[quote]One of the first aircraft carriers ever built by the U.S., the Lexington sank during the Battle of the Coral Sea in May of 1942. The ship went down with 216 crew members and 35 aircraft. But 2,770 crewmen and officers were rescued by awaiting U.S. ships. The Lexington was the first aircraft carrier to be sunk in history. The Battle of the Coral Sea stopped an important Japanese advance on Australia and New Guinea, and one month later the Battle of Midway permanently turned war in favor of the U.S.[/quote]
[hd]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K-V_ah6IIs[/hd]
[url]https://www.facebook.com/PaulGAllen.Ideas/videos/1609750932406453/[/url]
[url]https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/paul-allen-lexington-underwater-discovery-spd/[/url]
[url]https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/03/05/expedition-led-by-microsoft-co-founder-locates-lost-wwii-carrier/[/url]
[t]https://horobox.co.uk/u/4JpGun.jpg[/t] [t]https://horobox.co.uk/u/9rgEdc.jpg[/t]
That is awesome and sad at the same time. Hopefully the discovery will give some closure to the families of the ones lost at sea.
Whooooaaaa. Can't wait for more photographs to surface, that's tight as fuck.
It all looks so well preserved, even that TBD Devastator still has the coloration on its paint.
All the recent WWII finds are by Paul Allen, that's right, [I]that Microsoft guy.[/I] Pretty cool and huge props to him for taking an interest in this stuff.
I'd love to see move videos of all the recent wreck discoveries.
What I would do to be able to deep sea dive or explore the ruins of such amazing sunken marvels.
There is a reason when you become filthy rich like James Cameron or this guy you do this type of stuff. It's like good-ole fashioned exploring.
I was really confused because I didn't know there were two.
The other Lexington that was also used in WWII is a museum ship in Corpus Christi, TX now.
[t]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/USS_Lexington_Corpus.JPG[/t]
Apparently they renamed it while it was still under construction when they received word the other Lexington had been sunk.
[QUOTE=Amfleet;53180111]It all looks so well preserved, even that TBD Devastator still has the coloration on its paint.[/QUOTE]
There's no surviving examples on land. While I know the chances are nonexistent, it'd be incredible if they could haul one up
Would be cool if they could haul one up and put it in a display tank of water that mimics that same lighting/environment so it feels like you're standing on the bottom of the ocean.
There are probably enough Devastators down there to build one or more flying examples. Shame they'll be left to the sea.
It's probably too deep to recover the aircraft safely, I guess. Not to mention we are way more squeamish about disturbing sea graves than we used to be.
I love that the blue and white color is still visible on the airplane
Does anybody know if they have a 3D scan of it?
[QUOTE=Killuah;53180725]Does anybody know if they have a 3D scan of it?[/QUOTE]
Probably still too early for a 3D scan
i seriously hope this wreck isn't raided for rare metals and non-radiated steel
lately quite lot of ship wrecks in Pacific got dismantled
often by using explosives to tear them apart first
then using hooks to drag pieces up
[QUOTE=Dwarden;53180838]i seriously hope this wreck isn't raided for rare metals and non-radiated steel
lately quite lot of ship wrecks in Pacific got dismantled
often by using explosives to tear them apart first
then using hooks to drag pieces up[/QUOTE]
it might be kept secret for a while considering its probably containing some large quantities of high explosives itself.
the original lexington was a bit of a weird ship, built to be a battleship then converted halfway through to be a carrier, without it, US aircraft carriers would not have been as sufficiently advanced as they were going into WW2
[QUOTE]Nearby U.S. ships rescued 2,770 of the carrier’s remaining sailors, to include the captain’s dog, Wags.[/QUOTE]
I guess the captain wasn't very imaginative. :v:
I wonder if some of the planes can be recovered, we can never have enough WW2 era planes.
The original Lexington (CV-2) was certainly an enormous leap in carrier design and doctrine. Both her and the Saratoga were built from battlecruiser hulls and contained some of the largest enclosed hangars of American carriers, along with inheriting the respectable armor belts and 203mm gun armament from their original designation.
Lexington went down relatively early in the war after foiling a potential invasion of Port Moresby at the Battle of the Coral Sea. Saratoga went on to survive the war as a training ship before being sacrificed as a target dummy in Operation Crossroads.
The BTD Devastator was pretty much all but forgotten after Midway, where waves of Devastators went out to target the Japanese carriers and barely a handful returned with no hits scored (in a tragic twist of irony, the Devastators served better as a distraction for the Japanese fighters to create American dive bombers an opening). It's slow speed and the notoriously unreliable torpedoes being used early in the war by the American navy resulted in it being quickly and quietly replaced.
An absolutely amazing find. Who knows how many more historic wrecks lie in wait to be rediscovered?
[QUOTE=OvB;53180258]Would be cool if they could haul one up and put it in a display tank of water that mimics that same lighting/environment so it feels like you're standing on the bottom of the ocean.[/QUOTE]
It's the fishes home now
Also
[thumb]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/402879700243972102/420598665602662401/20180306_100819.png[/thumb]
:pudge:
They’re not going to excavate or raise anything from it. That’s a huge investment of time and money that never ends. It’s expensive when you’re dealing with a wreck that’s just a keel and a couple of frames and some scattered artifacts. Now multiply that by the amount of artifacts onboard this. It’s better off on the bottom, will be better preserved. At current I’m not sure how much information we could actually extracted from the wreck, so beyond “hey neat we know where it is”, it’s best to leave it undisturbed.
[QUOTE=bdd458;53181038]They’re not going to excavate or raise anything from it. That’s a huge investment of time and money that never ends. It’s expensive when you’re dealing with a wreck that’s just a keel and a couple of frames and some scattered artifacts. Now multiply that by the amount of artifacts onboard this. It’s better off on the bottom, will be better preserved. At current I’m not sure how much information we could actually extracted from the wreck, so beyond “hey neat we know where it is”, it’s best to leave it undisturbed.[/QUOTE]
It's not horribly deep but that this point it's probably like the titanic where it's just been so long that touching any of it has a lot of risk that isn't worth taking.
[quote]
Nearby U.S. ships rescued 2,770 of the carrier’s remaining sailors, to include the captain’s dog, Wags.
[/quote]
good thing he got out
World War II shipwrecks are generally considered both war graves and also heritage sites, so more often than not they'll be left in place and under the jurisdiction of an agency like the National Park Service or Naval Historic Heritage Command.
Yeah, but the only Devastators in existence right now are at the bottom of the sea on various ships. Lexington is in a pristine condition, and those Devastators have survived amazingly well. If they could raise a couple of those intact planes, it'd be a huge thing for aviation history.
[editline]6th March 2018[/editline]
This Wildcat is incredible though
[media]https://twitter.com/CavasShips/status/970804230482284544[/media]
[editline]6th March 2018[/editline]
[media]https://twitter.com/PaulGAllen/status/970912318061142016[/media]
seeing those pics just blows my mind, that shit is fuckin incredible
This is incredible. If the contents of USS Lexington are so well preserved, imagine what could we find with any other sunken ship/airship.
[QUOTE=Orkel;53181178][media]https://twitter.com/CavasShips/status/970802786396004352[/media][/QUOTE]
The inverted plane in the background of the second picture could be the one in the last picture.
e: Sorry I had to edit this post like 5 times, I'm really sick
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