Independence Class Aircraft Carrier - Disposal

Disposal

There was little margin for growth, as the ships' post-war careers showed. Independence was expended as an atomic bomb target, and the rest were laid up in 1947. Five returned to service in 1948–53, two with the French Navy. Two were used as training carriers, while Bataan saw Korean War combat duty with Marine Corps air groups. She and Cabot received anti-submarine warfare modernisations in the early 1950s, emerging with two funnels instead of the original four. All but the French ships were decommissioned in 1954–56 and were reclassified as aircraft transports in 1959. Cabot got a new lease on life in 1967, when she became the Spanish Navy's carrier Dedalo, serving until 1989 (in Spanish service, she was the first carrier to regularly deploy the Harrier jump jet). Despite best efforts to preserve her, Cabot was scrapped at Brownsville, TX starting in 1999 and ending in 2003. Preservation efforts continued until the hull was half scrapped.