USS America CVA-66 Yankee Station 1970 F-4 RA-5C A-7E Vietnam Southeast Asia National Archives NARA

It's Yankee Station off the coast of Vietnam in 1970, and USS America, CVA-66, launches and recovers aircraft during the war in Southeast Asia. Watch for Vought A-7 jets. The first A-7E combat sortie launched from USS America on May 26, 1970. On this deployment to Yankee Station, USS America's aircraft repeatedly hit communist transportation and petroleum targets in an effort to diminish movement of war materiel and troops to the ground fighting in the south. USS America served in many post-Vietnam operations, including Operation Eldorado Canyon against Libya on April 14, 1986. USS America also served in Desert Storm, beginning in January 1991. USS America was a conventionally-powered vessel. Commissioned in January 1965, USS America was decommissioned in August 1996. (The audio narration erroneously says the wrong year; we apologize for the error.) In 2005, the former USS America was used as a target vessel for tests of the effects of underwater explosions on a large aircraft carrier hull. The four weeks of testing are said to have given Navy planners valuable information about hull survivability for the construction of future aircraft carriers. At the conclusion of the tests, the former USS America was scuttled on May 14, 2005. The ship rests upright more than 16,000 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, about 250 nautical miles southeast of Cape Hatteras. I'm Fred Johnsen for the Airailimages Channel. Thank you for watching our channel. Please give this video a Thumbs Up. That helps us.