Midway:
Lex and Sara, Part Two
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
October 2025

Saratoga commissioned in November 1927, and Lexington a month later. After their shakedowns in the Atlantic, each separately transited the Panama Canal in early 1928. Except for a few fleet exercises held in the Caribbean and Atlantic, they would spend their entire careers in the Pacific.

In the years that followed, the two big carriers saw constant deployments in fleet exercises; sometimes operating together, sometimes opposed to one another. In 1932, operating together, they successfully conducted a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. They developed underway refueling, and worked out methods of assembling airstrikes. The pace of operations made the admirals reluctant to release them for modernization, and it seemed easy to defer the work since their great size and sound initial design meant they could continue to operate the newest aircraft even as the new planes grew larger and heavier. Lexington received a brief refit in 1936, in which the narrow forward end of her flight deck was widened, but while the Bureau of Construction and Repair pressed for a more extensive rebuilding, both carriers remained in active service. Saratoga finally went to Bremerton Navy Yard in 1941 for similar work, that included installing radar and upgrading her anti-aircraft armament.

Removing an 8-inch gunhouse from Lexington. 30 March 1942.

Though both carriers belonged to the Pacific Fleet and were based at Pearl Harbor, neither ship was present when the Japanese attacked on 7 December 1941. Lexington had been dispatched to Midway Island, bearing a squadron of Marine Corps dive bombers. Saratoga had just completed her refit and steamed south the San Diego to pick up her air group, which had been training there while their carrier was in the yard.

Saratoga quickly returned to Hawaii, and later in December both carriers took part in the abortive attempt to relieve the beleaguered Marine garrison of Wake Island, then under Japanese attack. Temporary fleet commander William S. Pye has been damned by Marines ever since for cancelling the operation, but the relief mission had been hastily (and poorly) organized and invited disaster if Japanese carriers appeared.

Both carriers then patrolled in waters surrounding Hawaii, and that’s when the Japanese submarine I-6 torpedoed Saratoga on 11 January 1942, causing extensive damage to her boiler rooms. The big battle cruiser hulls simply were not very maneuverable and the converted carriers could not easily dodge torpedoes. Saratoga limped into Pearl Harbor for temporary repairs, and dockyard hands removed her four 8-inch gunhouses at the same time.

Saratoga shifted to Bremerton, where she received much more than repair of her torpedo damage. She acquired a blister to her port side, to balance the weight of the funnel, island and armament on the starboard side and allow the fuel tanks previously used as ballast to contribute to the ship’s oil supply and extend her steaming range. The blister would also provide better protection against torpedoes; unfortunately, the next time a torpedo hit the big carrier, it would be on her starboard side, where she had no such blister protection.

Lexington burns as her crew abandons ship.

The 8-inch gunhouses were replaced by twin 5-inch/38-caliber gunhouses made surplus by the conversion of the light cruiser Amsterdam into the light carrier Independence. The dozen 5-inch/25-caliber single mounts gave way to eight single mounts for the newer, much more effective (and heavier) 5-inch/38. She picked up considerably more light anti-aircraft weaponry, including the powerful Bofors 40mm quad mounts, and more radars. Her flight deck became wider forward, and longer aft. She completed work on 22 May, now no longer able to transit the Panama Canal.

Lexington encountered Japanese submarines during the same patrols, but none fired torpedoes at her. She participated in raids on Japanese bases in the New Guinea area before returning to Pearl Harbor in March for a short refit, during which her 8-inch turrets were replaced by the nearly-useless 1.1-inch “Chicago Piano” quad anti-aircraft guns. She returned to service on 1 April, and two weeks later a training exercise was suddenly cancelled on word of a Japanese move against Port Moresby on the southern coast of New Guinea.

She joined up with the newer carrier Yorktown for what became the Battle of the Coral Sea. This would be the first battle waged solely by the planes of the participating aircraft carriers, with the ships involved never directly sighting one another.

Saratoga at Nouméa, New Caledonia. 1 January 1943. Battleship Indiana in background.

The Americans sank the light carrier Shoho and badly damaged the heavy carrier Shokaku; they also inflicted heavy losses to Japanese aircraft and aircrew. But the Japanese in turn dealt out heavy damage to Yorktown, and they sank Lexington. Hit by two torpedoes and three bombs at about 1120 on 8 May 1942, Lexington caught fire in several places and suffered minimal flooding. The fires continued to spread, and at 1707 Capt. Frederick C. “Ted” Sherman ordered the ship abandoned. A large explosion of gasoline vapor followed at 1730 as the last of the crew departed; Ted Sherman was the last man off the ship. A few minutes later, torpedo warheads stored adjacent to the hangar deck cooked off in a massive explosion. An American destroyer fired one torpedo to finish the hulk.

Saratoga just missed the Battle of Midway, arriving at Pearl Harbor as the fighting concluded. She helped cover the August landings on Guadalcanal, and in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons her planes sank the Japanese light carrier Ryujo. But on the last day of August a Japanese submarine torpedoed her, requiring more than two months of repair work.

Of the four carrier-to-carrier battles fought in the Pacific, Saratoga missed three of them. That absence brought a cascade of derisive nicknames: “The Reluctant Dragon” (from the mostly-forgotten 1941 Disney film, featuring an un-named, limp-wristed dragon who prance, minces, composes poetry, plays the flute, and most definitely does not want to fight) and “Sara Maru.”

Saratoga deck hands battle massive kamikaze-induced fires. 21 February 1945.

Upon her return, she operated in the Solomons for all of 1943, at times as the only American carrier present, though the British flattop Victorious joined her in May 1943. In March 1944 the Americans repaid that favor, sending Saratoga to operate with the British Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean. After her return in June, and a lengthy overhaul, she became a dedicated night-fighter carrier; as more of the big, new Essex-class carriers joined the fleet Saratoga lost her usefulness as steady wear and accumulated damage started to show their effects. Operating off Iwo Jima, kamikaze suicide planes swarmed over the old carrier on 21 February 1945; five bombs and three planes found their target, killing 123 men of her crew and destroying 40 planes, but the old girl continued to operate aircraft. Repair work removed her shattered aft elevator and converted part of the damaged hangar deck into classrooms, and in March 1945 she resumed service training carrier pilots. Once the war ended, she transported Marines and sailors home from Hawaii, and would be expended in 1946 in the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.

Lexington and Saratoga had been expensive ships, but the U.S. Navy got great value for the investment, both in working out carrier methodology and tactics before the war, and combat service once the shooting started.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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