USS Ranger (CV-61)

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USS Ranger (CVA-61)
USS Ranger (CVA-61)
Overview
Type Aircraft carrier
Keel laying 2nd August 1954
Launch September 29, 1956
1. Period of service flag
Commissioning August 10, 1957
Decommissioning July 10, 1993
Whereabouts 2015 Start of scrapping
Technical specifications
displacement

78,200 t

length

319 m

width

40 m,
greatest width 76 m

Draft

11.3 m

crew

5180

drive

8 steam boilers
4 steam turbines, 260,000 HP

speed

34 knots (63 km / h)

Range

8000 nm at 20 kn

Armament

8 × 5 inch (127 mm) guns, Mk29 NATO Sea Sparrow, Mk15 Phalanx CIWS

Planes

up to 70 aircraft of the types
F-14, F-4, A-7, A-6, E-2, S-3B, EA-6B, C-2, SH-3

Callsign

November Hotel Kilo Golf

Tactical designation

GRAY EAGLE

Nickname

Top gun

USS Ranger badge

Coordinates: 47 ° 33 '11.7 "  N , 122 ° 39' 9.3"  W The USS Ranger (CVA-61) (later CV-61 ) was an aircraft carrier of the United States Navy , and the third vessel of the Forrestal class . After the USS Ranger (CV-4) in 1934, she was the second aircraft carrier in the Navy to bear the name. She was in the service of the US Navy between 1957 and 1993 and took part in the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm .

history

construction

The Ranger was the first aircraft carrier that was planned from the start with an angled flight deck (the sister ships Forrestal and Saratoga were only equipped with an angled deck during construction). She was laid down on August 2, 1954 at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News , Virginia . Baptized by the wife of Arthur W. Radford , then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , the Ranger was launched on September 29, 1956. After further equipment, the ship was put into service with the Navy on August 10, 1957.

period of service

1950s

When it was assigned to the Atlantic fleet on October 3, 1957, the testing phase of the new aircraft carrier began. Until June 20, 1958, he operated in the Caribbean , mostly from Guantánamo Bay . Then he ran from Norfolk (Virginia) , with 200 midshipmen on board, around Cape Horn in the Pacific and on August 20 in Alameda (California) , where he was assigned to the Pacific Fleet . Flight missions continued to be trained off the coast of California until the end of the year, and in January 1959 the Ranger ran to Okinawa , where they held exercises with naval units from the SEATO states. She returned to San Francisco on July 27 and remained on high standby.

1960s

USS Ranger in August 1961

From February to August 1960 and from August 1961 to March 1962 the Ranger was again in East Asian waters on exercise and patrol trips. In the summer of 1963, after further intensive training off the coast of California, the porter ran out again for the South China Sea in order to emphasize its US presence while stabilizing the political situation in Laos . After the situation there had eased, the Ranger returned to her home port after extensive exercises with the 7th Fleet, where she was overtaken from August 7, 1963 to February 10, 1964. After further training off the coast, after the Tonkin incident on August 6, 1964 , the ranger moved back to the South China Sea, where she arrived after stopping over in Hawaii , the United States Naval Base Subic Bay and Yokosuka . From mid-October 1964 to March 13, 1965, it operated as the flagship of Task Force 77, the carrier aircraft now flew air support missions for the American troops who fought in the Vietnam War. After a severe fire caused by the break in a fuel line in the engine room, which killed a crew member, the ranger returned to San Francisco, where it was overhauled from May 13th to September 30th.

On December 10, the carrier became part of the 7th Fleet again and took part in the operations off Vietnam again from January 10, 1966 . This lasted until August 6, then the Ranger returned to the States via Subic Bay and was again subjected to an overhaul from September 30 in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard , which lasted until May 30, 1967. The rangers then operated off the California coast for training purposes. When she ran out again for use on September 15, she had the first aircraft carrier SH-2 Seasprite helicopters and A-7 Corsair II - fighter-bomber on board. In October she took part in a large-scale exercise ( Moon Festival ). At the beginning of November she cast off again in the direction of the western Pacific and replaced the USS Constellation in Yokosuka on November 21 and took over operations at the Yankee station off the coast of Vietnam from December 3 . The Ranger remained there until the beginning of April 1968 , after a brief interlude in Japan, and resumed operations in the Gulf on April 11th. After a five-month deployment, the ranger stopped in Hong Kong on May 5 and then headed for California, where it was again overtaken in Puget Sound. After completing the overhaul on July 29, the ranger set sail for San Francisco to practice again off the coast. From October 26th to May 17th of the next year she was once again in action in the western Pacific.

1970s

A-7 Corsair II takes off from the
ranger's catapult

The 1970s began again for the USS Ranger with a mission that took them off the coast of Vietnam from December 1969 to May 1970. After a break in the summer off the west coast of the USA, she returned to the western Pacific at the end of September, where she and the USS Kitty Hawk set a record for the most carrier-borne attacks (233) during the entire Vietnam War on March 10, 1971 put up. Together with the Kitty Hawk and the Hancock , it carried out attacks in Vietnam from the Yankee station throughout April 1971, particularly in the border area with Laos. It returned to Alameda, California for a regular overhaul in early June . This lasted until May 1972, after which the rangers returned to Vietnam by November 16.

When the Paris peace talks stalled and Operation Linebacker II began on December 18, the Rangers' fighter jets, along with aircraft from the Enterprise , Saratoga , Oriskany and America, carried out air strikes on North Vietnamese targets. After massive bombing raids lasting just under two weeks, the North Vietnamese returned to the negotiating table and Operation Linebacker II was suspended.

When the peace treaty was signed on January 27, 1973, the US Navy aircraft carriers ceased operations, attacks ceased, and the carriers returned to their home ports, where the rangers arrived in August. She stayed off the west coast of the USA until May 1974 and then returned to the western Pacific for six months. In May 1976, helicopters from the rangers , along with other units, helped flood victims on Luzon , evacuating a total of around 1,900 people and flying in over 180 tons of humanitarian goods.

From July 12, 1976, the USS Ranger operated with Task Force 77.7 in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya , where an armed conflict with neighboring Uganda was developing. In February 1977 the Ranger returned to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for a general overhaul. Changes were made to the Command Information System, the steam boiler renewed and Sea Sparrow starters installed. The overhaul was completed in March 1978, after which test and reclassification drives were undertaken over several months. On February 21, 1979, the carrier left Alameda to patrol the coast of Yemen , but never arrived because on April 5 it collided with the Liberian Fortune oil tanker in the Strait of Malacca , which nearly sank. The rangers, on the other hand, suffered only minor damage, which was temporarily repaired in Subic Bay in the Philippines and then finally repaired in Japan.

1980s

On November 1, 1983, a fire broke out in engine room 4 of the ranger , killing ten crew members and putting two drive trains out of operation, so that the rangers could no longer perform flight operations. The repairs in Subic Bay lasted until January 1984. On August 3, 1989, helicopters of the ranger rescued 39 Vietnamese refugees who were drifting 130 km off the Philippine coast in a junk.

Early 1990s and retirement

Bridge view of the rangers

When the Second Gulf War began on January 16, 1991 , the Ranger was lying with the Midway in the Persian Gulf and supported the advancing ground forces along with other carriers ( Theodore Roosevelt , John F. Kennedy , Saratoga and America ) with massive air strikes. The military operations ended on February 27 when George Bush declared Kuwait liberated.

On April 21, 1992, two B-25 Mitchell were hoisted aboard the Ranger to recreate the historic Doolittle Raid that occurred 50 years earlier. The two historic aircraft took off from the deck of the carrier in front of 1,500 invited guests. In preparation for their retirement, the rangers also visited the port of Vancouver and took part in an exercise in the Persian Gulf with Russian and French ships when the carrier was monitoring the no-fly zone over southern Iraq as part of Operation Southern Watch . The last deployment of the rangers took place off the coast of Somalia , where they provided information and support as part of Operation Restore Hope . On December 19, 1992, she began her last voyage to San Diego after she had been relieved from the USS Kitty Hawk .

The Ranger was decommissioned on July 10, 1993, deleted from the registers and has been in Bremerton ( 47 ° 33 ′ 7.2 ″  N , 122 ° 39 ′ 7.2 ″  W ) since then . Since 2004 a non-profit organization tried to bring the ship as a museum ship to Portland (Oregon) , where it should serve as a museum for maritime and aviation. However, it was towed to Brownsville, Texas for dismantling in March 2015 . The work was completed in November 2017.

The Rangers received 13 Battle Stars for their missions off Vietnam .

Trivia

Web links

Commons : USS Ranger (CV-61)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. History of the USS Ranger on navysite.de