USS Lexington (CV-2)

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USS Lexington (CV-2) was the first non-experimental aircraft carrier in the United States Navy, lead ship of the Lexington-class. The class were built on hulls originally intended for battlecruisers, but converted as a result of Washington Naval Treaty limitations.

"Commissioned in December 1927, During the late 1920s, through the 1930s and into the early 1940s, she took an active part in the development of carrier techniques, fleet doctrine and in the operational training of a generation of Naval Aviators."^[1] Initially she retained 8" naval gun for use after the flight deck was destroyed. although they were removed after her abortive first mission, the attempted Relief of Wake Island. At 33,000 tons, a battlecruiser displacement, she showed, in retrospect, that the first purpose-built carriers were far too light. In that sense, she and her sister, USS Saratoga (CV-3 were the predecessors of the [[Essex-class].

She was lost in combat at the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942, not before participating in sinking IJN Shoho and damaging IJN Zuikaku and IJN Shokaku.

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