CVA-34 USS Oriskany 1996 Vegas Reunion Patch

MC GROGAN'S US NAVY SHIPS THE USS ORISKANY CVA-34 PATCH "LAS VEGAS REUNION 1996" USS Oriskany, a 27,100 ton Ticonderoga class aircraft carrier, was built at the New York Navy Yard. Though she was launched in October 1945, construction was suspended in August 1947 and she was completed to a revised design that was also used in modernizing several other ships of the Essex and Ticonderoga classes. Commissioned in September 1950, Oriskany deployed to the Mediterranean Sea between May and October 1951 and steamed around Cape Horn to join the Pacific Fleet in May 1952. She made one Korean War combat cruise, from September 1952 to May 1953. Following the end of the Korean conflict, Oriskany continued her Pacific Fleet service for more than two more decades, deploying regularly to the Western Pacific for tours of duty with the Seventh Fleet. She was out of commission from January 1957 until March 1959, during which time she was modernized with a new angled flight deck, steam catapults, an enclosed "hurricane" bow and many other improvements that permitted safer operation of high-performance aircraft. In 1961, she became the first aircraft carrier to be fitted with the revolutionary Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS). Oriskany's second war began with her 1965 WestPac cruise, during which her planes hit targets in North and South Vietnam. Several more combat tours followed as the Southeast Asian conflict waxed and waned. Tragedy struck the carrier on 26 October 1966, during her second Vietnam War deployment, when fire ravaged her forward compartments, killing 44 members of her crew and air group. Oriskany was repaired in the U.S., returned to the war zone in mid-1967 and rendered assistance to USS Forrestal when that carrier also suffered a major fire. Following twenty-six years of service, USS Oriskany was decommissioned in September 1976. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in July 1989 and sold for scrapping in 1994. However, after a prolonged effort that exhibited the perilous state of the domestic ship-breaking industry at the end of the Century, she was repossessed in 1997 and is presently in U.S. Government custody awaiting her final fate.