Cold War aircraft carriers of the United States

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 180. Chapters: USS Kitty Hawk, USS Enterprise, USS John F. Kennedy, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS Carl Vinson, USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Nimitz, USS Abraham Lincoln, USS America, USS Wasp, Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, Essex class aircraft carrier, USS Yorktown, USS Ticonderoga, USS Forrestal, USS Intrepid, USS Constellation, USS Saratoga, USS Valley Forge, USS Coral Sea, USS Ranger, USS Midway, USS Oriskany, USS Hancock, USS Lexington, USS Independence, USS Hornet, USS Essex, USS Shangri-La, USS Wright, USS Saipan, USS Randolph, USS Antietam, USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, USS Princeton, USS Philippine Sea, USS Bennington, USS Lake Champlain, USS Kearsarge, Kitty Hawk class aircraft carrier, USS Tarawa, Sea Control Ship, USS Boxer, Independence class aircraft carrier, USS Cabot, Midway class aircraft carrier, USS Gilbert Islands, Forrestal class aircraft carrier, USS Monterey, SCB-27, USS Leyte, USS Rendova, USS Siboney, USS Kula Gulf, USS Bon Homme Richard, USS Bataan, USS Point Cruz, Saipan class aircraft carrier, USS Sicily, Commencement Bay class escort carrier, USS Mindoro, VSTOL Support Ship. Excerpt: The fifth USS America (CVA/CV-66) was one of four Kitty Hawk-class super carriers built for the United States Navy in the 1960s. Commissioned in 1965, she spent most of her career in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, but did make three Pacific deployments serving in the Vietnam War. She also served in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. She departed early on her final voyage in September 1995 and crossed the Atlantic Ocean in three days instead of the usual six day transit through a convergence of three hurricanes and several tropical storms, in order to arrive on station off the coast of Bosnia-Herzegovina to begin a fast and furious bombing campaign in response to a brutal civil war and reports of ethnic-cleansing on all sides. She completed her final voyage operating in the Adriatic Sea in support of Operation Deny Flight, Operation Deliberate Force (A NATO air assault designed to cripple Bosnian-Serb forces), and Operation Joint Endeavor, a mission that supported the incursion of 60,000 NATO implementation forces on the ground in Bosnia-Herzegovina. On this historic final voyage, she also participated in numerous joint training exercises, including Bright Star, and was deployed to the Persian Gulf heeding an emergency situation unfolding in Iraq and remained on station for several weeks facing imminent danger and the risk of hostile fire to support American-led sanctions and a No-fly-Zone in order to weaken the Iraqi regime, cripple the economy, enable UN Weapons Inspectors to investigate allegations of secret weapons of mass destruction, and eventually set up favorable conditions for an invasion to gain control of the oil fields and strategic dominance over Central Asia. The mission was cut short as the carrier was called back to the Adriatic and arrived on station off the coast of the former-Yugoslavia as the warring parties to the conflict were gathering in Paris for the signing of the peace agreement on December 14, 1995, and peace implementation forces