Kearsarge (CVS 33) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 8 text:

Waiter M. Shirra Jr. and his spacecraft, SIGMA SEVEN near Midway Island. Several months later she recovered Air Force Major Cordon L. Cooper and the FAITH SE F-.N capsule. One hundred years to the day after the original KEARSARGE sunk the ALABAMA, she be- gan her ninth Far-East cruise. Between August and November 1964, for her service as anti- surface and antisubmarine protection to the U. S. Seventh Fleet ships which had been attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats, the KEARSARGE crew was awarded the U. S. Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. Testimony to the competence of the KF3ARSARGE crew was given in October of 1965 when the ship received the Vice Admiral James M. Flatley Memorial Award for Naval Aviation Safety in antisubmarine aircraft carrier operations. 1965 also saw the 100,000th arrested landing of the carrier. The twentieth anniversary of her commissioning was marked by KEARSARGE on March 2, 1966. Had she been a sailor, she might have retired with honors and a pension on that date. But as a ship of the United States Navy, she spent the spring in the training operations, and in June deployed to Yankee Station, South China Sea, on her tenth cruise of the Western Pacific. The third I SSknKSlKCK. ling toward her tenth depl

Page 7 text:

I SSKE IRS tRGE II Twenty-six knots and the pride oj the Fleet training ship, and then was converted to the Navy ' s Craneship No. 1, performing salvage work at Pearl Harbor during World War II. In 1946 the third KEARSARGE was commissioned. On August 29. 1947, lor the first time for a carrier at sea, the KEARSARGE catapult launched a jet-propelled aircraft, ushering in an entire new era of carrier operations. In June of 1950 she began conversion from the ESSEX class to the ORISKANY class carrier, and was recommissioned in 1952 in time to be combat tested off the coast of Korea in early 1953. KEARSARGE toured Oriental waters in 1954 and 1955. and aided in the evacuation of the Nationalist Chinese who were fleeing the Communist threatened Tachen Islands. In 1956 the MIGHTY KAY, as she had become known acquired her hurricane bow and an- gled flight deck, and on October 1. 1958, she was redesignated C S an antisubmarine air- traft carrier, her new mission being to hunt, discover, and kill enemy submarines. In 1959 KEARSARGE deployed on her sixth Far-East cruise, and on her seventh in 1961. This was followed by an overhaul, from which she emerged the most modern anti- submarine carrier in the fleet. Her new capabilities were brought into play in Oc- tober of 1962 in her recovery of Navy Cdr.

Page 9 text:

A RECENT PAGE IN KEARSARGE HISTORY