On the night of April 14–15, 1986, the United States launched coordinated air strikes against targets in Libya — Operation El Dorado Canyon, retaliation for the Libyan government's role in the bombing of a Berlin disco that killed American servicemen. One of the two carrier battle groups that provided the strike aircraft was built around USS America (CV-66), operating in the Gulf of Sidra. Her aircraft flew into Libyan airspace that night, and the men who launched them, flew them, and recovered them did the work that no amount of diplomatic pressure had managed to do. Twelve minutes of strikes. Forty years later, the 1986 MED cruise is the deployment that defines America in Navy history.
The Ship
USS America was commissioned on January 23, 1965, the third ship of the Kitty Hawk class and the last American carrier to bear that name. She was 1,047 feet long, conventionally powered, capable of carrying 90 aircraft and more than 4,500 sailors and aircrew. From the beginning she was a ship of the Atlantic Fleet, homeported at Naval Air Station Norfolk and assigned to the Sixth Fleet's Mediterranean operating area. Over her first twenty years of service she became one of the most recognizable carriers in the fleet — a ship that sailors who served on her talk about with a particular intensity that is hard to explain to anyone who wasn't there.
By 1986 she had already deployed multiple times to the Mediterranean, through the tensions of the 1970s and the Reagan buildup of the early 1980s. She was a ship with history. The 1986 deployment would give her the kind of history that gets written down.
The 1986 Mediterranean Deployment
America deployed to the Mediterranean in early 1986 as part of Carrier Battle Group 5. Her air wing, Carrier Air Wing 1, carried the aircraft that would eventually fly the El Dorado Canyon strike missions. The deployment began in a region that was already tense — Libya under Muammar Gaddafi had been a persistent source of confrontation with the United States throughout the early 1980s, and the Gulf of Sidra had seen direct military engagement in 1981 when Navy fighters from USS Nimitz downed two Libyan Su-22s. In 1986, another confrontation with Libya was building.
In late March, the Navy conducted freedom of navigation operations in the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya claimed as its internal waters — a claim the United States did not recognize. Libyan forces fired surface-to-air missiles at American aircraft. The Navy responded by striking Libyan patrol boats and a missile radar site. This exchange set the context for what was coming six weeks later.
On April 5, a bomb exploded in La Belle discotheque in West Berlin, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman and wounding more than 200 people. US intelligence linked the attack to the Libyan government. President Reagan authorized a military response. The planning moved fast.
Operation El Dorado Canyon
The strike plan required coordination between two carrier battle groups — America and USS Coral Sea (CV-43) — operating in the Gulf of Sidra, and a separate force of Air Force F-111 bombers flying from bases in England. The Air Force element required a long, circuitous flight around Europe because France and Spain refused overflight permission. The two carrier battle groups would hit targets around Benghazi while the F-111s hit Tripoli.
At approximately 2:00 a.m. local time on April 15, the strikes began. Aircraft from America and Coral Sea struck targets in the Benghazi area — the Benina airfield and Jamahiriya barracks. The strike lasted approximately twelve minutes. Navy aircraft flew A-6 Intruders for the strike missions and F/A-18 Hornets and A-7 Corsairs for defense suppression and support.
The Navy lost one aircraft in the raid. An F/A-18 Hornet from America's CVW-1 was hit over Libya. Both crew members — the only American personnel killed in the operation — were lost. They were the only American fatalities of El Dorado Canyon, and their names are part of what makes the 1986 cruise the one that America's sailors remember differently from the others.
Life on America During the 1986 Cruise
For most of the sailors aboard America, the months before and after El Dorado Canyon were spent in the routines that define every carrier deployment: flight operations, maintenance, standing watch, crossing time zones. The Mediterranean in 1986 meant ports in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Cannes — the liberty ports that generations of Navy sailors have carried home with them as their first real experience of Europe. The ship was working, and the crew was doing the work.
The night of April 14-15 was different. The flight deck was at combat tempo, launching and recovering aircraft in the dark over a live threat environment. Ordnance crews had loaded real weapons on aircraft going to real targets. The intelligence briefs were not exercises. When the aircraft came back, everyone aboard knew what had happened. The mission was over in twelve minutes. The deployment had weeks still to go.
The Legacy
USS America continued her career after 1986 — more Mediterranean deployments, the Persian Gulf during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the post-Cold War operations of the 1990s. She was decommissioned on August 9, 1996, after 31 years of service. In 2005 she was used as a live-fire test platform for damage resistance studies — a fate that generated significant controversy among her veterans — and she was sunk in the Atlantic.
The men who were aboard during the 1986 cruise served on a ship that was asked to do something difficult, in a dangerous environment, with real consequences. They did it. That is what the 1986 cruise is: the deployment where America was called on and answered.
If you served aboard America or want to honor someone who did, browse the USS America 1986 cruise collection — gear from the deployment that carried the fight to Libya.
You can also explore the full USS America collection covering all her deployments from commissioning through decommissioning.