Paul Allen has done it again...



https://youtu.be/-K-V_ah6IIs

Really fascinating footage. RIP to those valiant USN sailors and pilots.

Wow indeed. All honor to the crew of the Lexington. Such a haunting and sacred space. I imagine more video will be forthcoming? They found it at 3000 meters! Others were also commenting on how well preserved the aircraft's paint is. Thanks for sharing.

Very interesting, and well done Paul Allen! It is amazing to see that, especially the Devastator in such good condition, considering it's on a ship that was attacked and sank over 70 years ago.

Sobering and wonderful.

RIP

Ok, I'm extremely impressed with the excellent level of conservation of the wreckage specially considering all these years that the Lexington (and the aircraft) have been at the bottom of the ocean!

I would not want the ship touched, as it is a war grave, but I wonder what the chances would be to salvage a few of the aircraft? At least some seem to be located off the ship, so you wouldn't be disturbing it.

the planes are junk. It might look pretty good, but they are junk

Not so sure about that, there have been numerous WWII aircraft recovered from Lake Michigan and restored for static display.

Lake Michigan is FRESH water.

True, but the Lex is pretty deep and there's less oxygen. Still, my understanding of this situation is that aircraft are fairly fragile re: immersion in any type of salt water, and it's been a long time.

It probably would be possible but at 2 miles down I don't know if it would be practical to bring the aircraft up. I have no idea how structurally sound the aircraft would be after first being damaged by the explosions that racked the ship and then the dive to the bottom of the ocean. I'm sure that if they got them up they could be restored, they have done more with aircraft found in jungles and even in shallow water in places like Norway. The depth might make it impractical though.

I'm glad they found Grandpa's ship. He never really talked about that day. I have his Navy Corpsman book that he went over the side with on that fateful day.

Awesome and haunting all at once to see Lady Lex, undisturbed for so long. Amazing how that deep water seems to stop time.

Some new images posted on The National Aviation Museum's Aviation Page. This is really exciting. I mean exciting. Look at that F4F, Some argument whether this if from VF3 which attached aircraft to the USS Lexington or a Yorktown VF5 aircraft that landed on the Lexington.

I'm thinking this is VF-3, was the Felix the Cat squadron in 1942



]

+1

Do17 restoration
http://warbirdsnews.com/warbird-restorations/raf-museum-dornier-17-restoration-underway.html

It is amazing how well the paint has held up.

Some detailed into on how exactly the Lexington sank,


"Aboard Lexington, damage control parties put out the fires and restored her to operational condition, but at 12:47, sparks from unattended electric motors ignited gasoline fumes near the ship's central control station. The resulting explosion killed 25 men and started a large fire. Around 14:42, another large explosion occurred, starting a second severe fire. A third explosion occurred at 15:25 and at 15:38 the ship's crew reported the fires as uncontrollable. Lexington's crew began abandoning ship at 17:07. After the carrier's survivors were rescued, including Admiral Fitch and the ship's captain, Frederick C. Sherman, at 19:15 the destroyer Phelps fired five torpedoes into the burning ship, which sank in 2,400 fathoms at 19:52 (15°15′S 155°35′E). Two hundred and sixteen of the carrier's 2,951-man crew went down with the ship, along with 36 aircraft. Phelps and the other assisting warships left immediately to rejoin Yorktown and her escorts, which departed at 16:01, and TF17 retired to the southwest. Later that evening, MacArthur informed Fletcher that eight of his B-17s had attacked the invasion convoy and that it was retiring to the northwest."

If I recall correctly the circumstances of the loss of Lexington resulted in a lot of changes in carrier operations, damage control etc. such as purging gasoline lines with CO2.

I wonder if there is anyway to identify, who had 4 kill's marked on the side of their wildcat, when the ship went down.

Possibly Albert Vorse Jr.

Retired 1959 as an Admiral, passed in 1979.

Amazing History. Lady Lex. Wow ~ RIP ~ S!

Wondering now about the aircraft. For EAW some related skins are around and the history of them, for instance:



from: Captain Kurt's EAW Collection

edit; ..unfortunately the skin graphic is not available just now.. arghhh! ;/

Amazing. That aircraft sure does look to be VF-3 (Now VFA-31). I was taken aback seeing that that aircraft also had 4 maybe 5 kills to its credit, and now lies at rest at the bottom of the sea...

v6,
boNes

"Look at that F4F, Some argument whether this if from VF3 which attached aircraft to the USS Lexington or a Yorktown VF5 aircraft that landed on the Lexington."

Not sure why there should be any argument. The Felix the Cat emblem shows quite clearly. That's VF-3. If it's because they think that number on the side after the V looks like a 5, that isn't the way those numbers worked, at the time, on U.S. Navy airplanes. It doesn't denote the plane's squadron. It's the airplanes personal number. Butch Ohare's Wildcat (Well, the one he recieved the Medal of Honor with) had V-15 on the side. Boy! Wouldn't that have been something to find! You would almost have to have tried to bring that one up.
Yeah, this find is exciting. It brings all of this to life. It makes the ship a real life breathing thing, not just black and white photos in a book. It makes The Battle of The Coral Sea a real, palpable, event. It lets you know that these aren't just stories. They were real events and the proof is sitting right there.

This is going to drive the World War Two Denialists into a frenzy.

i read that the microorganism that eats the steel protect them from saline waters, same is happening to titanic, but soon it will be just dust.

The Wildcat apparently was flown by Admiral Noel A. M. Gayler

wasnt the paint back then made of very toxic materials ?

I wonder how they arrived at the belief that it's Gaynor's airplane. I can't find out what his position in the squadron was at the time. There's some fascinating and confusing aviation history going on. According to his biography, he had flown with both VF-2 and VF-3. That airplane is a VF-3 fighter. VF-3 was assigned to CV-3, the Saratoga, but she had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, earlier in the year, while part of a task force heading to Midway to get help to the Marines over there. As we know, that didn't happen. Sara limped back to Pearl and recieved enough repairs to keep her seaworthy and then she headed for The States for the major work. Her air group remained in Hawaii and the airplanes were parcelled out to other carriers. Hence, CV-3 fighters aboard CV-2.
Now, if he was commanding VF-2 at the time, he probably would not have been assigned a VF-3 Wildcat. Only squadron commanders had their own airplanes. Everyone else flew the airplane that was assigned to him. The assignment was given according to how the planes were spotted on the deck. If you were assigned position number three, you flew the airplane spotted on the deck in that position. There just isn't enough room on a carrier deck to worry about positioning certain airplanes in certain positions for certain pilots.
So, I'm hoping that I'm not making this overly confusing. I'm just trying to understand how they arrived at the conclusion that it was his plane. An old logbook, maybe? Anyway, It's some fascinating stuff.

See last picture I posted. Look closely at the name under cockpit rail, mostly obscured by marine growth but you can make out a "GA" and an "R".

Most paint of that era was lead based.


Wheels

Yeah, sure looks as though it says "Gaynor." Here's his account of that fateful day aboard the Lady Lex.

"It was at least two and a half or three hours from the time I landed until the time the captain gave the orders to abandon ship. There was a lot of things going on, explosions in the ship. One main plane elevator went up on a column of fire and turned over and landed on the deck with a clang. There was a lot of concern about fighting fires. I was trying — fruitlessly, it turned out — to get another strike organized, because I knew there was at least one undamaged carrier in the Japanese force. At the time, we thought the planes would be able to launch, but we found out we couldn't fuel, so that was the end of that. But I spent a lot of time on that. I was mustering people in the squadron and rushing around taking care of squadron business while all the rest of the fire fighting was going on.

Finally, we were sort of driven by the fire to the extreme end of the ship, the stern. I know you've heard this story, but the ship's service ice cream plant was in the extreme port quarter, and some clown passed the word that there was free ice cream. So while they were abandoning ship, sailors were lining up for free ice cream. Of course, they puked it up as soon as they had been swimming in salt water a little while. People don't realize how young they were. God, they were only 18 or 19-20 at the most."

If I recall correctly from my reading, when the order came to abandon ship, the crew lined the edge of the flight deck with their shoes in neat rows. Survivors said it was a surreal sight.

Waiting in line for ice cream as their ship went down, and then lining up their shoes on deck before jumping over the side. "The Greatest Generation" indeed.

There's a lot of funny stories if you read enough books about World War 2. One that stands out is that one of the 101st paratroopers has a German accent and had 5 clickers on him before he jumped.

You better hope you run into people that know the sound of your voice.


Wheels

Spot On!

Zoomed it a bit for this screenie of same pic.

Not so much funny but more full of amusing irony is the story about the conversation between Erwin Rommel and a captured South African officer during the campaign in North Africa.

Do tell.

Isn't there also the fact that your name on the plane doesn't mean that you are the one always flying it as they simply can't spare a pilot just because the aircraft with his name on it is in the shop? In that case, that aircraft may have his name and kills on it but it doesn't necessarily mean that the kills were done in that aircraft. Or maybe like today, 4 kills were done in that aircraft, but not necessarily by the pilot whose name is on the aircraft. What was the convention back then?

v6,
boNes

"For me, soldiers are all equal. Those black people wore your same uniform, fought on your side, and so you will be in the same jail." -- Erwin Rommel

Said to a captured South African white officer that asked to be put in a different jail from the one with black soldiers.




From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel