USS Wright (CVL-49) - Service With 6th Fleet

Service With 6th Fleet

Wright sailed from Norfolk on 11 January 1952 with a fast carrier task group and reached Gibraltar on the 21st for her first tour of duty with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. Wright's first Mediterranean deployment took her from Gibraltar to Oran, Algeria. She proceeded thence to Augusta Bay, Sicily; Suda Bay, Crete; Beirut, Lebanon; and Golfe Juan, France—her replenishment and liberty ports during the never-ending cycle of fleet training and readiness exercises with the 6th Fleet.

Departing Golfe Juan on 19 March, Wright made port at Newport on the 31st. The carrier later entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and underwent an overhaul there before she took part in Atlantic Fleet maneuvers out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; engaged in ASW tactics and carrier operations in Narragansett Bay, received further repairs at the Boston Naval Shipyard, and participated in a convoy exercise that ran from 25 February to 21 March 1952; and ranged from Newport to waters of the Panama Canal Zone and Trinidad in the British West Indies.

As flagship for Carrier Division 14, Wright sailed on 9 June 1952 in company with four destroyers forming Task Group (TG) 81.4 for ASW operations along the Atlantic seaboard until the 27th, when the ships arrived at New York City. Returning to Quonset Point on 1 July, Wright trained units of the organized Naval Reserve concurrently with hunter-killer tactics and pilot training in operations out of Narragansett Bay until 26 August. On that day, she set course from Quonset Point and later rendezvoused with Vice Admiral Felix Stump's 2d Task Fleet en route to northern Europe for combined defense exercises and maneuvers with naval units of other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) navies.

En route, Wright, escorted by Forrest Royal, was detached to ferry men and gear of Marine Night Fighter Squadron (VMF(N)) 114 to Port Lyautey, Morocco, an operation she completed on 4 September. Two days later, Wright and her escort rejoined the task force; and they reached the Firth of Clyde, Scotland, on the 10th.

Three days later, Wright put to sea with two British destroyers acting as her plane guard for NATO Operation Mainbrace. She conducted air defense maneuvers and tactics evolutions with the British carriers HMS Illustrious and HMS Eagle en route to Rotterdam, Netherlands, where the force arrived on the 25th. On 29 September, Wright departed Rotterdam, bound for the United States, and arrived at Newport on 9 October.

That day, she embarked Rear Admiral W. L. Erdman, Commander, Carrier Division 4, and spent the next few months engaged in carrier qualification duties in waters ranging from Newport to the Virginia Capes, before she began her second deployment to the Mediterranean. She reached Golfe Juan on 21 February 1953 and operated with the 6th Fleet until 31 March, when she sailed for home, via the Azores.

Wright returned to Newport and, after a rigorous schedule of training in Narragansett Bay, sailed on 5 May for the Gulf of Mexico. During that training cruise, she visited Houston, Texas, where she hosted some 14,000 visitors on 16 and 17 May. Returning to Quonset Point on 28 May, Wright operated locally for another month before shifting south for a stint of operations out of Mayport, Florida.