Farewell, Saratoga

Underway, Mediterranean transit, September 1985. On port side catapult (angle-waist) and on the front main catapults, a total of 3 F-14 Tomcats are ready for nearly instant takeoff, with jet blast deflectors (JBD's) raised on the main catapults. Photo-public domain

It is a strange experience watching your personal history become a scrap heap. It’s even stranger when the history connects father and son. The USS Saratoga served as a capital ship of the line in the US Navy from 1956-1994 before her decommissioning. Sara was on the front lines for nearly 40 years. My father was aboard her when the world nearly ended during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He was on the CARDIV 6 Admiral’s staff, and handled communications. Before most others, he would know if the order to launch nukes had been given. While the world was waiting for “the balloon to go up,” I was waiting to be born. I can only imagine the turmoil his head and heart must have experienced. (Dad still refuses to discuss anything related to the Cuban Blockade, citing classified security restrictions.) After Cuba and displays of force around the Mediterranean Sea in the 1960’s, the Saratoga went to Viet Nam in the 1970’s. The painting Intruder depicts her at the height of her Nam deployment; it was intended as the original cover for Stephen Coont’s breakout 1986 book, Flight of the Intruder.

My service aboard the Saratoga was from 1983-1985. During our Mediterranean deployment we had orders via the US Department of State to wait prior to entering Tunis, Tunisia. The high command of the Palestine Liberation Organization had to depart the country before we entered territorial waters. After the Marine Barracks in Beirut were destroyed by a suicide bomber, we were ordered to patrol on station off the Lebanese coast. I still remember a speedboat approaching at a high rate of speed on dead reckoning to the starboard side; the Marines on board were preparing to open up with the .50 caliber machine guns mounted in the flight-deck catwalks, and the alert helo loaded with anti-surface rockets went aloft. I’m still equally grateful and amazed that the deterrence worked.

Like every sea-going command, her sailors had nicknames for her.  Some were official; others more personal.  My dad referred to her as Lady Sara; I knew her as the Sorry Sara. Her flight deck could house almost four football fields at nearly 1100 feet long; her beam was barely 130 feet. She was a relative runt for a modern carrier; she only carried about 5500 men (yes, men at that time) and 70-90 aircraft.  Carriers built during her own Viet Nam service carried 2000 men and at least another dozen aircraft more. Within the living, floating, airport-city these men did their jobs, and worried about their loved ones at home. Sometimes tempers flared; I still remember the murder in the lithographer’s shop and the call to “Now man the walking blood bank.” Sometimes shared triumphs and tragedies forged unbreakable bonds. Just weeks after I disembarked at the conclusion of my enlistment, the Sara’s air wing intercepted and forced the landing of the plane carrying the Palestinian hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. The murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound American Jew, would finally face a jury, albeit a lenient Italian version. During Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, 21 "Sara Sailors" drowned when a water taxi capsized in the bay of Haifa, Israel. Their survivors are still in touch with their loved one's shipmates to this day. Scott Speicher, a Saratoga fighter pilot, would be the first combat casualty of the Persian Gulf War; he died the first night of hostilities. Sara transited the Suez canal a record-setting six times during that deployment, and logged another record-setting 11,000 launch-and-recovery cycles. History is strange; former Saratoga pilot, Capt. “Chic” Burlingame eventually retired from the US Navy Reserves. He was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 on September 11, 2001.

Many feel that this old warrior has had an ignoble and ignominious end. Efforts to find the Saratoga a permanent home as a maritime museum in her former home-port of Jacksonville, FL failed to generate the funds necessary for the goal. She spent the past twenty years in the cold and harsh waters of New England, noticeably decaying a bit more with every passing year. The Navy made arrangements (at the cost of one cent) for her to be towed to Texas for dismantling. I imagine that some enterprising scrap dealer has already wrapped up contracts for repurposing her salvageable material, and creating mementos for the naval aficionado marketplace. Her final transit under tow from Rhode Island has inspired countless numbers of her former sailors to track her passage. Many of them have been voluble in their upset at Sara’s final disposition. “Scrapped? Couldn’t they have at least saved her dignity and made her a diving reef?” goes one theme of responses on the Facebook pages dedicated to the Saratoga. Many commented that Sara’s perpetual list to port is clearly still her defining characteristic, even as the tug provides her power and navigation needs. Many of the comments sound like “glory days” being recalled if not relived. I feel sad for these men, many of whom feel their service aboard her was the most meaningful, important, and defining act of their lives.

Whenever I see the steel hulls of old warriors like the Saratoga, I don’t see the rust. I don’t smell the effects of decay. Instead I remember the noble service—and even the suffering—of the men who were once her crew. I smell the peculiar odor of the hangar-bay, and taste the energy of my own youth. But that is just memory. Memory takes us to a past, be it real or fantasy. I don't want to romanticize that past. What I feel in my soul is not the melancholy of memory. It is hope with its call to a better future. It is a fervent hope, perhaps even my deepest hope—that this husk of a once powerful hull be a metaphor for the wars she was created to fight: obsolete; unsustainable, unwanted, a memory from a different lifetime. The Prophet Isaiah’s future vision of this perfection has inspired humanity for nearly three thousand years: “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war” (Isaiah 2:4). More recently the Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai added his voice to this timeless prophetic call:

Don’t stop after beating the swords
into ploughshares, don’t stop! Go on beating
and make musical instruments out of them.
Whoever wants to make war again
will have to turn them into ploughshares first.

The Saratoga likely will not become school band instruments or steel drums. Neither will she again know “fair winds and following seas” or be called to sail into harm's way. Her era of service truly ends with her arrival this morning to the Brownsville, TX scrap yard. May the memories of her crew who died in the line of duty be recalled with love and respect.  May the history books recall the noble service of the ship and crew who were, together, the USS Saratoga.

Thirty years later; the Saratoga characteristically lists to port under tow at sunrise by Warhorse Signet III, 7 September 2014. Photo by Kyle Uhl.