Explosion, USS Lexington (CV-2) 8 May 1942 - Coral Sea

[Dante Fierro]

Found this photo (on Wikipedia) while reading up on US carriers that participated in the Pacific. Pretty amazing.

The caption for this photo reads:

"A mushroom cloud rises after a heavy explosion on board the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2), 8 May 1942. This is probably the great explosion from the detonation of torpedo warheads stowed in the starboard side of the hangar, aft, that followed an explosion amidships at 1727 hrs. Note USS Yorktown (CV-5) on the horizon in the left center, and destroyer USS Hammann (DD-412) at the extreme left."

[BBfanboy]

Hamman made a habit of standing by stricken carriers and it cost her. She was alongside Yorktown after the battle of Midway when an IJN sub fired a spread of torpedoes at the carrier. Hamman caught at least one of them and sank along with Yorktown.

[xj900uk]

Thaqtt was a genuine bad accident for the Hamman at Midway. The IJN torpedo detonated her own complement of depth charges as she went down (in about 90 seconds according to eye-witnesses), there were sadly very few survivors from the DD

[rustysi]

Could've been the result of av-gas fumes that had spread throughout the ship. At least that's the way I've heard it.

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: rustysi

Could've been the result of av-gas fumes that had spread throughout the ship. At least that's the way I've heard it.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/New ... CTION).pdf

[rustysi]

ORIGINAL: Zorch

ORIGINAL: rustysi

Could've been the result of av-gas fumes that had spread throughout the ship. At least that's the way I've heard it.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/New ... CTION).pdf

Yup, that's the way I heard it. Thanks.

[Jonathan Pollard]

I saw a youtube video which has footage of a carrier deck with the letters L E X at the stern. Any idea what ship is in the 14:10 point in the video? Seems too small to be the CV Lexington. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsPSuiISuxU

[Fishbed]

That is indeed USS Lexington

[xj900uk]

ORIGINAL: rustysi

Could've been the result of av-gas fumes that had spread throughout the ship. At least that's the way I've heard it.

Ther e was a board of enquiry afterwards by the USN to determine why the Lexington caught fire so quickly and burned out of control when the damage it sustained from the IJN attack should have been survivable.
Nobody was blamed but the main problem was identified as follows :

Being an early conversion from a Battle Cruiser, the ship had large av-gas tanks built into its integral structure, and not separate too but supported by the box-like structure (which all pure CV's had).
It was the whip derived by the near misses and not the actual damage which caused the ship to buckle from the shock waves, and the vulnerable av-gas tanks to crack and fracture. Leakages were quickly plugged, but fumes began to spread throughouth the ship.
There was a n unconfirmed report submitted to the board of enquiry that, to rid the ship of its lethal fumes, all the doors and hatches were opened and fans set up to ventilate as many spaces as possible. Apparently one fan began to spark through faulty wiring which caused the initial explosion, although this has always remained unconfirmed.
The ship was still largely outfitted to a peace-time standard, with many inflammable fittings which quickly caught ablaze.

The board of enquiry recommended a lot of damage control training for all ship personnel in as realistic conditions as possible.
Secondly, it recommended the use of inert gasses to purge the av-gas pipes and hoses whenever an air-raid was detected.
Finally it recommended to get rid of all inflammable fittings on board the ships (including the life-vests) and replace with non-inflammable ones. In many cases this meant lots of lining and use of asbestos wherever possible!

It did nothing about the wooden flight decks or the largea mount of wood used in the panelling and building of the ships internal structure, which was specifically to keep weight down and the number of aircraft carried, up.

[spence]

There was a n unconfirmed report submitted to the board of enquiry that, to rid the ship of its lethal fumes, all the doors and hatches were opened and fans set up to ventilate as many spaces as possible.

Seems to me that I've read that the DCA on HIJMS Taiho did something similar with similar results. Certainly the one torpedo hit didn't let enough water into the ship to sink it.

[xj900uk]

Well I t makes s ense when you think a bout it. An aircraft carrier is a floating bomb, full of thousands of gallons of highly inflammable avgas, not to mention all the bombs and torpedoes kept in the various stores. Of course they would want to dissipate any fumes as soon as possible, it would only take just the one spark or the carelessly unlit match to set off a spectacular chain reaction.

Remember what happened to the USS Liscome Bay, one of the larger CVE's, off Butaritari Island - only one torpedo hit the ship, fired by a Japanese sub, but according to onlookers the ship immediately went up 'like the 4th of July' in a massive fireball as first the bomb magazine and then the avgas tanks immediately exploded in a mega double-explosion.
Out of a crew of over 900, there were only 272 survivors (644 dead or missing), and most of those who survived were actually on deck and blown off it and into the water by the first explosion. USS Liscome Bay has the highest % loss of life in a major US ship ever. One eye-witness reported that the forward elevator was blown so high uo into the sky, it came down c. 3 miles away and damaged a destroyer...

BTW the destruction of Liscome Bay is perhaps best well known for the loss of Ship’s Cook Third Class Doris Miller, the first Afro-American to win the Navy Cross award for his heroic actions at Pearl Harbor (the character played by Cuba Gooding jnr in the movie).
Apparently he survived the initial explosions and was last seen on the ships fan-tail, a ttending to the wounded and helping them to get into the water and away from the fires. He was never seen again.

[spence]

Liscome Bay was after all a CVE which means that it was a conversion from a merchant ship type and probably compartmented similar to a merchant ship. A ship built from the keel up as a warship would have different and more compartmentation as well as better protected magazines.

Certainly the USS Juneau lost a higher percentage of its crew (10 survivors out of 700 or so
)than Liscome Bay. As did USCGC Escanaba from which there were only 2 survivors out of 105 officers and crew after it blew up (hit a drifting mine?). (I can't name any US ships offhand that sank with all hands in WW2 but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if there were some.) USS Serpens blew up on this date in 1944 (apparently from non-combat causes) with only 2 survivors out of 257 on board at the time.

[anarchyintheuk]

Most if not all of the survivors of Pillsbury and Edsall were probably executed.

[ushakov]

ORIGINAL: anarchyintheuk

Most if not all of the survivors of Pillsbury and Edsall were probably executed.

To my knowledge, the Pillsbury was the only US surface warship that outright went down with all hands - there's evidence that there were a few survivors from the Edsall who were murdered later, and probably one from the Asheville who died of wounds, but nothing to suggest anyone was picked from Pillsbury.

There's also the explosion that destroyed the USS Mount Hood at Manus, which killed all of her crew that were onboard at the time and around more on the ships around her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mount_Hood_(AE-11)

[xj900uk]

There's also the destruction of the SS John Burke, a USN ammunition ship (and, I think, designed and built originally as a 'Liberty Ship')
It g ot hit by a Kamikaze and we nt up like a small tactical nuke... no hope for any of its crew or any ships in the immediate vicinity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJcDVbH5q3k

The liberty ships normally carried a crew of 40 sailors & 28 marines/guards/handlers etc, a lthough records are lost so nobody knows how many people were on that ship when it just went up in a mushroom cloud - estimate d at between 7/10 KT explosion. Certainly one of the biggest non-nuclear detonations of the 20th century/

[fcooke]

USS Jarvis - torpedoed off Guadalcanal on the first day of the campaign and sunk by Bettys while trying to retire south - no men came home.

[xj900uk]

My Grandfather's vessel (he was in the Merchant Navy during WWI & II), lost with all hands on 4th of March 1943

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_City_of_Pretoria

BTW my Grandmother remarried again very quickly. Her 2nd husband was in the RAF and went missing on 26th December 1943 whilst on a weather reconissance flight off the coast of Denmark, his plane (a semi-retired Stirling) was never found. They had been married nearly 7 weeks.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: xj900uk

My Grandfather's vessel (he was in the Merchant Navy during WWI & II), lost with all hands on 4th of March 1943

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_City_of_Pretoria

BTW my Grandmother remarried again very quickly. Her 2nd husband was in the RAF and went missing on 26th December 1943 whilst on a weather reconissance flight off the coast of Denmark, his plane (a semi-retired Stirling) was never found. They had been married nearly 7 weeks.

Sad story, especially the seamen who had already had their ships sunk and were returning to England on your grandfather's ship. March 1943 was the peak of the Battle of the Atlantic when Allied ASW was starting to get good licks in on the U-boats, but the subs were still sinking a lot of ships.

[rustysi]

March 1943 was the peak of the Battle of the Atlantic when Allied ASW was starting to get good licks in on the U-boats, but the subs were still sinking a lot of ships.

And by May it was as if someone threw a switch and the subs were just getting sunk with hardly any successes.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: rustysi

March 1943 was the peak of the Battle of the Atlantic when Allied ASW was starting to get good licks in on the U-boats, but the subs were still sinking a lot of ships.

And by May it was as if someone threw a switch and the subs were just getting sunk with hardly any successes.

I think the cracking of the Enigma code just before that led to the pinpointing of the U-boat positions with their daily report to Doenitz. And there were finally enough escorts for Hunter-Killer groups to chase down the nearby contacts.