USS Midway (CV-41) was the ship that never came home to stay. For twenty-one years — 1973 to 1991 — she was based at Yokosuka, Japan, the only American aircraft carrier permanently homeported overseas, closer to the western Pacific she was tasked to defend than to the Virginia piers where her sister ships spent their time. Midway was the ship of Western Pacific deployments, of Japanese port calls, of air wings that operated in the shadow of the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. She was the Navy’s forward presence in the Pacific at a time when that presence meant something different from anything else in the fleet, and the sailors who served aboard her understood that they were living a different kind of Navy life.
The Ship
USS Midway (CV-41) was commissioned on September 10, 1945 — eleven days after the formal end of World War II aboard her sister ship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, and named for the Battle of Midway, the June 1942 turning point of the Pacific War. She was the lead ship of the Midway class, a design that combined heavier armor and greater displacement than the wartime Essex class with the angled flight deck modernization she received in the 1950s and early 1960s. Midway was the Navy’s workhorse of the Cold War era: she was in continuous service from her commissioning until her decommissioning on April 11, 1992 — forty-seven years, interrupted only by modernization periods, longer than almost any carrier in naval history.
Vietnam and the WESTPAC Years
Midway’s Vietnam deployments brought her into the South China Sea for combat operations against North Vietnam on multiple occasions. Her air wing flew strike sorties into North Vietnam, supported ground operations in South Vietnam, and conducted the full range of carrier aviation missions that the Vietnam air campaign required. The WESTPAC deployment culture that defined Midway’s career was shaped in those years — the pattern of long deployments to Yokosuka, short port calls in Hong Kong and Subic Bay and Sasebo, and the continuous rotation of air wing operations that kept the western Pacific covered.
After being based at Yokosuka beginning in 1973, Midway became the Navy’s most forward-deployed asset. The sailors who served aboard her lived in Japan, enrolled their children in Japanese schools, shopped in Japanese markets, and built lives in a country that was host to the American military presence in a way that shaped the relationship between the two nations. The Yokosuka homeporting was as much a diplomatic statement as an operational one — American naval power, permanently present, visible, and credible in the Pacific.
Operation Desert Storm, 1991
In the last major combat deployment of her career, Midway participated in Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf in early 1991. Carrier Air Wing Five (CVW-5) — Midway’s air wing, the Japan-based wing that had been associated with the ship for years — flew strike missions against Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Iraq. The F/A-18 Hornets and A-6 Intruders of CVW-5 flew from Midway’s flight deck into the Persian Gulf air campaign, connecting the ship’s long service history to the last major war of the Cold War era. It was an appropriate deployment for a ship that had served through Korea, Vietnam, and the entire arc of the Cold War — a final combat mission before the end.
Decommissioning and Preservation
Midway was decommissioned on April 11, 1992, at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. For more than a decade, she sat in reserve as advocates worked to preserve her as a museum ship. Those efforts succeeded: USS Midway Museum opened in San Diego on June 7, 2004, and she has been the most visited naval museum ship in the United States — welcoming more than a million visitors per year to the flight deck and the below-decks spaces where her history lives. The ship that was never home to stay found a permanent berth in the city that is, in many ways, the home of the American Navy.
If you served aboard USS Midway or want to honor someone who did, browse The Ship’s Store — cruise shirts, license plate frames, and more.
Legacy
Midway’s legacy is both the ship herself and what she represents: forty-seven years of continuous service, a Pacific deployment culture that shaped generations of Navy sailors, and the forward presence mission that the United States Navy has maintained in the western Pacific from the end of World War II to the present day. The ship that was named for the battle that turned the Pacific War now sits in San Diego harbor as a monument to the naval aviation that won that war and sustained the peace that followed. It is a fitting end for a ship that never quite came home until she was done.