File:USS Intrepid (CV-11) (29973892203).jpg

Intrepid was one of 24 Essex-class carriers built during WW2 and was launched on 26th April 1943. She saw distinguished service in the Pacific theatre throughout WW2 including at the Marshall Islands, Truk, Leyte Gulf and Okinawa and was known as ‘the Fighting I’. During this time she was hit by one torpedo and four Kamikaze aircraft, with subsequent time in dry-dock for repairs. Post-war she initially joined the reserve fleet, but in 1957 she was fitted with an angled deck as part of the SCB-125 modernisation program and was renumbered CVA-11. In 1961 she was reclassified as an Anti-submarine warfare carrier and again renumbered, now as CVS-11. In May 1962 she recovered Astronaut Scott Carpenter after his ‘Aurora 7’ flight, part of the Mercury program, and three years later in March 1965 she recovered astronauts John Young and Guss Grissom after their ‘Gemini 3’ flight, in a craft named “Molly Brown”. Between 1966 and 1969 she made three Vietnam deployments and in October 1966 a VA-176 pilot, Lieutenant (junior grade) William T.Patton, shot down a MiG-17 while flying a Douglas A-1H Skyraider, for which he was awarded the Silver Star. She was finally decommissioned in March 1974 and in August 1982 she was opened to the public in New York as a museum ship. She remains there today as the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and is at Pier 86, New York Harbor, NY.