Tokyo Rose called her a ghost ship. In the early years of the Pacific War, Japanese propaganda had announced USS Lexington's sinking so many times — and been wrong every time — that her crew adopted the claim as a badge of honor. The “Blue Ghost” of the Pacific, they called her, a ship that refused to die no matter how many times the enemy declared her sunk. It was a good nickname, and it stuck. USS Lexington (CV-16) carried it for forty-eight years of service, from her commissioning in World War II through a final career as the Navy's premier carrier training ship, and into her current life as a museum ship in Corpus Christi, Texas, where she remains — still afloat, still the Blue Ghost.
The Ship
USS Lexington (CV-16) was an Essex-class carrier, the most successful carrier design in American naval history and the backbone of the fast carrier task forces that defeated Japan in the Pacific. She was laid down at Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, originally named Cabot, then renamed Lexington in honor of the previous USS Lexington (CV-2), which had been lost at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942. CV-16 was commissioned on February 17, 1943, under the command of Captain Felix Stump. She was 872 feet long, displaced nearly 30,000 tons fully loaded, and could steam at 33 knots — fast enough to outrun any surface threat of the era.
Her air wing was built around the aircraft that won the Pacific: F6F Hellcat fighters, SBD Dauntless and SB2C Helldiver dive bombers, and TBF/TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. The Essex-class design was refined over the course of the war, and Lexington incorporated improvements that made her more capable than the earliest ships of the class. She was the right ship at the right time.
World War II Service
Lexington arrived in the Pacific in time for the decisive campaigns of 1943 and 1944. She participated in the Gilbert Islands operation in November 1943, the Marshall Islands campaign in early 1944, and then the massive carrier strikes against Truk Lagoon in February 1944 that effectively neutralized Japan's most important western Pacific base. She was Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher's flagship during these operations — the admiral who commanded the fast carrier task forces that rewrote the book on carrier warfare chose Lexington as his platform, which is perhaps the clearest possible statement of confidence in the ship and her crew.
In June 1944, Lexington participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea — the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” — in which carrier aviation destroyed the remnants of Japanese naval air power in a single day of combat. Japanese losses in aircraft and experienced aircrew were so severe that Imperial Japan's carrier force never recovered as an offensive threat. Lexington was struck by a torpedo during the battle but was not seriously damaged. She continued operating.
By the end of 1944, Lexington had been through enough combat that she was briefly relieved for a refit. She returned to the Pacific for the final campaigns against Japan and was present in Tokyo Bay at the end of the war, having served through the entire conflict from the Gilberts to the surrender.
Cold War Service and the Training Mission
After the war, Lexington served in the postwar fleet through a period of rapid change — jet aircraft replacing propeller planes, angled flight decks replacing the straight decks of the wartime carriers. She was modernized, reclassified from CV to CVA to CVT, and eventually settled into the role that would define the second half of her career: carrier qualification training.
In 1969, Lexington was redesignated AVT-16 and assigned to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida as the Navy's dedicated training carrier. For the next twenty-two years, virtually every Naval aviator who qualified for carrier landings did so from her deck. She was the ship on which hundreds of thousands of qualification traps were made — each one a milestone in the career of the pilot who made it, each one conducted aboard the same hull that had operated against Japan in 1944. The Blue Ghost trained the Navy's aviators. She was good at it.
Decommissioning and Legacy
USS Lexington was decommissioned on November 8, 1991, after forty-eight years of service — a span that covered World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, and the beginning of the post-Cold War era. She was the longest-serving carrier in U.S. Navy history at the time of her decommissioning, a record that reflects both the quality of her construction and the value the Navy found in her training mission.
Today she is permanently moored in Corpus Christi, Texas, as the USS Lexington Museum on the Bay. She is painted the distinctive blue that gave her the “Blue Ghost” nickname — actually her wartime Measure 21 camouflage scheme, now her permanent colors. Visitors can walk her decks, sit in aircraft from multiple eras of her service, and stand on the same flight deck where generations of Naval aviators made their first arrested landings. The Blue Ghost is still there. She still refuses to go away.
If you served aboard USS Lexington or want to honor someone who did, browse the Lexington collection in the store.