Wow. That's a lot of Grumman iron in that pic.
Will be taking her last ride to be cut up, all for one stinkin' penny, made two WestPacs on her with VAW-116, and CVW2,last cruise was in DESERT STORM. Shame being a floating museum wasn't in the cards.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/25/final-voyage-navy-pays-one-cent-to-scrap-aircraft-carrier/
If memory serves me, Midway was an Essex class hull. I know she couldn't have Tomcats in her airwing (I thing it was a JBD thing). Also, last airwing with F-4s...........definitely smaller that Ranger.
Nor did it have Hoovers. For that NORPAC (first of the cold war), Enterprise off loaded all the A-7s and left them in Atsugi to make room for a 4 plane Viking augment from my squadron, just back from our own Westpac, to make up for the lack of VS on Midway and Coral Sea. As we were operating north of the arctic circle in February and March, the A-7 guys got a good deal.
Actually, CV-41 was built on a Battleship hull of the then new USS MONTANA, a new class of BB, abandoned after the Midway victory in June '42, the death knell of the battlewagon (new construction) in the future. She was commissioned only weeks after the Japanese surrender in 1945. I reported aboard MIDWAY in the drydock in January 1970, and made the '71 & '72 Westpac deployments.
Smaller hull, but with an equivalent area flight deck (4 acres), constructed during the 1966-70 modernization overhaul at Hunters Point. She also lost her #3 waist catapult in the mod to make space for avionics support equipment for the A-6 She competed very ably with the 4-cat FORRESTAL "Supercarriors" in Alpha Strike launch performance throughout the rest of the air war (in fact, earned the PUC for the ship/CVW-5 performance during "Linebacker II", in 1972)!
True that, Flash!
