USS MIDWAY
She was once one of the US Navy’s most powerful warships, but today USS Midway is one of California’s most popular tourist attractions. Her 47 years of active service saw the aircraft carrier participate in virtually every post war campaign including the Vietnam War and 1991s Operation Desert Storm.
Built by Newport News Shipbuilding, Midway and her two sister ships were designed during World War Two and were the largest aircraft carriers laid down up until that point. She commissioned on 10 September 1945, just eight days after the Japanese surrender and too late to see operational service in the war in her original axial flight deck layout configuration.
Throughout the mid- 1940s she conducted a series of tests and trials including during Operation Sandy of the launch of captured German V-2 rockets from her flight deck in September 1947. On 1 October 1952, Midway was redesignated as CVA-41.
Midway continued in her original wartime flight deck layout well into the 1950s when she was taken in hand for a major refit on 28 June 1955 at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. The refit was called the SCB-110 and saw Midway given an enclosed hurricane bow, an angled flight deck, steam catapults and an aft deck-edge elevator. The whole process took until 30 September 1957 and resulted in one of the most modern and capable aircraft carriers in the world at the time.
In the early 1960s, the situation in Vietnam started to deteriorate and by April 1965 she flew strike missions against military and logistics installations. On 17 June that year, two of her McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs made history when they were credited with the first confirmed MIG kills of the war downing a pair of MiG-17s with AIM-7 Sparrow air to air missiles.
Following her SCB-101-66 refit she returned to Vietnam and would remain involved until the American withdrawal. Aircraft flying from her deck would make both the first and last MIG kills of the Vietnam War with the last two MIGs being shot down on 12 January 1973.
The ignominious withdrawal of US loaded with transport helicopters to lift Americans and Vietnamese civilians to safety.
