didn’t know communications protocols, underestimated the enemy, made foolish decisions, and any time luck came into play, it played into the IJN’s hands that night. Hard to believe, nearly a thousand of our men killed in such a brief battle.
By the end of the Guadalcanal campaign, there would be three dead sailors killed at sea for every soldier or Marine killed on land.
Things must have looked pretty black and hopeless the next morning.
darkest before the dawn, thank God
Supposedly either John Thach or Butch O’Hare.
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