I was looking at the famous color image of Lex in Pearl Harbor on 25 March 1942 after her return from the aborted Rabaul mission. I had never noticed before the black stains on her hull between the forward superstructure, and her funnel. The staining seems to come from the boiler intakes on the side of the hull. Had she suffered a non-combat engineering casualty?

https://putteringinthestudy.com/2024/04/14/the-last-refit-uss-lexington-cv-2-before-and-after-march-april-1942-refit-at-pearl-harbor/