USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) - Post-Vietnam Service

Post-Vietnam Service

Ticonderoga arrived in San Diego on 18 September. After almost a month of post-deployment stand-down, she moved to the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in mid-October to begin conversion to an antisubmarine warfare (ASW) aircraft carrier. Overhaul and conversion work began on 20 October, and Ticonderoga was redesignated CVS-14 on the 21st. She completed overhaul and conversion on 28 May 1970 and conducted exercises out of Long Beach for most of June. On the 26th, the new ASW support carrier entered her new home port, San Diego. During July and August she conducted refresher training, refresher air operations, and carrier landing qualifications. The warship operated off the California coast for the remainder of the year and participated in two exercises-HUKASWEX 4–70 late in October and COMPUTEX 23–70 between 30 November and 3 December.

During the remainder of her active career, Ticonderoga made two more deployments to the Far East. Because of her change in mission, neither tour of duty included combat operations off Vietnam. Both, however, included training exercises in the Sea of Japan with ships of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. The first of these two cruises also brought operations in the Indian Ocean with units of the Thai Navy and a transit of Sunda Strait during which a ceremony was held to commemorate the loss of Houston (CA-30) and HMAS Perth in 1942.

In between these two last deployments, she operated in the eastern Pacific and participated in the recovery of the Apollo 16 moon mission capsule and astronauts near American Samoa during April 1972. The second deployment came in the summer of 1972, and, in addition to the training exercises in the Sea of Japan, Ticonderoga also joined ASW training operations in the South China Sea. That fall, she returned to the eastern Pacific and, in November practiced for the recovery of Apollo 17. The next month, Ticonderoga recovered her second set of space voyagers near American Samoa. The carrier then headed back to San Diego where she arrived on 28 December. On 22 June 1973, Ticonderoga recovered the Skylab 2 astronauts near San Diego.

Ticonderoga remained active for nine more months, first operating out of San Diego and then making preparations for inactivation. On 1 September 1973, the aircraft carrier was decommissioned after a board of inspection and survey found her to be unfit for further naval service. Her name was struck from the Navy list on 16 November 1973, and arrangements were begun to sell her for scrap. She was sold for scrap 1 September 1975.