The USS Lexington, affectionately referred to as "Lady Lex," was the US Navy's second aircraft carrier. Laid down as the lead ship of the Lexington-class battlecruisers, which were to have been the world's most powerful warships, the Washington Naval Treaty forbade her completion as such, but permitted her to be finished as an aircraft carrier. Commissioned on 14 December 1927, Lexington, with her fabric-covered biplanes deployed to the Pacific. Through the following years both the ship and her aircraft underwent numerous upgrades. These changes, along with her construction, the daily routine of the crew are fully chronicled. The book also describes the transition of both men and machine as the nation plunged into the war, which ended for the Lexington on 8 May 1942, when she sank in the Coral Sea.