The USS Ranger is towed through Rich Passage for the last time on March 5 in Bremerton, Wash., as the historic aircraft carrier heads to Texas to be dismantled.
With all of her reprieves expired, the mothballed supercarrier ex-USS Ranger was towed out of Bremerton Thursday, starting its 16,000-mile trip from Puget Sound, around South America to a scrap yard in Texas. She has been at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard’s Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility since 1993.
If you were a Top Gun fan in the 80s, you may have remembered Ranger.
As reported by the Kitsap Sun, “Ranger’s departure will leave just two carriers in the Bremerton mothball fleet — USS Independence and USS Kitty Hawk. Independence will follow the other two to Texas later this year. The Navy is holding Kitty Hawk in reserve until USS Gerald R. Ford becomes active. Ford is scheduled to join the fleet in March 2016, with its first deployment in 2019.”
The only other flattop on red lead row is the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67). Decommissioned in 2007, she has been at the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia since then and is (possibly) to be converted into a museum ship in Rhode Island.
