Photos > USS Saratoga Final Farewell Ceremony & Departure (August 2014)

The USS John F. Kennedy Project could not be where we are today without the years put into trying to acquire the USS Saratoga, and the dedicated men and women who helped try to make that happen. For that reason, we hosted a farewell ceremony at the ship on August 8, and on August 21, the USS Saratoga made her final departure from Naval Station Newport to the scrapping company in Brownsville, TX.
The ex-USS Saratoga was one of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1950s. Commissioned in 1956, she spent most of her career in the Mediterranean, but also participated during the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm. Saratoga was decommissioned in 1994. The Navy made the ship available for donation to an eligible organization for use as a museum or memorial in 1998, but no viable applications were received and the ship was removed from donation hold in 2010.

PLEASE REMEMBER: The vision we had for the USS Saratoga carries on with the USS John F. Kennedy project, and her memory will live on, as a substantial portion of the hangar bay will be dedicated to displaying Saratoga memorabilia and artifacts.