Carrier USS Nimitz Returns to Bremerton, Wraps Final Deployment
USS Nimitz (CVN-68) returned for what may be the last time to Bremerton, Wash., concluding its final deployment after nearly nine months at sea.
Nimitz, the oldest carrier in the Navy’s fleet — commissioned in 1975 — returned Tuesday to Bremerton after a stop in San Diego, Calif. The carrier departed Dec. 7 from San Diego, having disembarked elements of the strike group and Carrier Air Wing 17.
The carrier’s last deployment did not come without its hardships. A sailor went missing during Nimitz’s first port call, and two aircraft crashed into the South China Sea during the second half of its deployment.
The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group deployed March 26, leaving from San Diego Bay with no fanfare, USNI News previously reported. In April, it made a port call to Guam, where a sailor assigned to the carrier strike group went missing. The Navy called off the search after five days.
Nimitz then headed to the Philippine Sea to conduct drills with a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer. Toward the middle of May, the strike group operated near the Malacca Strait before Nimitz and one of its accompanying destroyers made a port call in Malaysia. It left Malaysia after approximately four days to operate in the South China Sea.
In June, the strike group set sail for the Middle East, where it operated alongside the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group. The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group arrived in the Middle East, hanging in the Arabian Sea, on the same day the U.S. struck three Iranian nuclear sites as part of Operation Midnight Hammer.
The Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group left the Middle East in July.
In August, while still in U.S. Central Command, Nimitz made a port visit to Bahrain, the first time a U.S. aircraft carrier called on the country in five years.
After three months in the Middle East, the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group sailed through the Singapore Strait and back to the Indo-Pacific region where it stayed for the remainder of its deployment.
While in the South China Sea, an F/A-18F Super Hornet and an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter, both assigned to the carrier strike group, crashed into the water within 30 minutes of each other. The crews were rescued. The aircraft, which crashed on Oct. 26, were recovered in early December.
Nimitz made a port call to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on its way home to Bremerton. Nimitz is expected to eventually sail to the East Coast, where the carrier will be decommissioned.
