Some 78 years ago today:
A Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless dive bomber from the Essex-class fleet carrier USS Lexington (CV-16)— or possibly her sistership Yorktown (CV-10)— in the background, flies anti-submarine patrol over the North Carolina-class fast battleship USS Washington (BB-56) while en route to the invasion of Tarawa and Makin Islands in the Gilbert Island chain (Operation Galvanic). 12 November 1943.
USN photo # 80-G-204897, now in the collection of the National Archives.
Laid down by Philadelphia Naval Ship Yard, 14 June 1938, Washington commissioned 15 May 1941 and earned 13 battle stars during World War II in operations that carried her from the Arctic Circle to the western Pacific. Decommissioned in mid-1947 and assigned to the New York group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, she was stricken and sold in 1961 for scrap.
Ironically, both Lexington and Yorktown are preserved as floating museum ships.