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Carrier Lexington by Hugh Power Introduction by Robert J. Cressman Foreword by Jerry Chipman |
Carrier Lexington, one of the most famous and formidable of the U.S. Navy warships and the last World War II-era aircraft carrier to retire from active duty, now lies permanently berthed at Corpus Christi, Texas. This definitive guide captures every aspect of this great warship through sharp photography, detailed floor plans, and descriptive text.
Entering World War II as the second of the great Essex-class carriers to be commissioned, the Lexington destroyed more than one thousand Japanese aircraft, sank more than a million tons of enemy shipping in the Pacific, and in September, 1945, had the honor of being the first American warship to enter Tokyo Bay in victory. "The Blue Ghost," a nickname derived from Japanese reports claiming that "a great blue ship" had been sunk, was one of the most decorated of all U.S. aircraft carriers during the war and helped establish its class of ship as the most powerful in the world, replacing the big-gunned dreadnoughts that had ruled the seas through most of the first half of the century.
The ship was decommissioned on November 8, 1991, and in 1992 the carrier arrived in Corpus Christi to be transformed into a first-class museum, now open to the public and commemorating the ship's forty-eight years of service to the nation.
This book, a convenient on-site or at-home guided tour of the ship, gives readers a close look at the technological wonders and fascinating history of U.S. Naval aviation and traces the remarkable emergence of the aircraft carrier as the high seas' most fearsome weapon.
HUGH POWER is a freelance photographer and writer living in Galveston, Texas. His previous book is Battleship Texas, published by Texas A&M University Press in 1993. ROBERT J. CRESSMAN is the author of three books and more than forty articles on naval history. JERRY CHIPMAN is executive director of the USS Lexington Museum on the Bay.
Number Sixty-one:
The Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University
Carrier Lexington
0-89096-680-X cloth $34.95s
0-89096-681-8 paper $15.95
LC 95-20213. 8 3/8 x 10 7/8. 176 pp. 96 b&w photos. 7 line drawings. Gloss. Apps. Bib. Index.
Military History. Regional Topics. Travel.
Publication Date: January 1996.
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