the United States Navy is as old as the country is in fact one of the oldest ships still afloat in human history is a heavy frigate flying these Stars and Stripes the USS Constitution and well none are as old as the Constitution the Navy has many ships considered too old to serve in combat effectively hence these ships go to Naval and active ship maintenance facilities for storage eventually either gaining refits or going to scrap yards which leads us to Washington State where countless iconic military ships stand in Stillness awaiting their fate today we discover Washington's forgotten Navy ships I'm your host Ryan sokash and you're watching its history today we discover some of the Navy's most important ships but one topic not covered is the tragic fate of the USS Arizona we will eventually do a Pearl Harbor episode but still in the meantime I insist you take the time to check out journey home to the USS Arizona a documentary on Magellan TV featuring The in-depth story of a great ship and an even greater tragedy this film truly moved me I was touched to learn that the Band of Brothers went so deep that the Navy made an unusual exception of allowing survivors to be buried in the ship's wreckage with their crewmates upon passing usually you'd need to pay to see this movie but thanks to our sponsor Magellan TV all its history fans can watch it free with my special link in the description let me explain Magellan TV is a documentary streaming service founded by filmmakers with the most varied history content available anywhere actually 15 to 20 hours of new content is added each week with a growing collection of 4K high definition content for no additional cost so you'll never run out of something to watch in addition to history subscribers enjoy other extensive collections of science True Crime travel and more with zero ads anytime anywhere and on all major devices like I said before our viewers get the first month totally free and after that you can take advantage of an annual membership for 59. 88 you only pay 4. 99 a month for 3500 hours of documentaries so click the link in the description below for your first full month for free as we've explained in previous episodes ships held in Naval and active ship maintenance facilities are either stored in reserve in case the nation needs their service again or are in the process of being scrapped hence the nation's quote mothball Fleet is spread throughout these facilities in the United States Naval bases but the one located in Washington state has held some fascinating ships firstly let's discuss usns Rainier AOE 7.
as a quick aside we will include Hall classifications when introducing these vessels the letters indicate what kind of ship it is and the numbers identify an individual ship within a class in this case AOE means fast combat support ship and seven is her code constructed at the national steel and shipbuilding in San Diego California and commissioned on January the 21st 1995. she operated as a supplier for Naval task forces the second Supply class fast combat support ship she carried fuel ammunition and other products from shuttle ships or ports to carrier groups needing resupply she was quick enough to keep up with any vessel in the Navy minimalizing side ship redistribution time with this and her ability to Pump Fuel at 3 000 gallons per minute she and her client ship tip were less vulnerable during transfer in June of 1996 she participated in the 1996 rim of the Pacific exercise a bi-annual Maritime Warfare exercise the largest of its kind the rim of the Pacific exercises or just Rim pack for short started as an annual exercise in 1971. in 1974 it became such a large-scale operation that its participating Nations opted to schedule it every two years in rimpac 96 the Rainier performed several replenishments on American Australian Canadian and Japanese ships these operations included fueling at Sea Maneuvers ammunition loads and vertical replenishments after rimpac 96 Rainier continued other exercises around Southern California before traveling to Hong Kong she also participated in rimpac 98 cooperating with navies from 30 teen countries and deploying to the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean to supply U.
S and Allied Forces by 2002 she operated very frequently in the Persian Gulf supplying 64 ships with 244 replenishments then when the Iraq War of 2003 came around she resupplied four to six vessels a day for three months by June she had returned from Iraq to be transferred to the military sealift command going from USS Rainier AOE 7 to us NS Rainier taoe7 however by October 2016 the Rainier was set out of service in Washington state and placed in the inactive Fleet in Bremerton she remains in the mothball Fleet on reserve for the day that the nation needs her service once again our next vessel is the second one named for the city where it is currently residing the USS Bremerton SSN 698 was a nuclear-powered submarine the tenth ship of the Los Angeles class constructed by General Dynamics Corporation in Connecticut she launched in July of 1978 with the blessing of Henry M Jackson and on March the 28 1981 the U. S Navy commissioned her from there she had four deployments to the Western and Eastern Pacific all without much incident however by 1999 the Bremerton took on a mission that Drw the eyes of the nation and Beyond on February the 4th a merchant vessel ran aground a few days after the wreck the hall cracked in several locations leaking 70 thousand gallons of oil into the bay making it a severe environmental hazard by March a tugboat head pulled the bow out to sea but a severe storm caused the tow line to snap before the tugboat could secure the derelict ship it floated out to sea for 14 hours until it ran aground again only to be towed back out to sea by two tugboats and here's where the Bremerton comes in as another storm was approaching pressure to destroy the vessel before it ran aground once more mounted in a Race Against Time the Navy called in Destroyer USS David R Ray and the Bremerton to sink at the broken vessel the David r ray shot 69 rounds from its five-inch guns into the Hall but after over half an hour of bombardment it was still afloat the gunfire simply wasn't enough with the storm approaching the Bremerton moved in and fired a Mark 48 torpedo into the underside of the ship blasting it open in under 10 minutes the ball slipped underwater trapping what oil remained inside the sunken Hulk preserving its surroundings we with the turn of the century the bremerton's Home Port swapped to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 2003 the Bremerton operated within the Pacific for several years performing exercises and minor operations with little incident by January 2010 the Bremerton became the oldest commissioned submarine in the American Navy and a year later the city of her namesake adopted her by 2017 she became the longest commissioned submarine in U. S history however it would not last long as in the next year she went to the Naval Shipyard in Bremerton for decommissioning and deactivation her decommissioned ceremony occurred in May of 2021 with most of the event being conducted online due to covid-19 restrictions perhaps one of the most significant victories of the United States Navy ever achieved was the Battle of Midway where the vessels of the Stars and Stripes destroyed all four of the the present Imperial Japanese carriers essentially kneecapping the Japanese ability to perform at Sea with this significance it's no wonder the Navy named the next class of carriers ordered after the battle the Navy ordered the construction of the USS Midway cv41 less than two months after her namesake battle but she wouldn't enter the Navy service until after Vijay day on September the 10th 1945.
at that time she was the largest ship in the world too big to pass through the Panama Canal she joined the Atlantic Fleet as the flagship of carrier division number one with Norfolk Virginia as her home Port she took part many tests and operations in this role one such maneuver being operation Sandy when she fired a German V2 rocket from her flight deck the first to do so on a moving platform after acquiring modifications to carry heavier aircraft she joined NATO forces in 1952 and participated in Maneuvers in the North Sea by October she obtained a new role an attack aircraft carrier changing her designation to CVA 41 with this new title the U. S Center on a world tour traveling from America down to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and then up to Taiwan after operating in the West Pacific until 1955 she completed her World trip by traveling to Bremerton Washington for an overhaul at Puget Sound with modernization completed in 1957 and a New Home Port in Alameda California Midway operated in the West Pacific for several years defending Japan Korea the Philippines and Taiwan she took part in the Vietnam war with her Air Wings Downing the first three Soviet mig-17 Fighters credited to U. S forces in Southeast Asia returning to America on February the 11th 1966 for more modernization in San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard she returned to Vietnam in 1971 in 1972 to conduct single carrier operations operating once again in 1975 she assisted in the final evacuation of American civilians in South Vietnam she served in several show of force operations off the Korean coast and the north Arabian Sea remaining around the Western Pacific for the 1980s she then reported to the north Arabian Sea in 1991 to participate in Operation Desert Storm also she assisted in evacuating families and military personnel from Clark Air Base when the volcano on the island of Luzon erupted her final voyage took her to San Diego where the Navy decommissioned her in April of 1992.
she remained in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard until 2003 when the San Diego Aircraft Museum received her as a donation unfortunately since January the 13th 2004 she has operated as a museumship named for the sight of the Wright brothers first powered airplane flight the USS Kitty Hawk II CVA 63 is the second ship of its name the first being an aircraft transport vessel that operated in the Pacific Theater of World War II constructed by the New York shipbuilding Corporation in Camden New Jersey and launched on May the 21st 1960 the Navy commissioned Kitty Hawk II the lead ship of the Kitty Hawk class of carriers on April the 29 1961 and Philadelphia Naval Shipyard Pennsylvania after receiving some design alterations in November of 1961 she entered the United States's seventh fleet relieving Midway as the flagship on October the 7th 1962 operating in the West Pacific until 1966 she performed combat Maneuvers in Vietnam striking at enemy troops in both North and South Vietnam she returned to San Diego for overhauls and training deploying again in November of 1966 serving as the flagship of the commander task 477 operating Around the Clock flying Air Wings Over Northern Vietnam she remained in Southeast Asia returning to San Diego for training once in 1968 then serving in the region until 1972. in 1973 her home Port swapped to San Francisco where the Navy refitted her from an attack carrier to a multi-mission carrier taking the CV designation her new designation allowed an air wing of hers to take an anti-submarine role so she took part in rimpac 73 and 75 and underwent a complete overhaul once more a Puget Sound Naval Shipyard completed in March of 1977. she deported for the Western Pacific again going to Pearl Harbor in May of 1978.
from there she assisted in aiding refugees fleeing the newly United Socialist Republic of Vietnam she also operated around Korea Iran and elsewhere in the West Pacific and Indian Oceans by the 1990s she expanded operations to the whole of the Pacific and participated in Operation Desert Storm after more modernization in 1997 she operated around the Middle East and after the September 11th attacks continued operations around the Pacific and Indian oceans until May 2008. she took part in rimpac 2008 afterwards traveling to Bremerton Washington in September and the Navy fully decommissioned her in May of 2009. by that point she was the last diesel fueled aircraft carrier the United States Navy had in January of 2022 she left Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Bound for Brownsville Texas for scrapping which brings us to the successor to the Kitty Hawk class of aircraft carriers and the next generation of carriers that abandoned diesel fueling named after the famous USS Enterprise cv6 the same Enterprise that fought in the second world war and gained the moniker Big E her successor was the U.
S Navy's first nuclear-powered carrier the USS Enterprise CVN 65 the lead ship of the Enterprise class of carriers and the eighth ship to carry her name began construction on February the 4th 1958 performed by Newport News shipbuilding and Dr Dock company commissioned on November the 25th 1961 she underwent many extensive training operations to test out the capabilities of the new nuclear engines after serving as a tracking station for America's first orbital space flight project Mercury she joined the second Fleet on her first deployment constituting training and nuclear strike exercises on the U. S east coast in 1962. she joined the sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea in August eventually returning to Norfolk Virginia in October it might only seem befitting that the first nuclear carrier took part in the most significant nuclear scare in human history the Cuban Missile Crisis you see during the situation Enterprise a part of task force 135 enforced the naval block cater on Cuba with support from shore-based aircraft after the de-escalation of the crisis Enterprise deployed out to the Mediterranean and eventually performed a worldwide journey of her own by 1965 she began participating in attacks on the Viet Cong in Vietnam launching 125 air sorties on the first day whereas her air Wing's Task Force Unleashed 167 short tons of explosive material on the Viet Cong supply lines by December the 3rd she flew 165 air strike sorties in a single day which was a new record she continued operating around the Western Pacific for the 60s completing 12 246 sorties by July of 1968 with 9182 being combat however on the morning of January the 14th 1969 a warhead detonated near the starboard Wing causing an enormous fire that spread to many nearby planes within minutes according to Naval records the fire consumed most of the end of the flight deck and explosions blocked firefighters hence the ship underwent repairs in Pearl Harbor but the fire claimed the lives of 27 soldiers and injured 314 after the shipyard completed her repairs in March of 1969.
the Enterprise took part in the Korean DMZ conflict in April of 1969. afterwards she underwent refitting and overhaul in Newport concluding in January of 1971 launching with newly designed nuclear reactor course she took off for Vietnam once again striking several thousand Vietcong supply lines she also entered the Bay of Bengal in December of 1971 during the indo-pakistani war acting as an American presence in the conflict she continued operating around Vietnam and Mainland southeast Asia until 1973 when she went to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to refit for the newest fighter aircraft gaining jet blast deflectors by 1975 she returned to Vietnam to assist in evacuating Americans from the country as the North Vietnamese troops closed in on Saigon Enterprises 8th and 9th deployments kept her in the West Pacific operating around Australia and New Zealand for the 8th and Hong Kong to Australia in the ninth as the 1990s came the Enterprise did not take part in Operation Desert Storm instead she took part in the Navy's most extensive overhaul refit in its history by 1994 her training trials exposed that her new tech broader back up to the power she had when she was brand new she enforced no-fly zones over Bosnia and Iraq and relieved the carrier Dwight D Eisenhower and the Persian Gulf in 1998. she hosted President George H.
