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The USS Saratoga (CV-60) underway with F-14 fighters on her bow during operations in the Mediterranean Sea in September 1985. Naval Historical Center image, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Veterans’ hopes of saving USS Saratoga scuttled

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
The USS Saratoga (CV-60) underway with F-14 fighters on her bow during operations in the Mediterranean Sea in September 1985. Naval Historical Center image, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The USS Saratoga (CV-60) underway with F-14 fighters on her bow during operations in the Mediterranean Sea in September 1985. Naval Historical Center image, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (AP) – Former Navy sailors and New Yorkers with an attachment to the USS Saratoga say they’re saddened by the news that the mothballed aircraft carrier will be scrapped instead of converted into a floating museum.

The Navy announced earlier this month that the carrier would be sold to a Texas scrap company for a penny. The ship will be towed from its pier near Newport, R.I., to Texas, where it will be dismantled and sold for scrap.

Brad Senter is president of the USS Saratoga Association, the alumni group of those who served aboard the carrier between its launching in 1955 and decommissioning in 1994. He tells the Daily Gazette of Schenectady that former Saratoga sailors are saddened by the news, but they knew it was coming.

The carrier was named for the 1777 Revolutionary War battle.

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AP-WF-05-27-14 1107GMT

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

The USS Saratoga (CV-60) underway with F-14 fighters on her bow during operations in the Mediterranean Sea in September 1985. Naval Historical Center image, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The USS Saratoga (CV-60) underway with F-14 fighters on her bow during operations in the Mediterranean Sea in September 1985. Naval Historical Center image, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.