USS Midway (CV-41)
History of the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier
The USS Midway (CV-41) was ordered for the U.S. Navy on August 1, 1942. Her keel was laid down at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Virginia on October 27, 1943. She was launched on March 20, 1945 and commissioned on September 10, 1945 under the command of Captain Joseph F. Bolger, the first U.S. Navy ship to be commissioned after World War II.
USS Midway started as a member of the Atlantic Fleet with her homeport in Norfolk, Virginia. She spent the early part of her career in testing and training, including Operation Frostbite, testing for cold weather operations in the North Atlantic, and Operation Sandy, where she test fired a German V-2 rocket from her flight deck.
For the next few years, the USS Midway spent a number of annual deployments with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, received alterations that allowed her to accommodate heavier aircraft and participated in maneuvers with NATO forces.
During the 1950s, USS Midway sailed for a world cruise that took her to the Western Pacific with the Seventh Fleet to help evacuate Chinese Nationalist from the Tachen Islands. She headed to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington for overhaul on June 28, 1955. The aircraft was decommissioned from October 1955 until September 30, 1957 as she underwent modernization that included an angled flight deck and steam catapults.
The USS Midway then moved her homeport to Alameda, California, where she was deployed annually with the Seventh Fleet. She spent the spring of 1961 in the South China Sea during the Laotian Crisis and tested air defense systems for Taiwan, the Philippines, Okinawa, Korea and Japan in 1962. In 1965, she sailed for Vietnam, launching air strikes against targets in both North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Her Attack Carrier Wing 2 scored the first air-to-air kills of the Vietnam War in June 1965 when they downed three MiGs.
USS Midway underwent further modernization at San Francisco Naval Shipyard in California on February 11, 1966. She was decommissioned until January 31, 1970. The aircraft carrier returned to Vietnam on May 18, 1971, relieving the USS Hancock on Yankee Station.
The Vietnam War saw many such deployments for the USS Midway. In the spring of 1972, her aircraft helped to lay minefields at Thanh Hoa, Dong Hoi, Vinh, Hon Gai, Quang Khe, Cam Pha and other approaches to Haiphong. In August of the same year, one of her helicopters conducted a successful search and rescue mission to retrieve a downed aviator from the USS Saratoga in North Vietnam. The helicopter would complete 48 successful rescue missions by the end of 1972.
Aircraft from the USS Midway also made the last air-to-air kill of the Vietnam War when one of her pilots downed a MiG on January 12, 1973.When Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in April 1975, the aircraft carrier supported Operation Frequent Wind to evacuated U.S. personnel and Vietnamese refugees from the capital.
In August 1976, USS Midway participated in Operation Paul Bunyan, a show of force in Korean waters when two U.S. Army officers were killed by North Korean guards in an unprovoked attack. In 1979, she headed to the Indian Ocean and provided an American naval presence in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. She supported U.S. operations during the Iranian Hostage Crisis before being relieved by the USS Coral Sea on February 5, 1980.
The USS Midway collided with the Panamanian merchant ship Cactus on July 29, 1980 450 miles southwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines. Two men from the aircraft carrier were killed, three were injured and she sustained light damage to her hull and three of her aircraft. On August 17, she returned to the Indian Ocean on contingency duty.
On March 16, 1981, USS Midway rescued 17 people from a downed civilian helicopter in the South China Sea. She served in the western Pacific for the remainder of the 1980s, including the final launching of a
U.S. Navy F-4S Phantom II before they were replaced with the F/A-18 Hornets.
USS Midway was deployed to the Persian Gulf during the early 1990s to support operations in the Middle East. She took part in Operation Desert Shield, Operation Imminent Thunder and Operation Desert Storm. The aircraft carrier was decommissioned on April 11, 1992 and struck from the Naval Vessel Register on March 17, 1997. She now serves as a museum ship at the Broadway Pier in downtown San Diego, California.
The use of asbestos was common in shipbuilding components for much of the 20th Century because of its heavy resistance. This exposure to asbestos onboard Navy ships and in Navy has put many shipyards, seaman, shipyard workers and longshoreman at risk for developing asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma.
Sources include:
John Hedley-Whyte and Debra R Milamed, "Asbestos and Ship-Building: Fatal Consequences," Ulster Med. J. 77(3):191-200 (Sep 2008)
U.S. Navy, A Brief History of Aircraft Carriers – USS Midway
