Forrestal-Class Aircraft Carrier

The Forrestal class was a group of four United States Navy supercarriers, the first class of true supercarrier ever completed, named for James Forrestal, the first United States Secretary of Defense. The lead ship, USS Forrestal, was commissioned on 1 October 1955, and her three sisters, USS Saratoga, USS Ranger and USS Independence, followed over the rest of the decade; each displaced 81,000 long tons at full load, measured just under 1,070 feet in length, and could carry between 80 and 100 jet aircraft, introducing the angled flight deck and large island superstructure that became standard on later American carriers. All four ships served through the Cold War and into the 1990s before being decommissioned, the last in 1998, and all four were eventually scrapped at Brownsville, Texas, between 2014 and 2017.