The were the first operational aircraft carriers in the United States Navy (
USS ''Langley'' was a strictly developmental ship which only served for a short time as an active fleet unit before being converted to a seaplane tender AV-3). The ships were laid down and partly built as
Battlecruiser s before being converted to carriers while under construction. ''Saratoga'', the third ship, was more complete than the second ship, ''Constellation'', when the vessels were under consideration for conversion, so ''Saratoga'' was continued and ''Constellation'' was scrapped. Successful wide-scale operations with these ships, compared to the very limited operations possible with the much smaller
USS ''Ranger'' convinced the Navy that larger carriers were more effective than smaller ones, a trend which has continued through the years; the modern day ''Nimitz'' class supercarriers are a hundred percent larger than the ''Midway'' class ships of fifty years ago.
The original battlecruiser design studies had much in common with Lord Fisher's "large light cruiser" concept, studies were made on low-displacement battlecruisers with virtually no armor, armed with up to twenty guns in five quadruple turrets of 12" guns. A semi-finalized design came forth in 1916 with ten 14" guns in five dual turrets and very thin armor, with half of the boilers above the protective deck, on a displacement of 36,500 tons. By the time the battlecruiser design had been finalized, the ships had a conventional displacement of over 43,000 tons and were conventionally armed with eight 16" guns and 16 6" guns, though for commonality's sake the secondary battery probably would have been changed to a mixed battery of 5" anti-surface and anti-air guns before installation, and replaced by a uniform battery of dual 5"/38 DPs during World War II. The canceled battlecruisers were the last-ever use of the two-gun turret in US Navy ships, the subsequent WWII-era "fast battleships" used triple turrets exclusively.
As commissioned, the aircraft carriers had a heavy cruiser-style battery of four dual 8" gun turrets; the Navy's
Bureau Of Construction And Repair (later Bureau of Ships, now
NAVSEA ) had no confidence in aircraft as armament and equipped the vessels with the heavy guns even though they would have ripped up the flight deck if ever fired in anger. Their official displacement on commissioning was 33,000 tons (in accordance with the Washington Treaty) even though in reality both ships were well in excess of that, 36,000 tons standard displacement and nearly 40,000 tons fully loaded with fuel, ammunition, aircraft and gasoline. Shortly after
Pearl Harbor , both ships' 8" batteries were lifted off of them for use as shore-defense guns in Hawaii; these weapons were replaced with 5" DP guns that were more suitable for carrier use.
The name source for the battlecruisers was famous past ships of the U.S. Navy, which continued to be the name source for aircraft carriers until
CV-66 USS ''America'' .
CV-67 ''John F. Kennedy'' started a trend of naming carriers for political figures, a trend which continues as of this writing. The exceptions prior to ''John F. Kennedy'' were
CV-42 USS ''Franklin D. Roosevelt'' (named for the late
President ),
CV-38 USS ''Shangri-La'' (named for the fictional city, which had been used as a code name for
USS Hornet (CV-8) early in the war),
CVL-49 USS ''Wright'' (named for the
Wright Brothers ),
CV-59 ''Forrestal'' (named for
James V. Forrestal ) and
CV-63 ''Kitty Hawk'' (again named in honor of the first flight).
The ''Lexington'' class carriers were the largest aircraft carriers in the fleet until the late-war
''Midway''-class Carriers , and had the largest hangar decks in the world until the early-50s
''Forrestal''-class Supercarriers .
There were two Lexington-class carriers: CV-2 USS ''Lexington'' (also called "Lady ''Lex''") and CV-3 USS ''Saratoga'' (also called "Sister ''Sara''"). Lady ''Lex'' was sunk in the Battle of Coral Sea in 1942; ''Saratoga'' survived to be disposed of in the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests after the war.
For the history of the class prior to the decision to convert two units, please see
Lexington Class Battle Cruiser .
