How the Lexington battlecruisers might have fought

How would the Lexington-class battlecruisers have performed if they had not been converted to carriers?

They might have done well against other battlecruisers, but the fight would probably have been mutually destructive.

The unconverted Lexington-class ships might have performed reasonably well in battlecruiser-versus-battlecruiser combat. Even in that favorable matchup, the opponents would probably have destroyed one another. Their guns and speed gave them real offensive potential. The design offered no comfortable survivability margin against a peer.