Day 29

Jenny and I went to Corpus Christi on Friday for a college visit at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi (Saturday); she's been accepted there for this upcoming fall. Our hotel was right beside the USS Lexington, which is now permanently docked in Corpus Christi bay and has become a museum open to the public. We got there too late to climb aboard, but did eat dinner in her shadow. After the sun set, these ghostly blue lights appeared beneath her and I knew I had to get a picture. The hotel was quite a trek, but we went back for my tripod (of course I had my camera!) so that I could get a completely natural-light, blur-free picture of this magnificent ship. Here's a little history:

The USS LEXINGTON, CV-16, was commissioned on February 17, 1943.

After training maneuvers and a shakedown cruise, Lexington joined the Fifth Fleet at Pearl Harbor. During World War II, the carrier participated in nearly every major operation in the Pacific Theater and spent a total of 21 months in combat. Her planes destroyed 372 enemy aircraft in the air and 475 more on the ground. She sank or destroyed 300,000 tons of enemy cargo and damaged an additional 600,000 tons. The ship's guns shot down 15 planes and assisted in downing five more.

The Japanese reported Lexington sunk no less than four times! Yet, each time she returned to fight again, leading the propagandist Tokyo Rose to nickname her "The Blue Ghost." The name is a tribute to the ship and the crew and air groups that served aboard her.



Thanks for looking!