Mark Cancian, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. The Lexington was also notable as a “very unusual aircraft carrier,” since it was converted from a battle cruiser, says retired U.S. naval aviation curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The Battle of the Coral Sea was “the first pure aircraft carrier battle,” meaning one in which opposing ships attacked each other with aircraft without directly seeing each other, says Laurence Burke, U.S. Japanese fighter planes launched from aircraft carriers severely damaged the Lexington, forcing the destroyer USS Phelps to scuttle the vessel on May 8, 1942, after the surviving crew abandoned ship. The expedition was funded by Allen, who has paid for other attempts to locate the wreckage of World War II ships. A separate remotely operated underwater vehicle with LED lights videotaped the wreckage. Researchers located the wreck with the sonar and sea floor mapping instruments on a Remus 6000 autonomous underwater vehicle built by Norway-based Kongsberg, which says the vessel can dive to 6,000 meters. The Petrel researchers located the wreckage of the USS Lexington on the floor of the Coral Sea 3,000 meters deep and 800 kilometers off the eastern coast of Australia, according to a March press release from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s team. sailors and airmen killed during the Battle of the Coral Sea, following the research vessel Petrel’s discovery of a wrecked aircraft carrier scuttled in 1942. Historians now have color images of rare World War II planes, and families know the final resting place of 216 U.S. Rare World War II planes found By Tom Risen | April 2018
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