Apart from Forrestal, which still carried the McDonnell Douglas F-4S Phantom II, all three carriers were equipped with the Grumman F-14A Tomcat as its primary fleet-defense fighter.īy then in its second decade of service, the Tomcat had already proven to be one of the world’s deadliest dogfighters. By comparison, two carrier battle groups were deployed to the Mediterranean for the Iraq invasion in 2003.īy 1982, the carrier and its embarked air wing had improved by leaps and bounds from just a decade earlier. It was certainly the most powerful concentration of carrier-based air power ever in the Mediterranean. This “dream team” lasted for only days, but it represented one of the greatest assemblies of air and naval power in the post-Vietnam War era. Exercise Daily Double concluded, and Forrestal and Independence relieved Kennedy and Eisenhower of duty, sending the latter two home. Though the siege of Beirut would last until August, the situation had stabilized to Washington’s satisfaction within several days. This powerful juggernaut was to conduct a NATO exercise codenamed “Daily Double,” but were also ordered to prepare for additional evacuations and, possibly, rescue attempts of other Americans still in Lebanon. The result was a 50-ship task force, with four carriers and their air wings at the core, along with a plethora of other surface combatants. The next day, two more carrier battle groups, centered on USS Forrestal and USS Independence joined Kennedy and Eisenhower from the United States. On June 24, Eisenhower assisted in the evacuation of American citizens in Lebanon caught up in the conflict. Kennedy, which had entered the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean. Eisenhower and her battle group, which was on-station in the Mediterranean when the war began, in early June had been joined by USS John F. The nuclear-powered Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Dwight D. In actuality, the largest American naval deployment to the Mediterranean occurred 36 years ago during a war that didn’t directly involve the United States. Even in the 1991 Gulf War, which involved a larger force, the carriers operated from the Gulf and the Red Sea. naval deployment to the region since the start of the Iraq war, much of the sea power involved in that conflict deployed to the Persian Gulf. Along with its escorts, the Essex would embark a squadron of Lockheed F-35B Lightning IIs, representing the long-awaited operational debut of the Joint Strike Fighter. In addition, the USS Essex expeditionary strike group was slated to deploy to the area. They were scheduled to join a guided-missile cruiser, three guided-missile destroyers and a nuclear-powered attack submarine already in the Mediterranean to form a 15-ship-strong naval task force. Truman, seven surface combatants and two submarines departed stateside for the region on April 11. The carrier strike group, centered on Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Harry S. As tensions escalated in the Middle East over the civil war in Syria, in April 2018 the United States deployed one of the largest naval forces to the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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