The USS Lexington, the Blue Ghost

Tied to the bayfront at North Shoreline Boulevard, alongside the downtown waterfront, sits an Essex-class aircraft carrier that is one hundred and ten feet tall, eight hundred and seventy feet long, and has not moved under its own power since nineteen ninety-one. The USS Lexington, hull designation CV-sixteen, is a museum ship now. To the Japanese forces who hunted her through the Pacific War and repeatedly reported her sunk, she was known as the Blue Ghost.

The Lexington was commissioned in February nineteen forty-three and entered the Pacific War in time for its most intense phase. She served as flagship for Admiral Marc Mitscher and led the Fast Carrier Task Force through engagements from the Marshall Islands to the Philippines. The Japanese reported her sunk three times. Each time, she came back. The Blue Ghost nickname came from the blue-gray camouflage paint she wore during the war, which made her seem to disappear in certain light conditions.

She received eleven battle stars for her World War II service and the Presidential Unit Citation for heroism. More than a hundred thousand men served aboard her over the course of her active career, which continued into the early nineteen nineties. When the Navy decommissioned her in nineteen ninety-one, the city of Corpus Christi made an offer. The Navy donated the ship in June nineteen ninety-two.

She became a National Historic Landmark in two thousand and three. Today the Lexington draws visitors who can walk through more than five hundred preserved spaces, from the engine rooms to the bridge to the flight deck, where twenty-one restored aircraft are displayed in the open air above the bay.

She is very large. Standing at the waterline, you understand that immediately.