USS Ranger leaving Puget Sound for Texas scrap yard

BREMERTON, Wash. — Naval Sea Systems Command says the mothballed aircraft carrier USS Ranger will be towed out of Puget Sound on Thursday on its way to be scrapped in Texas.

The USS Constellation completed the same journey in January to International Shipbreaking at Brownsville, Texas.

It will take five months to complete a 16,000-mile trip around South America. The Ranger won’t fit through the Panama Canal.

The Ranger was commissioned in 1957 and was active during the Vietnam War and also deployed in support of Operation Desert Storm, the first Persian Gulf War. The carrier was decommissioned in 1993 at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

The Kitsap Sun reports the Ranger’s departure will leave two carriers in the Bremerton mothball fleet, the USS Independence and the USS Kitty Hawk.