Allen’s searchers discover lost carrier

AUSTRALIA: The wreck of the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier credited with helping to save Australia from Japanese invasion during World War II, has been found 76 years after it was lost in an epic naval battle.

A six-month search funded by Paul Allen, the billionaire cofounder of Microsoft, discovered the wreck in the Coral Sea 800 kilometres off Queensland. Footage from submersibles showed the carrier’s guns and blast shields as well as one of the 35 aircraft it was carrying.

‘‘Lexington was on our priority list because she was one of the capital ships that was lost during World War II,’’ said Robert Kraft, Allen’s director of subsea operations. ‘‘It came together nicely.’’

The wreck was located by remotely operated vehicles launched from the support ship Petrel and able to explore to depths of 6500 metres. Similar technology is being used off the west coast of Australia in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished with 239 people on board four years ago today.

One of America’s first aircraft carriers, and nicknamed ‘‘Lady Lex’’, the carrier was crippled in May 1942 during the Battle of the Coral Sea by waves of Japanese aerial bombs and torpedoes that took the lives of 216 sailors. It was scuppered by another American warship, USS Phelps, and the remaining 2735 crew evacuated.

Lexington was hit twice on the port side by torpedoes. Soon afterwards, it was hit by two more Japanese bombs. As the stricken carrier listed, a huge explosion caused by igniting fuel vapour rocked the ship, but the flight deck remained operational until the order to abandon ship was given.

Admiral Harry Harris, US Pacific commander and US President Donald Trump’s nominee as ambassador to Australia, said he was elated by the find. ‘‘As the son of a survivor of the USS Lexington, I offer my congratulations to Paul Allen and the expedition crew,’’ he tweeted.

Allen has discovered several notable wrecks. In 2015 his team recovered the bell from the British battlecruiser HMS Hood, which was sunk by the German battleship Bismark in 1941, and last year found USS Indianapolis, which was sunk by a Japanese submarine in July 1945, having delivered components for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima a week later.

PHOTO: AP The American aircraft carrier Lexington was sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea, which halted a major advance by Japanese forces towards Australia during World War II, and was the first naval battle in which aircraft carriers engaged each other.