USS Ranger, a 56,300-ton Forrestal class aircraft carrier built at Newport News, Virginia, was commissioned in August 1957. After working up in the Atlantic and Caribbean, she steamed around Cape Horn in mid-summer 1958 to enter the Pacific Ocean, her home for virtually her entire operational career. Early in 1959, Ranger began the first of some twenty deployments across the big ocean to operate with the Seventh Fleet in the western Pacific. Four more "WestPac" cruises followed in the first five years of the 1960s.

During her fifth 7th Fleet deployment, in early 1965, Ranger commenced Vietnam War operations, covering the initial stages of what would grow to a very large commitment of U.S. forces to that conflict. She returned to the war zone six times from late 1965 until the end of the U.S. fighting role in early 1973, contributing a large portion of the air power applied against the enemy in both North and South Vietnam. Her 1967-68 cruise introduced the then-new A-7A "Corsair II" attack aircraft to combat.

Following the end of the Southeast Asian conflict, Ranger continued her visits to the western Pacific, and began to entend those voyages into the Indian Ocean, whose northwestern reaches were increasingly volatile. The Navy was also changing, and in June 1975 Ranger was reclassified from attack aircraft carrier (CVA-61) to general purpose aircraft carrier (CV-61), reflecting the addition of anti-submarine warfare planes and helicopters to her air group.

Ranger's 1980-81 deployment included active operations in the Arabian Sea area during the crisis precipitated earlier when Iran seized U.S. diplomatic personnel and held them hostage. In 1987, her planes ranged deep into the Persian Gulf, protecting Kuwaiti oil tankers that had been transferred to the U.S. flag during the war between Iraq and Iran. From late 1990 until April 1991, Ranger was back in the Persian Gulf to participate in the brief, but very intense "Desert Storm" fighting that successfully drove the invading Iraqi army out of Kuwait. Her last deployment, beginning in mid-1992, saw the carrier's planes in action over Iraq, enforcing sanctions against that nation's brutal regime under operations "Southern Watch" and "Restore Hope".

USS Ranger was decommissioned in July 1993. Though she was the only one of her four-ship class to not receive the extensive SLEP ("Service Life Extension Program") overhaul during the 1980s, she is also the only one of the four to remain on the Naval Vessel Register. Ranger is presently part of the Reserve Fleet, moored at Bremerton, Washington.