    
Title: USS Lexington, May, 1942 Description: Consumed by flames and burning from stem to stern, after being hit by three bombs and two torpedoes during the second day of the Battle of the Coral Sea, the carrier USS Lexington (CV-2), abandoned by her crew, begins to sink; the valiant carrier did not slip beneath the waves until the following day when the destroyer USS Phelps (DD-360) fired four torpedoes into what remained of her hull; of the Lexington's complement of 2961, 216 of its crew were lost; less than three months earlier, on February 20, 1942, the Lexington had been saved from annihilation by nine Japanese bombers when the ship was operating off Rabaul; at that time, a single fighter plane, a Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat, from the Lexington, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Edward H. "Butch" O'Hare (Edward Henry O'Hare' AKA: Butch; 1914-1943), single-handedly attacked and shot down five of the enemy bombers, damaged a sixth and scattered the rest in one of the most courageous acts of the war, becoming the Navy's first flying ace, and for which O'Hare, the son of a Chicago businessman (murdered by gunmen of the Al Capone gang for providing information that had sent Capone to prison), was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor; O'Hare survived the sinking of the Lexington, only to be killed on the night of November 26-27, 1943 in the Navy's first ever nighttime fighter attack, while, as a lieutenant commander of a fighter group from the USS Enterprise (CV-6), he attacked a group of Japanese torpedo planes; his wife Rita posthumously received O'Hare's Purple Heart and the Navy Cross on November 26, 1944; the destroyer USS O'Hare (DD-889) was named in his honor, as was present-day Chicago O'Hare International Airport; Date: May 8, 1942 Category: World War II Keywords: aircraft carriers, airplanes, aviation, aviators, carriers, Imperial Japanese Navy, Japan, Japanese dive bombers, heroes, pilots, medals, Second World War, U.S. Navy, U.S. warships, World War II, WWII Orientation: Panorama Dimensions: 2010 x 1002 (2.01 MPixels) (2.01) Print Size: 17.0 x 8.5 cm; 6.7 x 3.3 inches File Size: 5.77 MB (6,050,302 Bytes) Resolution: 300 x 300 dpi Color Depth: 16.7 million (24 BitsPerPixel) Compression: None Image Number: 0000010614 Source: Jay Robert Nash Collection |
