In the second week of March 1996, the People's Republic of China began firing ballistic missiles into the waters off Taiwan. The splash points bracketed the island's two largest ports, Keelung and Kaohsiung, and they were timed to intimidate Taiwan's voters ahead of the island's first direct presidential election. The message was meant for Taipei, but it was heard in Yokosuka, Japan — where the only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier in the United States Navy was tied to the pier. Her name was USS Independence, and within days she was steaming south.
The Navy's Ship in Japan
Independence (CV-62) was the second of the Forrestal-class supercarriers, commissioned in 1959. By 1996 she was the oldest carrier in the fleet, but she held a job no other carrier had: since September 1991 she had been the U.S. Navy's forward-deployed carrier, homeported at Yokosuka and married to Carrier Air Wing Five (CVW-5). Being forward-deployed meant she could be on station in the Western Pacific in a fraction of the time it would take a carrier sailing from San Diego or Bremerton. In a crisis measured in days, that head start was the whole point.
The winter of 1995–96 had already been a busy one. Independence and CVW-5 had returned to Japan late in 1995 after completing a deployment to the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Southern Watch, the no-fly-zone mission over southern Iraq. The ship and her air wing were a seasoned team. They would need to be.
The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis
Tensions had been building since 1995, when Taiwan's president Lee Teng-hui made a private visit to the United States. Beijing answered with a series of missile tests and live-fire exercises in the waters around Taiwan, escalating them as the March 1996 election approached. When the missiles began falling near Taiwan's harbors, the Clinton administration ordered the largest U.S. naval movement in the region since the Vietnam War.
Independence led the response. She took station in the waters east of Taiwan, positioned to provide what the Navy calls presence — a visible, capable force that need not fire a shot to change a calculation. She was soon joined by a second carrier, USS Nimitz (CVN-68), sailing from the Persian Gulf. Two carrier battle groups operating near Taiwan sent an unambiguous signal: the United States would not stand aside while the strait was turned into a shooting gallery.
The crisis passed without combat. Taiwan held its election on March 23, 1996; Lee Teng-hui won. China's exercises wound down. No missile was fired at an American ship, and no American aircraft dropped a weapon. But the deployment had done exactly what a carrier is built to do — it had put decisive power in the right place at the right time, and it had made the cost of miscalculation plain to everyone watching.
Life Aboard a Forward-Deployed Carrier
For the crew, the Taiwan Strait sortie had the particular flavor of forward-deployed life: the call could come at any time, and home was already an ocean away. Sailors homeported in Yokosuka lived a different rhythm than their stateside counterparts. Their families were in Japan. Their liberty ports were the great cities of Asia. And their ship was, in a real sense, always ready — because the whole reason she was in Japan was to be the one that could go first.
The men who stood those watches in March 1996 remember the sense of purpose more than the fear. Flight operations ran around the clock. The air wing flew presence missions and kept the deck cycle turning. Below decks, the engineering plant that had been driving ships since the Eisenhower administration answered every bell. Independence was old, but she was good, and her crew took pride in both.
When she returned to Yokosuka in April 1996, the ship received a visitor: President Bill Clinton came aboard during an official state visit to Japan, a public acknowledgment of what the carrier and her crew had accomplished.
The End of an Era
The Taiwan Strait crisis was one of the last great chapters in Independence's long career. She continued as the Navy's forward-deployed carrier until 1998, when USS Kitty Hawk relieved her at Yokosuka and Independence sailed home to be decommissioned. She had served thirty-nine years — through the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the 1980s Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and finally the Western Pacific standoff that closed out her time in the fleet.
For the sailors who wore her name, 1996 is a year that still means something. They were the crew of the carrier that answered the call when the missiles started falling — the ship that was already there because being already there was her mission.
If you served aboard USS Independence or want to honor someone who did, browse the full USS Independence (CVA/CV-62) collection — cruise shirts, ship's crest apparel, license plate frames, and more, built for the sailors who stood the watch.
#TheShipsStore