Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 1, 1990                   TAG: 9005010106
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK                                LENGTH: Medium

NAVY RETIRES THE CORAL SEA

"Time and time again, in periods of crisis and international tension, our nation's leaders ask, `Where are the carriers?' And time and time again, Coral Sea and her sister ships ... have responded," said Adm. Carlisle A.H. Trost, chief of naval operations and the principal speaker at the decommissioning.

Commissioned in 1947, too late for World War II, the Coral Sea still managed to see more than its share of action. The ship launched the first air strikes of the Vietnam War in 1965 and the last, seven years later.

In April 1986, 15 of the ship's A-6E Intruder attack bombers joined in the air attack of suspect Libyan terrorist camps.

"Throughout the (Vietnam) war, the Coral Sea was a work horse," retired Adm. Paul Peck, the ship's commander from 1972 to 1973, once said of the ship. "She was always the one who could answer the bell. Whatever you needed to be done, she could stagger out and do it."

Planes from the Coral Sea blunted the Tet offensive in 1968 and helped lift the seige of Khe Sahn the same year. In 1972, the Coral Sea launched the planes that dropped mines into Haiphong harbor.

The ship's crew began referring to it as the "Ageless Warrior."

After Vietnam, the ship provided air support for Marines freeing the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez, seized in international waters by Cambodia in 1975. With the taking of the American embassy in Teheran, the Coral Sea spent much of its time in southwest Asia.

"There is no clearer example of employment of U.S. carrier power in peacetime pursuit of national policy objectives than during this period from late 1979 to 1981," Trost said.

Trost told the more than 4,000 people gathered pierside at the Norfolk Naval Station for the ceremony that this country continues to need aircraft carriers.

"Some say that threats to the United States have crumbled with the Berlin Wall. Many of these say we can get by with 12, 10, or even six carrier battle groups. Such opinions clearly go beyond the bounds of prudence, and discount the lessons of history," he said.

As the crew in dress whites filed off the ship, the ship's flag and commissioning pennant were lowered.

"This is a day of sadness. Clearly there is a touch of sadness as we say goodbye and mark an end of an era of this great lady. And it's a day of hope. Hope for a world in the future that will not be torn by wars, or threats of war - such ugly events in our world that have so characterized this Ageless Warrior's years of service," Trost said.

More than 70,000 men have served aboard the Coral Sea.

According to Lt. Cmdr. Mike John, spokesman for the Atlantic Fleet Air Force, a decision will be reached whether to mothball the ship, sell it, or scrap it by the end of June.

The Coral Sea, built for $90 million, is replaced as the Navy's 14th carrier by the nuclear-powered carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln cost $3.4 billion.