If you ask a former Navy carrier sailor to name the toughest, most accident-prone, most lovable ship in the fleet, there's a strong chance you'll hear two words: Fightin' Sara.
The USS Saratoga (CV-60) served the Navy for 38 years across four decades of Cold War, peacetime, and combat. She was the second of the four Forrestal-class supercarriers, the first to enter combat in the Mediterranean, and a fixture of Sixth Fleet operations from the late 1950s to the early 1990s. By the time she paid off in 1994, she had earned every variation of her name - Sara, the Sara, Fightin' Sara - and a place in the memory of every sailor who deployed on her.
Here's the long story of CV-60.
Forrestal-class beginnings
The Saratoga was laid down at New York Naval Shipyard in December 1952 and commissioned on April 14, 1956. She was the sixth U.S. Navy ship to carry the name, following a long line back to the Revolutionary War-era Saratoga that fought on Lake Champlain. As CVA-60, she joined her sister Forrestal (CVA-59) as one of the first true supercarriers built from the keel up to operate jets.
The Forrestal class was a leap forward. The angled flight deck, steam catapults, mirror landing system, and hurricane bow were all there from day one. She displaced 60,000 tons, ran at 33 knots flat out, and carried an air wing of around 90 aircraft. After the lessons of the Essex-class jet conversions, the Saratoga and her sisters represented what a real jet-age carrier was supposed to look like.
The early years (1956 to 1962)
The Saratoga spent her first years on shakedown cruises and Mediterranean deployments. President Eisenhower was aboard for a 1957 Atlantic cruise. She earned a reputation early as a steady steamer with one ongoing headache: her catapults. A 1959 boiler accident killed crew members and previewed the kind of hard luck that would follow her for decades. The Sara was tough, but she was also a ship that broke.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
In October 1962, with Soviet missiles in Cuba and the U.S. Navy enforcing a blockade, the Saratoga was on station off the Florida coast. She was one of the carriers tasked with strike planning for what nearly became a shooting war. She didn't fire a shot - none of them did - but she was there at the moment the Cold War got closest to going hot.
Vietnam
The Sara made her one Vietnam combat deployment in 1972 to 1973, late in the war, with Linebacker II and the final round of air operations against the North. She launched strikes from Yankee Station with CVW-3 embarked, including the F-4 Phantoms of VF-31 and VF-103. By the end of the deployment her air wing had flown over 11,000 combat sorties. She returned to Mayport in early 1973 with a Presidential Unit Citation.
The MED years (1976 to 1989)
Most of the Saratoga's career was spent in the Mediterranean as part of the Sixth Fleet. After her Vietnam cruise and a long Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) overhaul at Philadelphia from 1980 to 1983, she returned to active service homeported in Mayport, Florida, and began a string of MED deployments that defined her reputation.
The two cruises that put Fightin' Sara into Cold War history were back to back.
1985: Achille Lauro
In October 1985, after Palestinian hijackers seized the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro and murdered American passenger Leon Klinghoffer, the Sara was the carrier the Reagan administration turned to. F-14 Tomcats from VF-74 and VF-103, operating off the Saratoga's deck at night with no warning to the Egyptian government, intercepted the EgyptAir 737 carrying the hijackers and forced it down at Sigonella, Italy. The Achille Lauro intercept remains one of the most celebrated Tomcat missions of the Cold War. It happened off the Saratoga.
1986: El Dorado Canyon
Six months later, the Sara was central to Operation El Dorado Canyon, the U.S. strike on Libya in retaliation for the Berlin disco bombing. She and the USS America, with Coral Sea, launched the carrier-side of the strikes against Benghazi while Air Force F-111s hit Tripoli. The Sara's air wing took on Libyan SA-5 sites, MiG-23s, and surface threats over the Gulf of Sidra. She came home with another set of campaign stars.
Desert Shield and Desert Storm
The Saratoga's last great combat deployment was the 1990 to 1991 Persian Gulf cruise. She deployed to the Red Sea in August 1990 as part of the initial Desert Shield buildup and stayed on station through Desert Storm in January and February 1991. CVW-17 flew strikes deep into Iraq from her deck. She lost an F/A-18 from VFA-81 to an Iraqi MiG-25 on the opening night of the war, one of the first U.S. combat losses of Desert Storm. She came home to a hero's welcome at Mayport with a Navy Unit Commendation.
The final years
The Sara made one more MED cruise in 1992 and her final deployment in 1994. By that point the Forrestal class was old, expensive to maintain, and being phased out in favor of the Nimitz-class nuclear carriers. The Saratoga was decommissioned on August 20, 1994, at Mayport, the same homeport she'd kept for most of her career.
She sat in Newport, Rhode Island, in the inactive fleet for 20 years while veterans groups tried, and ultimately failed, to save her as a museum ship. In 2014, she was sold for scrap and towed to Brownsville, Texas, where she was broken up at International Shipbreaking. The Texas yard estimated she contained around 26,000 tons of recyclable steel. It was a quiet end for a loud ship.
Why she's remembered
Every carrier sailor has the boat they served on, but the Saratoga has fans across the fleet. Part of it is the historic missions; Achille Lauro and El Dorado Canyon are still studied at the war colleges. Part of it is the personality. The Sara was famous for breaking down, catching fire, taking damage, and getting underway anyway. She earned the "Fightin'" in Fightin' Sara the hard way.
If you served on her, you already know. If you didn't, the patches, ribbons, and cruise shirts in every veteran's closet tell you what kind of ship she was.
Sara gear at The Ship's Store
The Ship's Store carries the full lineup for CV-60. Browse the USS Saratoga (CVA/CV-60) collection for cruise designs covering every deployment from 1958 through 1994, including the 1985-86 MED cruise, the 1990-91 Desert Storm cruise, and her final 1994 deployment. The Ship's Crest collection has crest gear for everyday wear.
Sara forever.