Bob Collins
Fate allowed the carrier Lexington to escape the destruction its sister ships suffered at Pearl Harbor.
She was at sea, ferrying fighter aircraft to Midway Island in December 1941.
Not long after, the Lexington was given orders to block any Japanese advances in the Coral Sea, which it did alongside the Yorktown.
In May 1942, the Lexington was badly damaged during the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first carrier battle in history, and it was sunk by a destroyer to prevent the inferno from being a beacon to Japanese vessels and war planes.
More than 2,000 surviving crew members watched the demise of the first U.S. aircraft carrier sunk at sea.
“She didn’t turn over. She is going down with her head up. Dear old Lex. A lady to the last,” one of “Lady Lex’s” officers is reported to have said at the time.
And that’s the last anyone saw of the Lexington.
The Lexington had turned the tide of the war in the Pacific by taking out two Japanese aircraft carriers before the crucial Battle of Midway.
The expedition to locate the ship was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, whose teams had previously located the USS Indianapolis (August 2017), USS Ward (November 2017), USS Astoria (February 2015), Japanese battleship Musashi (March 2015) and the Italian WWII destroyer Artigliere (March 2017).
