page_title: List of battlecruisers of the United States
section_title: Lexington class
hierarchical_section_title: List of battlecruisers of the United States / Lexington class
caption_attribution_description: Contemporary photograph of a painting by Louise Larned, 1922, depicting the definitive design of the Lexington class, whose construction was cancelled under the Washington Naval Limitations Treaty.
context_page_description: The United States Navy began building a series of battlecruisers in the 1920s, more than a decade after their slower and less heavily armed armored cruisers had been rendered obsolete by the Royal Navy's Invincible-class battlecruisers. Construction of these ships was abandoned under the terms of an armaments limitation treaty, though two were completed as aircraft carriers. The US Navy subsequently ordered six "large cruisers"—which are often considered battlecruisers by historians—in 1940, of which only two entered service.
  At first unconvinced of the importance of the superior speed of the British battlecruisers, the US Navy changed its position after evaluating the new type of ship in fleet exercises and Naval War College wargames, and after the Japanese acquisition of four Kongō-class battlecruisers in the early 1910s. The Secretary of the Navy initially refused the General Board's suggested procurement of several battlecruisers, but fleet exercises revealed that the Navy lacked forces that could effectively find and track an enemy fleet in any weather, and a consensus gradually emerged that battlecruisers would be ideal for this role.
context_section_description: The design of the Lexington-class battlecruisers was approved on 30 June 1916 and six were planned as part of the massive 1916 building program, but their construction was repeatedly postponed in favor of escort ships and anti-submarine vessels. The original design mounted ten 14-inch (356 mm) and sixteen 5-inch (127 mm) guns on a lightly armored hull with a maximum speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph). The General Board regarded the design's firepower as inadequate and took the opportunity offered by the postponement to order a redesign to improve the ships' armament to include eight 16-inch (406 mm) and sixteen 6-inch (152 mm) guns. After the Americans entered World War I in April 1917, the Royal Navy furnished more information from its analyses of the Battle of Jutland, in which three British battlecruisers were destroyed by magazine explosions, and provided detailed information on the heavily armored design of the Admiral-class battlecruisers then under construction. The General Board then re-evaluated the design and greatly increased the armor protection, at the cost of reducing the maximum speed to 33 knots (61 km/h; 38 mph). Anti-torpedo bulges, additional torpedo bulkheads and a general increase in armor thicknesses increased the design's beam by 11 feet (3.4 m) and increased its displacement by over 7,000 long tons (7,100 t).
  While four of the ships were eventually cancelled and scrapped on their slipways to comply with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, Lexington and Saratoga, the two most advanced ships, were converted into the United States' first fleet carriers. In World War II, Lexington conducted several raids on Japanese bases before being sunk during the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942. Saratoga sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons three months later, then supported a number of American operations in the Pacific before being attached to the British Eastern Fleet for operations in the Indian Ocean. Though she was torpedoed twice, Saratoga survived the war, and was destroyed as a target ship during Operation Crossroads, a series of atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946.
caption: A 1922 painting by Louise Larned depicting the definitive design of the Lexington class, with eight 16-inch guns and two funnels
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