Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest, sometimes referred to as Cascadia, is a geographic region in western North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and by the Cascade Mountain Range on the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U. S. states of Idaho and Washington. Broader conceptions reach north into Southeast Alaska and Yukon, south into northern California, east to the Continental Divide to include Western Montana and parts of Wyoming. Narrower conceptions may be limited to the coastal areas west of the Coast mountains; the variety of definitions can be attributed to overlapping commonalities of the region's history, geography and other factors. The Northwest Coast is the coastal region of the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest Plateau is the inland region; the term "Pacific Northwest" should not be confused with the Northwest Territory or the Northwest Territories of Canada. The region's largest metropolitan areas are Greater Seattle, with 3.8 million people.
A key aspect of the Pacific Northwest is the US–Canada international border, which the United States and the United Kingdom established at a time when the region's inhabitants were composed of indigenous peoples. The border—in two sections, along the 49th parallel south of British Columbia and the Alaska Panhandle west of northern British Columbia—has had a powerful effect on the region. According to Canadian historian Ken Coates, the border has not influenced the Pacific Northwest—rather, "the region's history and character have been determined by the boundary". Definitions of the Pacific Northwest region vary, Pacific Northwesterners do not agree on the exact boundary; the most common conception includes the U. S. states of Idaho and Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Broader definitions of the region have included the U. S. states of Alaska and parts of the states of California and Wyoming, the Canadian territory of the Yukon. Definitions based on the historic Oregon Country reach east to the Continental Divide, thus including all of Idaho and parts of western Montana and western Wyoming.
Sometimes, the Pacific Northwest is defined as being the Northwestern United States excluding Canada. Note that these types of definitions are made by government agencies whose scope is limited to the United States; the Pacific Northwest has been occupied by a diverse array of indigenous peoples for millennia. The Pacific Coast is seen by some scholars as a major coastal migration route in the settlement of the Americas by late Pleistocene peoples moving from northeast Asia into the Americas; the coastal migration hypothesis has been bolstered by findings such as the report that the sediments in the Port Eliza Cave on Vancouver Island indicate the possibility of survivable climate as far back as 16 kya in the area, while the continental ice sheets were nearing their maximum extent. Other evidence for human occupation dating back as much as 14.5 kya is emerging from Paisley Caves in south-central Oregon. However, despite such research, the coastal migration hypothesis is still subject to considerable debate.
Due in part to the richness of Pacific Northwest Coast and river fisheries, some of the indigenous peoples developed complex sedentary societies, while remaining hunter-gatherers. The Pacific Northwest Coast is one of the few places where politically complex hunter-gatherers evolved and survived to historic contacts, therefore has been vital for anthropologists and archaeologists seeking to understand how complex hunter and gatherer societies function; when Europeans first arrived on the Northwest Coast, they found one of the world's most complex hunting and fishing societies, with large sedentary villages, large houses, systems of social rank and prestige, extensive trade networks, many other factors more associated with societies based on domesticated agriculture. In the interior of the Pacific Northwest, the indigenous peoples, at the time of European contact, had a diversity of cultures and societies; some areas were home to egalitarian societies. Others along major rivers such as the Columbia and Fraser, had complex, sedentary societies rivaling those of the coast.
In British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, the Tlingit and Haida erected large and elaborately carved totem poles that have become iconic of Pacific Northwest artistic traditions. Throughout the Pacific Northwest, thousands of indigenous people live, some continue to practice their rich cultural traditions, "organizing their societies around cedar and salmon". In 1579 the British captain and erstwhile privateer Francis Drake sailed up the west coast of North America as far as Oregon before returning south to land and make ship repairs. At this landing site near present-day San Francisco, Drake made a symbolic claim of the region for England, naming it New Albion. Juan de Fuca, a Greek captain sailing for the Crown of Spain found the Strait of Juan de Fuca around 1592; the strait was whether he discovered it or not has long been questioned. During the early 1740s, Imperial Russia sent the Dane Vitus Bering to the region. By the late 18th century and into the mid-19th century, Russian settlers had established several posts and communities on the northeast Pacific coast reaching a
USS Independence (CV-62)
The fifth USS Independence was an aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. She was the final member of the Forrestal class of conventionally powered supercarriers, she entered service with much of her early years spent in the Mediterranean Fleet. Independence was decommissioned in 1998 after 39 years of active service. Stored in recent years at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Washington, the ex-Independence was towed beginning on 10 March 2017 to Brownsville, Texas for scrapping, she arrived on 1 June 2017 and is being dismantled. The Forrestal-class aircraft carriers were designed in the early 1950s as a smaller version of the cancelled United States-class "supercarriers". Unlike the United States class, they were to operate in both the nuclear strike and conventional roles, were therefore intended to carry a mixed fleet of fighters, light attack and heavy attack aircraft, all of which were to be jets; the carriers were designed around the large new Douglas A3D Skywarrior bomber, with four deck-edge aircraft elevators large enough to handle the new bomber.
As jet aircraft needed much more fuel than piston-engined aircraft, the Forrestal class had a much greater aviation fuel capacity than existing carriers, with 750,000 US gallons of Avgas and 789,000 US gallons of jetfuel, more than double that carried in the Midway-class aircraft carriers. Independence was built with an angled flight deck with four C-7 steam catapults, two on the bow and two on the angled deck, she was fitted with AN/SPS -8 B height finding radar. Defensive armament consisted of eight 5"/54 caliber Mark 42 guns mounted on sponsons jutting out from the sides of the ship so they did not interfere with the flight deck; the initial air wing of the Forrestal-class carriers was about 90 aircraft, although this varied with the composition of the airwing. The contract to build Independence, the fourth Forrestal-class carrier was awarded to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 2 July 1954, with the ship being laid down on 1 July 1955, she was launched on 6 June 1958 by the wife of Thomas S. Gates, the Secretary of the Navy, commissioned on 10 January 1959.
Independence conducted shakedown training under her first captain, Captain R. Y. McElroy, with the first landing-on being carried out by a Grumman Trader carrier onboard delivery aircraft on 2 March 1959, she arrived at her new homeport of Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia on 30 June 1959, carried out a ten-week training cruise in the Caribbean. During these trials, while carrying out compatibility tests aboard the new carrier, a Douglas A3D Skywarrior was catapulted off Independence at a gross weight of 84,000 pounds, the heaviest aircraft to take off from a carrier at the time. Independence operated off the Virginia Capes for the next year on training maneuvers, departed 4 August 1960 for her first cruise to the Mediterranean. There, she added her great strength to the peace-keeping power of the 6th Fleet in that troubled region, remaining in the eastern Mediterranean until her return to Norfolk 3 March 1961. On 4 August 1961, she departed again for the Mediterranean to join the US 6th fleet for another cruise and returned on 19 December 1961 to Norfolk.
Independence sailed on 19 April 1962 for Sixth Fleet duty in support of President John F. Kennedy's firm stand on Berlin during a recurrence of stress in a critical area, she sailed 11 October for the Caribbean Sea. Called on by President Kennedy on 24 October during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Independence provided a strong, visible reminder of U. S. determination and resolve while she acted as a key participant in the U. S. naval blockade of Cuba. She arrived off Puerto Rico in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba and took part in the quarantine operations which forced withdrawal of those missiles, she returned to Norfolk on 25 November for readiness exercises along the eastern seaboard, overhaul in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, refresher training out of Guantanamo Bay. Independence departed Norfolk on 6 August 1963 to take part in combined readiness exercises in the Bay of Biscay with sea-air units of the United Kingdom and France entered the Mediterranean on 21 August for further duty with the Sixth Fleet.
Cruising throughout the Mediterranean, she gained much valuable experience during combined NATO exercises, including close air support to Turkish paratroops, reconnaissance and convoy strike support. President Makarios of Cyprus paid her a visit on 7 October 1963, after which she took part in bilateral U. S.-Italian exercises in the Adriatic with Italian patrol torpedo boats, U. S.-French exercises, which pitted her aircraft against French interceptors and a surface action with the French cruiser Colbert. She returned to Norfolk on 4 March 1964. Following training exercises, ranging north to New York and south to Mayport, Independence departed Norfolk 8 September 1964 for NATO Teamwork exercises in the Norwegian Sea and off the coast of France to Gibraltar, she entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for overhaul. On 10 May 1965, Independence deployed for more than seven months, including 100 days in the South China Sea, off the coast of Vietnam, the first Atlantic Fleet carrier to do so, she was the fifth U.
S. carrier to operate off Vietnam. Independence and her embarked Air Wing 7 received the Navy Unit Commendation for exceptionally meritorious service from 5 June to 21 November 1965; the carrier's air group participated in the first major series of coordinated strikes against vital enemy supply lines north of the Hanoi-Haiphong complex evading the first massive surface-to-air missile barrage in aviation history while attackin
Frigate
A frigate is a type of warship, having various sizes and roles over the last few centuries. In the 17th century, a frigate was any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description used being "frigate-built"; these could be warships carrying their principal batteries of carriage-mounted guns on a single deck or on two decks. The term was used for ships too small to stand in the line of battle, although early line-of-battle ships were referred to as frigates when they were built for speed. In the 18th century, frigates were as long as a ship of the line and were square-rigged on all three masts, but were faster and with lighter armament, used for patrolling and escort. In the definition adopted by the British Admiralty, they were rated ships of at least 28 guns, carrying their principal armaments upon a single continuous deck – the upper deck – while ships of the line possessed two or more continuous decks bearing batteries of guns. In the late 19th century, the armoured frigate was a type of ironclad warship that for a time was the most powerful type of vessel afloat.
The term "frigate" was used because such ships still mounted their principal armaments on a single continuous upper deck. In modern navies, frigates are used to protect other warships and merchant-marine ships as anti-submarine warfare combatants for amphibious expeditionary forces, underway replenishment groups, merchant convoys. Ship classes dubbed "frigates" have more resembled corvettes, destroyers and battleships; some European navies such as the French, German or Spanish ones use the term "frigate" for both their destroyers and frigates. The rank "frigate captain" derives from the name of this type of ship; the term "frigate" originated in the Mediterranean in the late 15th century, referring to a lighter galley-type warship with oars, sails and a light armament, built for speed and maneuverability. The etymology of the word remains uncertain, although it may have originated as a corruption of aphractus, a Latin word for an open vessel with no lower deck. Aphractus, in turn, derived from the Ancient Greek phrase ἄφρακτος ναῦς - "undefended ship".
In 1583, during the Eighty Years' War of 1568-1648, Habsburg Spain recovered the southern Netherlands from the Protestant rebels. This soon resulted in the use of the occupied ports as bases for privateers, the "Dunkirkers", to attack the shipping of the Dutch and their allies. To achieve this the Dunkirkers developed small, sailing vessels that came to be referred to as frigates; the success of these Dunkirker vessels influenced the ship design of other navies contending with them, but because most regular navies required ships of greater endurance than the Dunkirker frigates could provide, the term soon came to apply less to any fast and elegant sail-only warship. In French, the term "frigate" gave rise to a verb - frégater, meaning'to build long and low', to an adjective, adding more confusion; the huge English Sovereign of the Seas could be described as "a delicate frigate" by a contemporary after her upper decks were reduced in 1651. The navy of the Dutch Republic became the first navy to build the larger ocean-going frigates.
The Dutch navy had three principal tasks in the struggle against Spain: to protect Dutch merchant ships at sea, to blockade the ports of Spanish-held Flanders to damage trade and halt enemy privateering, to fight the Spanish fleet and prevent troop landings. The first two tasks required speed, shallowness of draft for the shallow waters around the Netherlands, the ability to carry sufficient supplies to maintain a blockade; the third task required heavy armament, sufficient to stand up to the Spanish fleet. The first of the larger battle-capable frigates were built around 1600 at Hoorn in Holland. By the stages of the Eighty Years' War the Dutch had switched from the heavier ships still used by the English and Spanish to the lighter frigates, carrying around 40 guns and weighing around 300 tons; the effectiveness of the Dutch frigates became most evident in the Battle of the Downs in 1639, encouraging most other navies the English, to adopt similar designs. The fleets built by the Commonwealth of England in the 1650s consisted of ships described as "frigates", the largest of which were two-decker "great frigates" of the third rate.
Carrying 60 guns, these vessels were as capable as "great ships" of the time. The term "frigate" implied a long hull-design, which relates directly to speed and which in turn, helped the development of the broadside tactic in naval warfare. At this time, a further design evolved, reintroducing oars and resulting in galley frigates such as HMS Charles Galley of 1676, rated as a 32-gun fifth-rate but had a bank of 40 oars set below the upper deck which could propel the ship in the absence of a favourable wind. In Danish, the word "fregat" applies to warships carrying as few as 16 guns, such as HMS Falcon, which the British classified as a sloop. Under the rating system of the Royal Navy, by the middle of the 18th century, the term "frigate" was technically restricted to single-decked ships of the fifth rate, though small 28-gun frigates classed as sixth rate; the classic sailing frigate, well-known today for its role in the Napoleonic wars, can be traced back to French deve
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal government's official list of districts, buildings and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property; the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one million properties on the National Register, 80,000 are listed individually; the remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service, an agency within the United States Department of the Interior, its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate and protect historic sites in the United States.
While National Register listings are symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties. Protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places; the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Historic sites outside the country proper, but associated with the United States are listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, multiple property submissions; the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties: district, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties; some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service.
These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks, National Memorials, some National Monuments. On October 15, 1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices; the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Register's creation, as well as any other historic sites in the National Park system. Approval of the act, amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy; the 1966 act required those agencies to work in conjunction with the SHPO and an independent federal agency, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, to confront adverse effects of federal activities on historic preservation. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, with director George B.
Hartzog Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law. Ernest Connally was the Office's first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register; the division administered several existing programs, including the Historic Sites Survey and the Historic American Buildings Survey, as well as the new National Register and Historic Preservation Fund. The first official Keeper of the Register was an architectural historian. During the Register's earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small and underfunded. However, funds were still being supplied for the Historic Preservation Fund to provide matching grants-in-aid to listed property owners, first for house museums and institutional buildings, but for commercial structures as well. A few years in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U.
S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two "Assistant Directorates." Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation. From 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs. Jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate, he was described as a skilled administrator, sensitive to the need for the NPS to work with SHPOs, local governments. Although not described in detail in the 1966 act, SHPOs became integral to the process of listing properties on the National Register; the 1980 amendments of the 1966 law further defined the responsibilities of SHPOs concerning the National Register.
Several 1992 amendments of the NHPA added a category to the National Register, known as Traditional Cultural Properties: those properties associated with Native American or Hawaiian groups
Reserve fleet
A reserve fleet is a collection of naval vessels of all types that are equipped for service but are not needed, thus or decommissioned. A reserve fleet is informally said to be "in mothballs" or "mothballed". S. naval usage is "ghost fleet". In earlier times, in British usage, these ships were said to be laid up in ordinary; such ships are held in reserve against a time when it may be necessary to call them back into service, they are tied up in backwater areas near naval bases or shipyards to speed the reactivation process. They may be modified, for instance by having rust-prone areas sealed off or wrapped in plastic or, in the case of sailing warships, the masts removed. While being held in the reserve fleet, ships have a minimal crew to ensure that they stay in somewhat usable condition. If for nothing else, their bilge pumps need to be run to reduce corrosion of their steel and to prevent the ships from foundering at their moorings; when a ship is placed into reserve status, the various parts and weapon systems that the ship uses are placed in a storage facility, so that if the warship is reactivated, the proper spare parts and ammunition are available, but like the ships themselves, the stored parts and equipment are prone to fall into disrepair, suffer metal corrosion, become obsolete.
The British Reserve Fleet was a repository for British decommissioned warships from c. 1800 until c. 1970. The United States National Defense Reserve Fleet, consists of about fifty World War II ships that have been moored in Suisun Bay near San Francisco since the 1950s or'60s; the fleet includes military tankers. In practice most reserve ships become obsolete and are scrapped, or used for experiments or target practice, or are sold to other nations, or become museum ships or artificial reefs. Exporting the vessels for shipbreaking or dismantling are alternatives to reserve fleets. More the U. S. Navy has established a program to allow ships, such as Oriskany, to be sunk in selected locations to create artificial reefs. Recycling is another option, as in the case of the United States National Defense Reserve Fleet, the ships of which are set to be stripped of their paint, cut into pieces, recycled. Steel from pre-nuclear age ships either mothballed or sunk and raised, called low-background steel, is used in experimental physics when the experiment requires shielding material, itself only weakly radioactive, emitting less than present-day background radiation.
The practice of exporting and dismantling ships has caused international protests as they contain toxic materials. In 2007, following studies that found that 20 tons of lead paint had flaked off the ships of the NDRF, environmentalist groups sued to have them removed; the U. S. Federal Maritime Administration agreed to remove more than 50 of the ships as a result, 25 of which have been removed by 2012 and the remainder removed at the end of 2017. Aircraft boneyard National Defense Reserve Fleet Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet United States Navy reserve fleets Daniel Madsen. Forgotten Fleet; the Mothball Navy. U. S. Naval Institute Press. 1999. To Sail No More. Seven volumes. Maritime Books. United Kingdom. P. W. Singer and August Cole. Ghost Fleet. Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border; as a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea had been split into two sovereign states in 1948. A socialist state was established in the north under the communist leadership of Kim Il-sung and a capitalist state in the south under the anti-communist leadership of Syngman Rhee. Both governments of the two new Korean states claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea, neither accepted the border as permanent; the conflict escalated into warfare when North Korean military forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—crossed the border and advanced south into South Korea on 25 June 1950. The United Nations Security Council authorized the formation and dispatch of UN forces to Korea to repel what was recognized as a North Korean invasion. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel.
After the first two months of war, South Korean and U. S. forces dispatched to Korea were on the point of defeat, forced back to a small area in the south known as the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, an amphibious UN counter-offensive was launched at Incheon, cut off many North Korean troops; those who escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north. UN forces approached the Yalu River—the border with China—but in October 1950, mass Chinese forces crossed the Yalu and entered the war; the surprise Chinese intervention triggered a retreat of UN forces which continued until mid-1951. In these reversals of fortune, Seoul changed hands four times, the last two years of fighting became a war of attrition, with the front line close to the 38th parallel; the war in the air, was never a stalemate. North Korea was subject to a massive bombing campaign. Jet fighters confronted each other in air-to-air combat for the first time in history, Soviet pilots covertly flew in defense of their communist allies.
The fighting ended on 27 July 1953. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone to separate North and South Korea, allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty was signed, according to some sources the two Koreas are technically still at war, engaged in a frozen conflict. In April 2018, the leaders of North and South Korea met at the demilitarized zone and agreed to work towards a treaty to formally end the Korean War. In South Korea, the war is referred to as "625" or the "6–2–5 Upheaval", reflecting the date of its commencement on June 25. In North Korea, the war is referred to as the "Fatherland Liberation War" or alternatively the "Chosǒn War". In China, the war is called the "War to Resist America and Aid Korea", although the term "Chaoxian War" is used in unofficial contexts, along with the term "Hán War" more used in regions such as Hong Kong and Macau. In the U. S. the war was described by President Harry S. Truman as a "police action" as the United States never formally declared war on its opponents and the operation was conducted under the auspices of the United Nations.
It has been referred to in the English-speaking world as "The Forgotten War" or "The Unknown War" because of the lack of public attention it received both during and after the war, in relation to the global scale of World War II, which preceded it, the subsequent angst of the Vietnam War, which succeeded it. Imperial Japan destroyed the influence of China over Korea in the First Sino-Japanese War, ushering in the short-lived Korean Empire. A decade after defeating Imperial Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan made Korea its protectorate with the Eulsa Treaty in 1905 annexed it with the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty in 1910. Many Korean nationalists fled the country; the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was founded in 1919 in Nationalist China. It failed to achieve international recognition, failed to unite nationalist groups, had a fractious relationship with its U. S.-based founding president, Syngman Rhee. From 1919 to 1925 and beyond, Korean communists led internal and external warfare against the Japanese.
In China, the Nationalist National Revolutionary Army and the communist People's Liberation Army helped organize Korean refugees against the Japanese military, which had occupied parts of China. The Nationalist-backed Koreans, led by Yi Pom-Sok, fought in the Burma Campaign; the communists, led by Kim Il-sung among others, fought the Japanese in Manchuria. At the Cairo Conference in November 1943, the United Kingdom, the United States all decided that "in due course Korea shall become free and independent". At the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War within three months of the victory in Europe. Accordingly, it declared war o
USS Ranger (CV-61)
The seventh USS Ranger was the third of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1950s. Although all four ships of the class were completed with angled decks, Ranger had the distinction of being the first US carrier built from the beginning as an angled-deck ship. Commissioned in 1957, she served extensively in the Pacific the Vietnam War, for which she earned 13 battle stars. Near the end of her career, she served in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. Ranger appeared on television in The Six Million Dollar Man and Baa Baa Black Sheep, in the films Top Gun, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Flight of the Intruder. Ranger was decommissioned in 1993, was stored at Bremerton, Washington until March 2015, she was moved to Brownsville for scrapping, completed in November 2017. Ranger was the first American aircraft carrier, she was laid down 2 August 1954 by Newport News Drydock Co.. Newport News, Virginia in Shipway 10, her completed hull was floated and placed in Shipway 11 four months for final completion.
Ranger was launched 29 September 1956, sponsored by Mrs. Arthur Radford and commissioned at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard 10 August 1957, Captain Charles T. Booth II in command. Ranger joined the U. S. Atlantic Fleet on 3 October 1957. Just prior to sailing on 4 October for Guantánamo Bay, for shakedown, she received the men and planes of Attack Squadron 85, she conducted air operations, individual ship exercises, final acceptance trials along the eastern seaboard and in the Caribbean Sea until 20 June 1958. Noted artist Jack Coggins was commissioned by the United States Naval Institute to paint the new aircraft carrier, she departed Norfolk, with 200 Naval Reserve officer candidates for a two-month cruise that took the carrier around Cape Horn. She arrived at her new homeport, Naval Air Station Alameda, California, on 20 August and joined the Pacific Fleet; the carrier spent the remainder of 1958 in pilot qualification training for Air Group 14 and fleet exercises along the California coast. Departing 3 January 1959 for final training in Hawaiian waters until 17 February, she next sailed as the flagship of Rear Admiral Henry H. Caldwell, Carrier Division Two, to join the Seventh Fleet.
Air operations off Okinawa were followed by maneuvers with SEATO naval units out of Subic Bay, Philippines. A special weapons warfare exercise and a patrol along the southern seaboard of Japan followed. During this first WestPac deployment, Ranger launched more than 7,000 sorties in support of 7th Fleet operations, she returned to San Francisco Bay 27 July. During the next 6 months, Ranger was kept in a high state of readiness through participation in exercises and coastal fleet operations. With Carrier Air Group 9 embarked, she departed Alameda on 6 February 1960 for a second WestPac deployment and returned to Alameda 30 August. From 11 August 1961 through 8 March 1962, Ranger deployed to the Far East a third time; the next seven months were filled with intensive training along the western seaboard in preparation for operations in Southeast Asia. Ranger departed Alameda on 9 November for brief operations off Hawaii, thence proceeded, via Okinawa, to the Philippines, she steamed to the South China Sea 1 May 1963 to support possible Laotian operations.
When the political situation in Laos relaxed 4 May, she resumed her operations schedule with the 7th Fleet. Arriving at Alameda from the Far East 14 June 1963, she underwent overhaul in the San Francisco Naval Shipyard 7 August 1963 through 10 February 1964. Refresher training out of Alameda commenced 25 March, interrupted by an operational cruise to Hawaii from 19 June to 10 July. In May 1964, Ranger was deployed near French Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean to monitor the French nuclear tests on Moruroa, a task made possible by launching and recovering a Lockheed U-2 from its flight deck. Work on modifying the U-2 for carrier landing and take-off started in late 1963, one accident occurred during the carrier landing operation when the aircraft piloted by test pilot Bob Schumacher crashed. Ranger again sailed for the Far East on 6 August 1964; this deployment came on the heels of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Ranger made only an eight-hour stop in Pearl Harbor on 10 August hurried on to Subic Bay to Yokosuka, Japan.
In the latter port on 17 October 1964, she became the flagship of Rear Admiral Miller, who commanded Fast Carrier Task Force 77. In the following months, she helped the 7th Fleet continue its role of steady watchfulness to keep sea lanes open and stop Communist infiltration by sea. General William Westmoreland, commanding the Military Advisory Command in Vietnam, visited Ranger on 9 March 1965 to confer with Rear Admiral Miller. Ranger continued air strikes on enemy inland targets until 13 April when a fuel line broke and engulfed her No. 1 main machinery room in flames. The fire was extinguished in little over an hour. There was one fatality, she sailed on the 20th for Alameda, arriving home on 6 May. She entered the San Francisco Naval Shipyard 13 May and remained there under overhaul until 30 September 1965. Following refresher training, Ranger departed Alameda on 10 December 1965 to rejoin the 7th Fleet, she and her embarked Carrier Air Wing 14 received the Navy Unit Commendation for exceptionally meritorious service during combat operations in Southeast Asia from
,_USS_Lexington_(CV-2)_and_USS_Saratoga_(CV-3)_at_the_Puget_Sound_Naval_Shipyard,_in_1929_(NNAM.1996.488.001.004).jpg)
