Lexington was assigned to Black Fleet, defending Hawaii and the West Coast against Blue Fleet and Saratoga. 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. Ships such as these were essentially Tennessee-class ships in which the 6-inch (150 mm) intermediate battery had been traded for heavier main guns and protection. Hone, Trent (2011). Description . Found inside – Page 22USS Lexington, CV-2. Converted from a battle cruiser during construction. Completed in 1928. Displacement: 41,000 tons Maximum speed: 34 knots Crew: 2,122 ... Built at Quincy, Massachusetts, and commissioned in December 1927, Lexington was one of the U.S. Navy's first two aircraft carriers that were large and fast enough to be . The USS Lexington Museum will be CLOSED to the general public all day Saturday, September 4th for a private event. The problem was that the tonnage cap for new carrier construction had been set at 27,000 tons, which was too low for any practical conversion of the battlecruisers. . The USS Lexington Museum will be CLOSED to the general public all day Saturday, September 4th. After she entered service in 1927, Lexington and her sister Saratoga . The Lexington-class carriers were constructed on hulls originally laid down as battlecruisers after World War I. The ship entered service in 1928 and was assigned to the Pacific Fleet for her entire career. Sep 22, 2012 - Lexington-class battlecruiser, 1920s. After his attack, Lieutenant Commander Robert E. Dixon, commander of VS-2, radioed his famous message to the American carriers: "Scratch one flat top! The conference concluded that battlecruisers would be worth building, with the caveat that they be considered in the same category as armored cruisers, in support of the battle fleet but not to fight in the line with fully armored battleships. This did not stop the U.S. The Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R) sketched out such ships the following year, at the request of the Secretary of the Navy, as fast equivalents of the Wyoming-class ships being considered. [2] The ship is about 430 nautical miles (800 km) off the northeastern coast of Australia in the Coral Sea. A disadvantage was the formation of a heavy layer of water which would creep up along the outer plating of the forecastle at higher speeds. [45], Eight 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes were to be carried. [26], The Royal Navy temporarily assigned a young constructor, Stanley Goodall, to C&R to assist in this task. Lexington was the lead ship in a class of 6 which were intended to be the US Navy's first 6 battlecruisers. Lexington and Yorktown launched a total of 53 Dauntlesses and 22 Devastators escorted by 18 Wildcats. The unshielded Hood was severely damaged when . These guns were just interim weapons until the quadruple 1.1-inch gun mount could be mounted, which was done in August 1941. [50], The heavy cruiser San Francisco and two destroyers reinforced the task force on 10 February and Brown rendezvoused with the ANZAC Squadron six days later. [26][28][29], Four proposed redesigns were submitted to the General Board on 3 June 1918, along with a letter that requested a formal reconsideration by the Navy that the Lexingtons be armored to protect them only against fire of guns 6 inches (150 mm) and under. "[7] Tsushima sealed the outcome of the Russo-Japanese War in Japan's favor, signaled its emergence as a world power and began a period of rivalry with the United States over intentions in the Pacific theater, as the two now became the dominant military powers there. Keel laid at Quincy, Massachusetts . [10] 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. These guns were originally mounted on the Florida- and Wyoming-class battleships, but they found their way into the secondary armament of every U.S. battleship that was built prior to the Washington Naval Treaty. This article is about the original battlecruiser class. Completed model photo by Chris Martens. [8][12] This catapult was strong enough to launch a 10,000-pound (4,500 kg) aircraft at a speed of 48 knots (89 km/h; 55 mph). Injection-molded, 119 parts, stickers. The down side to this practice was a reduction of the relative height of the belt, which increased the chance of plunging shellfire going over or under it. [70], Fuel was pumped from the port storage tanks to the starboard side to correct the list and Lexington began recovering damaged aircraft and those that were low on fuel at 11:39. She would have 8x16" guns in four turrets, 14 6" guns in fourteen turrets, and 7 inch main belt and 9 inch barbette and 11 inch turret armor. [45] At this time she embarked 65 of her own aircraft, including 17 Brewster F2A Buffalo fighters. 11, pt. A majority report recommended a top speed of at least 20 percent above that of battleships. Ranger-class battlecruiser (Alternity) The Ranger-class was a class of five battlecruisers built for the United States Navy in the mid to late 1920s. Hood. Although the General Board and the Secretary of the Navy refused to adopt the proposed new armored cruiser, perhaps because the Navy already had 10 new armored cruisers on hand, the college continued to test the design against a variety of foreign vessels, including the British Invincible-class battlecruiser. The Board also feared that producing heavily armored fast battleships such as Hood would make the U.S. Navy's Standard type battleships obsolete, just as HMS Dreadnought made the Royal Navy's pre-dreadnought battleships obsolescent and negated its advantage in numbers over other navies. Naval Intelligence confirmed she was to be the first of four ships, the other three to be built in Japan, which would form a fast division for the IJN. McBride, became privy to much British experience and was able to share it with C&R. The fueled Dauntlesses were launched and six Wildcats that were low on fuel landed aboard. Lexington-class Battlecruiser Like the South Dakota-class battleships also included in the 1916 Act, their construction was repeatedly postponed in favor of escort ships and anti-submarine vessels. When commissioned, Lexington was one of the largest aircraft carriers in existence. These penetrated the ship's flight deck and burst inside her hangars, setting the fueled and armed aircraft there on fire. The ship was spotted by Japanese search aircraft while approaching Rabaul, New Britain, but her aircraft shot down most of the Japanese bombers that attacked her. Found inside – Page 37The USS Lexington originated as a battle cruiser and was first classed as a battle scout – a ship powerful enough to carry out reconnaissance tasks in the ... The severity of the strength and weight challenges necessitated a larger displacement of 33,000 tons and a hull of 850 feet (260 m) instead of 800 feet (240 m) to give enough internal volume to accommodate all the needed machinery. The dive bombers of VS-2 began their attack at 1110 as the three Japanese fighters attacked the Dauntlesses in their dive. Later in the exercise, the two carriers successfully attacked San Francisco without being spotted by the defending fleet. C&R estimated 180,000 shaft horsepower would be needed to obtain this planned speed. This system was authorized to be replaced by the hydraulically operated Mk 2 system, without longitudinal wires, on 11 August 1931. Jul 1, 2014 - 1/350 USS Lexington BC-2 (Scratchbuilt) by Andy Bradshaw Also, the ship could go astern at full power simply by reversing the electrical polarity of the motors. Roosevelt himself, as President of the United States, had written before Tsushima to British diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice, "The Japs interest me and I like them. Her mission was cancelled and she returned to Pearl Harbor a week later. The substitution of flexible electric cables for bulky steam-lines meant that the motors could be mounted further to the rear of the ship, which reduced both vibration and weight by shortening the propeller shafts. When the "large light cruiser" HMS Courageous weathered a heavy gale during her initial trial run, a number of her outer hull plates were so distorted that they had to be removed, sent back to the foundry and renewed. [36], Captain Ernest J. With the Marine aircraft aboard, Lexington's flight deck was very congested and he decided to reverse the phase of the ship's electric propulsion motors and steam full speed astern in order to launch a new CAP and then swap back to resume forward motion to recover his current CAP. [13], Lexington was initially fitted with electrically operated arresting gear designed by Carl Norden that used both fore-and-aft and transverse wires. The fact that the U.S. Navy misunderstood the essential points of the battle initially was shown by its ignoring the Lexingtons staying power while increasing their main armament to eight 16"/50 caliber guns and their secondary armament to fourteen 6"/53 caliber guns. Also, while the 8 inches (203 mm) of belt armor being considered was not an impressive amount in itself, the belt's running potentially along 80 percent of the waterline and covering the entire side amidships made the amount of armor protection impressive by European standards. The approval of two New York-class ships in 1910 (FY 1911) instead of just one was apparently "something of a personal triumph for Secretary of the Navy von Lengerke Meyer. Large numbers of anti-submarine warfare vessels and merchant ships were needed to ensure the safe passage of men and materiel to Europe during Germany's U-boat campaign and were given top priority. They were also exactly the type of ships for which the college had argued unsuccessfully to add to the U.S. Navy before switching to battlecruisers. On 12 July 1912, Naval Constructor R.H. Robinson presented these studies at a lecture he gave at the Naval War College with the General Board in attendance. The desired speed of 35 knots had been attained previously only in destroyers and smaller craft. [62], Another H6K spotted the Americans during the morning of 6 May and successfully shadowed them until 1400. The Lexingtons were included as part of the Naval Act of 1916. During some of the heaviest fighting in the Coral Sea, the USS Lexington (a battle cruiser converted into one of the first aircraft carriers and the . [18] They would have a secondary armament of eighteen 5"/51 caliber guns on a displacement of 34,300 long tons (34,900 t) and steam at 35 knots. This was found inordinately difficult to be practical and, while it would have added girder strength where most badly needed, was considered too radical a proposition to be truly safe. The Lexingtons were given "no less than" seven funnels, four of them side by side. [43] The 1938 Fleet Problem again tested the defenses of Hawaii and, again, aircraft from Lexington and her sister successfully attacked Pearl Harbor at dawn on 29 March. Found inside – Page 12The USS Langley , Saratoga and Lexington The U.S. Navy built its first ... the The Saratoga was originally planned to be a battle cruiser Lexington each had ... [25] Lexington received a RCA CXAM-1 radar in June 1941 during a brief refit in Pearl Harbor. [58] The Japanese opened Operation Mo by occupying Tulagi on 3 May. During these delays, the class was redesigned several times; they were originally designed to mount ten 14-inch guns and eighteen five-inch guns on a hull with a maximum speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph), but by the time of the definitive design, these specifications had been altered to eight 16-inch guns and sixteen six-inch guns, with a speed of 33.25 knots (61.58 km/h; 38.26 mph) to improve hitting power and armor (the decrease in speed was mostly attributed to the additions of armor). A series of large explosions began around 18:00 that blew the aft elevator apart and threw aircraft into the air. Sixteen water-tube boilers, each in their own individual compartment, provided steam for the generators at a working pressure of 295 psi (2,034 kPa; 21 kgf/cm2) and a temperature of 460 °F (238 °C). The USS Lexington was originally commissioned as a battlecruiser but was launched as an aircraft carrier in 1925. This is based how the Lexington would have turned out if it wasn't modified to be a Carrier. However, this tendency could be reduced to some degree by careful design of the frames. Comparing costs, a brand-new aircraft carrier would cost $27.1 million, while a conversion of one of the Lexington class, not counting the $6.7 million already sunk into them, would cost $22.4 million. "[53] Only four of the nine G4Ms in the first wave survived to reach Lexington, but all of their bombs missed and they were all shot down afterward, including one by a Dauntless. The Dauntlesses of VB-2 began their attack at 11:18 and they hit Shōhō twice with 1,000-pound (450 kg) bombs. Even so, the size of the power plant meant pushing the main turrets further toward the ends of the ships, which increased hull stress. [30], The waterline belt of the Lexington-class ships tapered 7–5 inches (178–127 mm) in thickness from top to bottom and angled 11° outwards at the top. Tom's Model Works 0716 US Heavy Cruiser. The Japanese, however, were unwilling or unable to launch air strikes in poor weather or without updated spot reports. The bridge rests by itself in between these sections. Accordingly, studies were done exploring the possibilities of converting one or more of the battlecruisers to different uses: one looked at a conversion to an aircraft carrier, while another contemplated a conversion to an Atlantic ocean liner. The Lexington-class ships featured advanced sensors and may have been . [13][15][19], A painting of the Lexington class' original planned configuration. [14], There was also the political climate to consider—and the weather was not good for battlecruisers. Lexington launched several scout planes to search for the Japanese that day and remained at sea between Johnston Island and Hawaii, reacting to several false alerts, until she returned to Pearl Harbor on 13 December. Brown was ordered back to sea on 31 January to escort the fast oiler Neosho to its rendezvous with Halsey's task force returning from its attack on Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands. The design selected for construction of the Lexington (Battle Cruiser # 1) class followed this general layout. [49] The third deck over the ships' machinery and magazine was armored with two layers of Special treatment steel (STS) totaling 2 inches (51 mm) in thickness. The ship's registry was seen on a chart indicating the repair status of several vessels. The fact they were not approved by Congress at the time of their initial request was due to political, not military considerations. Large numbers of anti-submarine warfare vessels and merchant ships were needed to ensure the safe passage of men and materiel to Europe during Germany's U-boat campaign and were given top priority. Report recommended a top speed of at least 20 percent above that of.... 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