USS Ranger (CV-61) went to Operation Desert Storm as a ship in transition. She was a conventional carrier — oil-fired, not nuclear — operating in an era when the fleet was moving steadily toward nuclear propulsion for its capital ships, and she was old enough that some in the Navy had wondered whether she should be replaced rather than deployed. She went anyway. Operating in the Persian Gulf, Carrier Air Wing Two flew combat strikes from her deck for the full duration of the air war, hitting Iraqi targets in Kuwait and Iraq with a professionalism that left no room for questions about the ship's relevance. Ranger proved herself the hard way, and then she came home and was decommissioned two years later. Her last deployment was her best.
The Ship
USS Ranger (CV-61) was a Forrestal-class aircraft carrier, commissioned on August 10, 1957, and named in the tradition of American naval nomenclature that stretches back to John Paul Jones's ship of the Revolutionary War. She was the fourth of the Forrestal class — the first generation of postwar supercarriers — and like the class she was large, capable, and conventionally powered. By 1990 she was one of the oldest carriers in the active fleet, homeported at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California, and operating with Carrier Air Wing Two. The decision to deploy her to Desert Storm rather than a newer ship was a statement of confidence in her crew and her air wing.
The Desert Storm Deployment
Ranger deployed to the Persian Gulf in December 1990 as part of the Desert Shield buildup and was in position when Operation Desert Storm began on January 17, 1991. Operating in the northern Persian Gulf, CVW-2 aircraft flew strikes against Iraqi targets in Kuwait and southern Iraq throughout the air war — closer to the targets than the Red Sea carriers, able to reach Iraqi positions with shorter transits and simpler flight plans. The air wing flew F-14 Tomcats, A-6E Intruders, EA-6B Prowlers, A-7E Corsairs, F/A-18 Hornets, E-2C Hawkeyes, and S-3 Vikings — the full complement of carrier aviation in its final pre-F/A-18-dominant configuration.
Like the Theodore Roosevelt, Ranger's air wing was flying one of the final combat deployments for the A-7E Corsair II. The Persian Gulf proved to be one of the last places the Corsair flew in anger. For the crews of CVW-2, the deployment was the culmination of years of training for a war that had actually arrived, and they executed it effectively, sustaining flight operations through the six-week air campaign and into the ground war that followed.
The Final Deployment
Ranger returned to San Diego after Desert Storm and conducted one more deployment before decommissioning — to the Western Pacific in 1992. She was decommissioned on July 10, 1993. The ship that some had thought too old for Desert Storm turned out to have been exactly right for it. The crew that deployed to the Gulf in 1990 did not know they were on the ship's penultimate cruise. They knew they were going to a war. They flew their missions, maintained their readiness, and came home. That is the whole of it.
If you served aboard USS Ranger or want to honor someone who did, browse the full Ranger collection — cruise shirts, license plate frames, and more.
Legacy
USS Ranger was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 2004 and ultimately scrapped. The last of the Forrestal class to be broken up, she left behind the record of her Desert Storm deployment as the defining achievement of her final years — a ship that proved its worth on the last opportunity available. The crew that flew combat missions from her deck in 1991 served on a ship that, whatever its age, was still capable of the most demanding mission the Navy had. That matters.