USS Saratoga and Lexington off the Virginia Capes

This is a 1930 photo of the aircraft carriers USS Saratoga (CV-2) and Lexington (CV-3) off the Virginia Capes. Along with eleven battleships, USS Langley (CV-1), nine cruisers, twenty-five destroyers, and two fleet submarines (V-2 and V-3), the two 33,000-ton aircraft carriers participated in an official Naval Review by President Herbert Hoover. The President observed the carriers' torpedo bombers practice attack runs on the battleships. A crewmember of the mammoth dirigible USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) took this photo.

The fleet had just completed Fleet Problem X, an official U.S. Navy battle exercise designed to develop naval aviation doctrines, in the Caribbean. After the Review, most of the fleet got underway for San Diego and Pearl Harbor.