There are 1490 users online
You can register for a user account here.
Login
Military Photos
Main Menu
Online
Past Articles
Military Quotes
You must love soldiers in order to understand them, and understand them in order to lead them. -- Henri Turenne |
USS Bennington (CV-20, later CVA-20 and CVS-20), 1944-1993(422 total words in this text)(2406 Reads) In October 1950, Bennington was brought out of "mothballs" to receive a SCB-27A modernization. When recommissioned in November 1952, she was much more able to handle modern high-performance aircraft and had been redesignated CVA-20. For the next two years, she operated in the Atlantic and made a Mediterranean deployment in October 1953 - February 1954. She also suffered two major accidents: a boiler room explosion in April 1953 and a terrible hydraulic catapult explosion and fire on 26 May 1954. After the latter tragedy, which cost the lives of 103 officers and men, she entered the shipyard for further modernization, which gave her an angled flight deck and enclosed bow. Bennington transferred to the Pacific in October 1955, and thereafter frequently operated with the Seventh Fleet in Asiatic waters. In June 1959, she became an anti-submarine warfare support aircraft carrier with the new designation CVS-20. She was in the Far East during the 1960-61 Laotian Crisis, guarding the fleet against the possibility of hostile submarine involvement, and also 1964 as the fighting in Vietnam intensified. After United States' forces became actively involved in the conflict, Bennington had three tours of duty off Southeast Asia, in 1965, 1966-67 and 1968. She decommissioned in January 1970 and entered the Reserve Fleet at Bremerton, Washington. Nearly two decades later, USS Bennington was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. She was sold in September 1993 and subsequently towed across the Pacific Ocean to be scrapped in India. |
Military History
Forum Posts
This Day in History
1865:
Confederate General Joseph Johnston officially surrenders his army to General William T. Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina.
1865: John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. 1865: Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Army of Tennessee to Sherman. 1937: The ancient Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain is bombed by German planes. 1952: Armistice negotiations are resumed. 1971: The U.S. command in Saigon announces that the U.S. force level in Vietnam is 281,400 men, the lowest since July 1966. 1972: President Nixon, despite the ongoing communist offensive, announces that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam in May and June, reducing authorized troop strength to 49,000. |