One of the most powerful aircraft carrier USS Saratoga was launched on this day in 1955

One of the world’s most powerful aircraft carrier, USS Saratoga, was launched by the New York Naval Shipyard on this day, i.e., October 8, in 1955. Classified as the ‘Attack Aircraft Carrier’, USS Saratoga was the second of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1950s. She was the sixth US Navy ship and the second aircraft carrier to be named for the Battles of Saratoga in the American Revolutionary War. 

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According to the USS Saratoga Association, the aircraft carrier was commissioned in 1956 and she was the first carrier in the US Navy to use high pressure 1,200 psi boilers. She spent most of her career in the Mediterranean. She even participated in the Vietnam War. 

Saratoga conducted various engineering, flight, steering, structural and gunnery test. Back in 1957, former US President Dwight D Eisenhower and members of his cabinet even boarded the aircraft carrier to observe operations onboard the giant carrier. For two days, Saratoga and eighteen other ships demonstrated air operations, antisubmarine warfare, guided missile operations, and the Navy's latest bombing and strafing techniques. The President’s visit back then was also highlighted by the nonstop flight of two F8U Crusaders, spanning the nation in three hours and twenty-eight minutes, from Bon Homme Richard off the West Coast to the flight deck of Saratoga in the Atlantic. 

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Reclassified as ‘Multi-purpose Aircraft Carrier’ 

USS Saratoga was one of the two aircraft carriers configured to operate the turbojet-powered subsonic guided missile and only one os six carriers to ever actually launch the missile providing the first US Navy nuclear strategic deterrence force. In 1957, the carrier departed for its maiden transatlantic voyage. The next year she was departed to Mayport for the Mediterranean and her first deployment with the Sixth Fleet. 

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On May 17, 1969, Armed Forces Day, Saratoga was also the host ship for then US President Richard Nixon during the firepower demonstration conducted by Carrier Air Wing Three in the Virginia Capes area. After spending years in the sea, in 1972, the carrier was then reclassified as a ‘Multi-purpose Aircraft Carrier’. In the following years, she even participated during the Vietnam War and even received one battle star for its services. 

In 1994, Saratoga was decommissioned at the Naval Station, Mayport, Florida and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register the same day. She was towed to Philadelphia in 1995, then, upon deactivation of the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1998, to Naval Station Newport in Newport, Rhode Island. There, she was first placed on donation hold, then her status was changed to "disposal as an experimental ship", and finally she was returned to donation hold in 2000.

 

(Images: USS Saratoga Association/Website) 

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