Famous carrier set to arrive at port early Saturday - Monitor
The Ranger, the only West Coast-based carrier to deploy in support of Operation Desert Storm, was decommissioned in 1993 after more than 35 years of service. The vessel ship spent eight years on the “donation hold” list, though the USS Ranger Foundation was unable to raise the funds necessary to convert the ship into a museum or to tow it up the Columbia River to Fairview, Oregon, which had proposed... The Ranger appeared in the movies “Top Gun,” “Star Trek IV: The Journey Home” (as a stand-in for the USS Enterprise), and “Flight of the Intruder” as well as the television shows “Bah Bah Black Sheep” and “Six Million Dollar Man. International Shipbreaking Vice President Robert Berry said the vessel is expected to arrive before dawn on Saturday and enter the jetties of the Brazos Santiago Pass between 7 a. m. and 7:30 a. m. before threading the Brownsville Ship Channel. The Ranger will have made the trip from Bremerton to Brownsville in only four months, largely thanks to good weather, Berry said. The decommissioned carrier USS Constellation, which arrived at International Shipbreaking in early January, took five months to get here from Bremerton due to rough seas, he said. Berry said he expects the Ranger to be a big draw, even if aircraft carriers showing up in Brownsville is no longer such a novelty. Source: www.themonitor.com
