USS Ranger (CV-61)

USS Ranger (CV-61)

The seventh USS Ranger (CV/CVA-61) is one of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the US Navy in the 1950s. Commissioned in 1957, she served extensively in the Pacific, especially the Vietnam War, for which she earned 13 battle stars. Near the end of her career she also served in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. She was decommissioned in 1993, and is being stored at Bremerton, Washington. The USS Ranger Foundation is currently working to acquire her as a museum to be berthed on the Columbia River at Fairview, Oregon.

Ranger had the distinction of being the first US carrier built from the very beginning as an angled deck ship. She appeared on television in The Six Million Dollar Man, Baa Baa Black Sheep and in the films Top Gun, Star Trek IV (doubling for the carrier USS Enterprise), The Final Countdown, and Flight of the Intruder.