abstract
| - The USS Oliver Hazard Perry(CVN-66) is a United States Navy supercarrier and the first of the Oliver Hazard Perry class of aircraft carriers, often called the Hazard-class. The ship is often referred to as the Hazard Perry as opposed to simply Perry to avoid confusion with the guided missile destroyer USS Commodore Matthew Perry or the M1 Perry tank. The Hazard Perry was laid down in 1963 and was commissioned in 1967 as the first ship of its class and, at the time of its construction, was the most advanced aircraft carrier ever put to sea. The ship spent the majority of the 1970s stationed in England to project American power in the English Channel and the Irish Sea, but was redeployed to the Caribbean in 1979 as the Brazilian War escalated. In 1982, it was attacked and severely damaged during the Battle Group Six raid, an attack in which Executive Officer Kenneth Pyle was killed and in which future Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John S. McCain III was injured. The Hazard Perry was withdrawn from the theater and underwent expensive repairs and other modernizations at Cibou Naval Shipyard in Nova Scotia, whose adjacent Naval Base would serve as its homeport for the next fifteen years after it was returned to service in 1985. The Hazard Perry was involved in aid missions in Africa and South Asia during the 1990s, and was sent to the Irish Sea during the Icelandic War. For three years, it was based dually out of Cibou and Iceland, and in the 2001 Naval Reorganization under President Martin it was homeported at Naval Station St. John in Aroostook. In 2013, it will be decommissioned and turned into a museum commemorating the Naval personnel who died in the Brazilian War, in particular during the Battle Group Six raid.
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