Completing the Colorado-class battleships was a defensible choice, which makes the Lexington alternative a missed opportunity rather than an obvious error. The alternative would have produced two Lexington-class carriers and two battlecruisers, forming paired fast scouting groups. Battlecruisers designed to defeat enemy cruisers could have protected the carriers and removed the perceived need for heavy guns aboard the flight-deck ships. Modernized by 1941, the fast capital ships would also have complicated British and Japanese assumptions that their battle fleets could outmaneuver the slower American line.
Notable Point · 2:30:30-2:39:42
The Lexington battlecruiser alternative
Keeping two Lexington-class battlecruisers alongside two carrier conversions would have produced a different American fast-scouting force.