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USS Saratoga (CV-3)

USS Saratoga (CV-3)
Saratoga underway in 1942, after her lengthy refit
History
United States
Name: USS Saratoga
Namesake: Battle of Saratoga
Ordered:
  • 1917 (as a battlecruiser)
  • 1922 (as an aircraft carrier)
Builder: New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey
Laid down: 25 September 1920
Launched: 7 April 1925
Commissioned: 16 November 1927
Reclassified: 1 July 1922 to aircraft carrier
Struck: 15 August 1946
Identification: Hull number: CC-3, then CV-3
Nickname(s): Sara Maru, Sister Sara
Honors and
awards:
8 battle stars
Fate: Sunk by atomic bomb test, 25 July 1946
General characteristics (as built)
Class and type: Lexington-class aircraft carrier
Displacement:
Length: 888 ft (270.7 m)
Beam: 106 ft (32.3 m)
Draft: 30 ft 5 in (9.3 m) (deep load)
Installed power:
Propulsion:
Speed: 33.25 knots (61.58 km/h; 38.26 mph)
Range: 10,000 nmi (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement: 2,791 (including aviation personnel) in 1942
Armament:
Armor:
Aircraft carried: 78
Aviation facilities: 1 Aircraft catapult

USS Saratoga (CV-3) was a Lexington-class aircraft carrier built for the United States Navy during the 1920s. Originally designed as a battlecruiser, she was converted into one of the Navy's first aircraft carriers during construction to comply with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The ship entered service in 1928 and was assigned to the Pacific Fleet for her entire career. Saratoga and her sister ship, Lexington, were used to develop and refine carrier tactics in a series of annual exercises before World War II. On more than one occasion these included successful surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. She was one of three prewar US fleet aircraft carriers, along with Enterprise and Ranger, to serve throughout World War II.

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Saratoga was the centerpiece of the unsuccessful American effort to relieve Wake Island and was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine a few weeks later. After lengthy repairs, the ship supported forces participating in the Guadalcanal Campaign and her aircraft sank the light carrier Ryūjō during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August 1942. She was again torpedoed the following month and returned to the Solomon Islands area after repairs were completed.

In 1943, Saratoga supported Allied forces involved in the New Georgia Campaign and invasion of Bougainville in the northern Solomon Islands and her aircraft twice attacked the Japanese base at Rabaul in November. Early in 1944, her aircraft provided air support during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands Campaign before she was transferred to the Indian Ocean for several months to support the British Eastern Fleet as it attacked targets in Java and Sumatra. After a brief refit in mid-1944, the ship became a training ship for the rest of the year.


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