They Located USS Lexington After 76 Years — This Is What They Found

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]2 mi beneath the Coral Sea, when explorers finally sent a robot down to one of America's most legendary aircraft carriers, what they found was not what anyone expected. The planes were still there.

[00:00:14]11 aircraft sitting on the seafloor, squadron markings still visible, kill markings still painted on the fuselage, exactly as they had been left in 1942.

[00:00:26]And on one of them, a cartoon cat.

[00:00:30]The USS Lexington sank more than 80 years ago, [music] but 2 mi down in the Coral Sea, she is still revealing secrets. Before we get into it, drop a comment and let me know where in the world you are watching from, and if you or anyone you know has any connection to any warship anywhere, I want to hear about it.

[00:00:54]Before we get to the ocean floor, you need to understand what kind of ship Lexington was. Because Lexington was not just another aircraft carrier. The USS Lexington was commissioned in 1927, and she was one of America's very first aircraft carriers. Originally designed as a battle cruiser, Lexington was converted mid-construction after naval treaties limited the number of battleships America was allowed to build. The result was something the world had never quite seen before. A ship nearly 900 ft long, a crew of nearly 3,000 men.

[00:01:29]The Navy called Lexington one of the two most powerful carriers in the fleet. The crew called her something else entirely.

[00:01:36]They called her Lady Lex.

[00:01:39]By the spring of 1942, Lexington was one of the most important ships America had.

[00:01:44]The attack on Pearl Harbor had already destroyed much of the [music] Pacific Fleet. Carriers were now the most valuable weapons in the ocean, and Lexington was one of only a handful America had left.

[00:01:58]In May of 1942, Lexington was sent to the Coral Sea, the stretch of water between Australia and the Solomon Islands, to stop a Japanese invasion fleet heading for Port Moresby in New Guinea.

[00:02:12]If Port Moresby fell, Australia itself would be under direct threat.

[00:02:17]What followed was unlike anything that had ever happened in the history of naval warfare. For the first time ever, two carrier fleets fought each other without the opposing ships ever coming within sight of each other. Every attack was launched by aircraft. Every blow was struck from the air. The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first carrier versus carrier battle in history, and Lexington was at the center of it.

[00:02:47]On the morning of May the 8th, 1942, Japanese aircraft found Lexington and hit her with two torpedoes and two bombs.

[00:02:55]Fires broke out. The flight deck took damage, but Lexington kept fighting. The crew brought the fires under control.

[00:03:02]The ship maintained speed. For a moment, it looked like Lexington might survive.

[00:03:07]And then something went wrong deep inside the ship. [music] Aviation fuel vapor had been building in the lower decks since the torpedo hits. At 12:47 in the afternoon, a spark ignited it.

[00:03:20]The explosion was catastrophic, [music] far worse than anything the Japanese had managed to cause. Secondary explosions followed. The fires came back, worse than before, and this time the crew could not stop them.

[00:03:34]At 5:00 that afternoon, the order was given to abandon ship. You see, that evacuation was one of the most orderly in naval history. The Lexington crew lowered themselves down ropes. They helped wounded men into the water.

[00:03:49]They passed supplies over the sides.

[00:03:52]Captain Frederick Sherman was the last man to leave.

[00:03:55]And before he went, >> [music] >> he made sure to bring his dog. Captain Sherman had a cocker spaniel aboard named Admiral Wags, the ship's mascot, known to the entire crew.

[00:04:09]When the abandon ship order came, Sherman handed Admiral Wags to an orderly who strapped a life jacket on the dog and lowered him by lifeline to a destroyer below.

[00:04:20]Only after making sure Admiral Wags was safe, did Sherman himself hook onto a lifeline and leave the ship.

[00:04:29]In the middle of one of the most catastrophic naval losses of the war, the captain saved his dog before saving himself. 2,770 sailors were rescued from the water that afternoon.

[00:04:44]216 never came home. With Lexington clearly beyond saving and enemy ships in the area, the decision was made that Lexington could not be allowed to fall [music] into Japanese hands.

[00:04:57]The destroyer USS Phelps was ordered to finish her.

[00:05:02]Five torpedoes from Phelps sent Lexington beneath the Coral Sea at 7:52 that evening.

[00:05:10]For 76 years, nobody knew exactly where she went. The search that finally found her was led by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, using his research vessel, the RV Petrel. The same team that would later find USS Wasp, USS Hornet, and USS Indianapolis.

[00:05:27]On March 4th, 2018, the Petrel's remotely operated vehicle descended 2 miles into the Coral Sea.

[00:05:34]And almost immediately, it started finding things. The first thing the remotely operated vehicle found was the nameplate. It was still attached to the stern of the wreck, still readable after 76 years on the ocean floor. Three letters confirm what the team already suspected, l e x.

[00:05:52]But it was what was lying around the wreck that stopped everyone cold, the aircraft. Lexington went down with 35 planes aboard. The petrol team found 11 of them scattered across the sea floor around the wreck. And the condition of those aircraft was remarkable.

[00:06:09]You see, at 2 miles down there is no light, no oxygen, no wood boring organisms, no corrosion from the elements. The cold dark water of the deep ocean preserves things in ways that nothing on the surface can match.

[00:06:24]The planes looked almost intact. Landing gear still extended [music] on some.

[00:06:29]Wings still folded as they had been stored on the hangar deck. The five-pointed star insignia of the United States still clearly visible on wings and fuselages.

[00:06:40]The paint, the actual paint applied in a shipyard in 1941 is still there. And then the remotely operated vehicle, the r o v, got closer to one particular aircraft. On the nose of the fuselage, a cartoon cat.

[00:06:56]Felix the cat painted there by a pilot or a crew chief sometime before May 8th, 1942.

[00:07:04]A small piece of personality on a military aircraft. The kind of thing a young man far from home puts on his plane to make it feel like his own.

[00:07:14]Below the cartoon, four small Japanese flags.

[00:07:18]Four kills.

[00:07:20]Four missions that pilot had flown and survived. And then a fifth mission he did not.

[00:07:25]That plane has been sitting on the floor of the Coral Sea since 1942.

[00:07:30]The cartoon cat is still there. The kill markings are still there.

[00:07:35]The pilot never came back for it.

[00:07:38]You see, that is what makes wreck exploration so strange. History does not fade at 2 miles down. It stops completely exactly at the moment the ship went under. The petrol team was not looking at the remains of a battle. They were looking at the battle itself. Paused, preserved, still exactly as it was left.

[00:07:59]And the deeper the ROV looked, the more it found. The anti-aircraft guns were still in their mountings. The 8-in guns that had defended Lexington through battles across the Pacific were still pointing outward.

[00:08:12]The flight deck structure was still recognizable. A ship that had been 2 miles underwater for 3/4 of a century looked like a ship, not a ruin, a ship.

[00:08:24]Now, the USS Lexington is not just another wreck on the seafloor. Lexington was there at the moment naval warfare changed forever.

[00:08:33]The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first battle in history where opposing fleets never saw each other, where aircraft did everything, where carriers became the most important weapons on the ocean. Lexington helped win that battle, and then Lexington went to the bottom of it. What makes the wreck so remarkable today is exactly what makes all great wrecks remarkable. Technology finally caught up. The remotely operated vehicles can go deeper. The cameras are sharper. The lights are brighter. And every dive seems to find something new waiting in the darkness.

[00:09:08]A nameplate still readable after 76 years.

[00:09:12]11 aircraft preserved almost exactly as they were left. And on one of them, a cartoon cat and four Japanese flags painted by a young man who did not make it home.

[00:09:25]More than 80 years ago, the Lexington crew slid down ropes into the Coral Sea.

[00:09:30]Most of them made it. 216 did not. And 2 miles down on the floor of the Coral Sea, the ship that carried all of them is still there, still intact, still waiting.