USS Wright (CVL-49)

USS Wright (CVL-49) from early 1950s
History
United States
Name	Wright
Namesake	Wright Brothers
Builder	New York Shipbuilding Corporation
Laid down	21 August 1944
Launched	1 September 1945
Commissioned	9 February 1947
Decommissioned	27 May 1970
Reclassified	AVT-7 (1959), CC-2 (1963)
Stricken	1 December 1977
Honors and awards	National Defense Service Medal (2)
Fate	Sold for scrap 1980
General characteristics
Class and type	Saipan-class aircraft carrier
Displacement	14,500 tons
Length	684 ft (208 m)
Beam	76.8 ft (23.4 m) (waterline) 115 ft (35 m) (overall)
Draft	28 ft (8.5 m)
Speed	33 knots (61 km/h; 38 mph)
Complement	1,787 officers and enlisted
Armament	40 × Bofors 40 mm guns
Aircraft carried	50+ aircraft

USS Wright (CVL-49/AVT-7) was a

Construction

Wright was laid down on 21 August 1944, at Camden, New Jersey, by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, launched on 1 September 1945, sponsored by Mrs. Harold S. Miller, a niece of the Wright brothers, and commissioned at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on 9 February 1947, with Captain Frank T. Ward in command.

Service history

Wright departed Philadelphia on 18 March 1947 and stopped briefly at Norfolk, Virginia, en route to the Naval Air Training Base at Pensacola, Florida. After her arrival there on 31 March, Wright soon commenced a rigorous schedule of air defense drills and gunnery practice while acting as a qualification carrier for hundreds of student pilots at the Naval Air Training Base, relieving Saipan.^[2] Wright would embark on 40 operational cruises—each of between one and four days' duration off the Florida coast. In addition, the carrier embarked a total of 1,081 naval reservists and trained them in a series of three two-week duty tours.

On 3 September 1947, Wright embarked 48

for rocket-firing operations.

That exercise was her last prior to her departure from Pensacola on 24 October, to return north. She arrived at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard soon thereafter and from 1 November to 17 December, underwent post-shakedown repairs and alterations before she returned to Pensacola two days before Christmas, where she resumed her regular schedule of pilot qualification training under the operational control of the Chief of Naval Air Training, Commander Air Atlantic. Wright spent the year 1948 engaged in those pilot carrier qualification operations, before she put into the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 26 January 1949, to commence a four-month overhaul. She was relieved as training carrier by Cabot.^[2]

Following refresher training in Cuban waters, Wright returned to Norfolk on 1 August 1949, and four days later shifted to

) for temporary duty.

Service with 6th Fleet

Wright sailed from Norfolk, on 11 January 1951, with a fast carrier task group and reached

, France—her replenishment and liberty ports during the never-ending cycle of fleet training and readiness exercises with the 6th Fleet. Departing Golfe Juan on 19 March, Wright made port at Newport on 31 March 1951.

The carrier later entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and underwent an overhaul there before she took part in Atlantic Fleet maneuvers out of

.

As

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) navies.

En route, Wright, escorted by Forrest Royal, was detached to ferry men and gear of Marine Night Fighter Squadron (VMF(N)) 114 to

, Scotland, on 10 September.

Three days later, Wright put to sea with two British destroyers acting as her plane guard for NATO

, Netherlands, where the force arrived on 25 September. On 29 September, Wright departed Rotterdam, bound for the United States, and arrived at Newport on 9 October.

That day, she embarked Rear Admiral

.

Wright returned to Newport, and after a rigorous schedule of training in Narragansett Bay, sailed on 5 May, for the Gulf of Mexico. During that training cruise, she visited Houston, Texas, where she hosted some 14,000 visitors on 16 and 17 May. Returning to Quonset Point on 28 May, Wright operated locally for another month before shifting south for a stint of operations out of Mayport, Florida.

Service with 7th Fleet

Wright was overhauled at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard from 31 July to 21 November 1953, and then conducted refresher training in Cuban waters from 4 January to 16 February 1954. Next, after departing

, where she remained until 23 February 1955.

At that point, Wright was attached to CarDiv 17, Pacific Fleet, and operated locally out of San Diego until 3 May, when she put to sea as part of TG 7.3—formed around the flagship

Pacific Reserve Fleet

.

Reclassification

During her time in reserve, Wright was reclassified on 15 May 1959, an auxiliary aircraft transport, AVT-7. However, she never served in that role but remained inactive until 15 March 1962, when she was taken to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for conversion to a command ship and reclassified as CC-2. The conversion—which lasted a year—included extensive alterations to enable the ship to function as a fully equipped mobile command post afloat for top-echelon commands and staff for strategic direction of area or worldwide military operations. Facilities were built into the ship for worldwide communications and rapid automatic exchange, processing, storage, and display of command data. A portion of the former hangar deck space was utilized for special command spaces and the extensive electronics equipment required, while a major portion of the flight deck was utilized for specially designed communications antenna arrays. In addition, facilities were provided to enable the ship to operate three helicopters.

Recommissioned at Puget Sound on 11 May 1963, Capt. John L. Arrington II, in command, Wright (CC-2) operated locally on trials and training evolutions in the waters off the Pacific Northwest until 3 September, when she departed Seattle and proceeded to San Diego, which she reached three days later. For the next three weeks, the ship trained in nearby waters before she returned to Puget Sound on 30 September to commence her post-shakedown availability.

Following those repairs and alterations—which took up all of the month of October and most of November—Wright prepared to shift to her new home port, Norfolk. She departed Seattle on 26 November, stopped briefly at San Diego three days later to embark civilian engineers and personnel who were to conduct surveys of communications and-air conditioning equipment, and was steaming south off the coast of northern Mexico when she picked up a distress message from the Israeli merchantman SS Velos, on 1 December. Wright altered course and rendezvoused with Velos later that same day. The command ship's medical officer was flown across to the Israeli ship and treated a seaman suffering from kidney stones. The medical officer was then flown back to Wright. Upon completion of that mission of mercy, Wright resumed her voyage to Balboa.

Transiting the Panama Canal on 7 and 8 December, Wright steamed via St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and moored at the Hampton Roads Army Terminal on 18 December. After a subsequent brief operational period off the Virginia Capes, Wright entered port on 21 December, and remained there through Christmas and New Year's.

NECPA duties

For the next six years, Wright operated out of Norfolk, training to perform her assigned mission as the National Emergency Command Post Afloat. Regular overhauls performed at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard saw the ship receiving the repairs and alterations that continually improved her capabilities to carry out her task. She operated primarily off the Virginia Capes, but ranged as far north as Bar Harbor, Maine, and as far south as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Punta del Este, Uruguay. Her other ports of call included Newport, Quonset Point, Jacksonville, Mayport, Fort Lauderdale and Port Everglades, Florida; Boston; Portsmouth; New York City; Atlantic City; Annapolis; Philadelphia; Little Creek; Norfolk; and Guantánamo Bay. As part of NECPA duties, she alternated on alert status with Northampton.^[3]

There were highlights and breaks from the cycle of periods in port and at sea. From 11 to 14 April 1967, Wright lay at anchor off the coast of Uruguay, providing a worldwide communications capability in support of President

, was hurriedly recalled to Norfolk and, upon her arrival there, stood by, on alert.

Decommissioning

Ultimately decommissioned on 27 May 1970, Wright was placed in reserve at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The ship was stricken from the

(DRMS) for scrapping on 1 August 1980.

Awards

USS Wright (CVL-49)

• Navy Occupation Service Medal with "Europe" clasp
• National Defense Service Medal
• Korean Service Medal
• United Nations Korean Medal
• Republic of Korea War Medal (retroactive)

USS Wright (CC-2)

• National Defense Service Medal with star (2 awards)

Gallery

• USS Wright Lifecycle
• 
  F4U-5 Corsair of VF-23 on USS Wright in November 1948
• 
  USS Wright underway at sea with North American T-6 Texans on board somewhere between the late 1940s and the early 1950s
• 
  VF-14

  aboard USS Wright in early 1951
• 
  VF-14

  on USS Wright in early 1951
• 
  USS Wright, HMS Illustrious (R87) and HMS Eagle (R05) underway in the North Sea in September 1952
• 
  USS Wright as (CC-2) underway on 17 June 1963
• 
  USS Wright underway at sea in September 1963
• 
  UH-2B of HC-4 on board USS Wright in c. 1966
• 
  USS Wright at sea in c. 1967

References

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Further reading

• This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.
• Ghosts of the East Coast: Doomsday Ships https://coldwarveteran.us/
• Photo Archive US Navy : http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/49.htm