A small item carried by the Associated Press late last month delivered the final blow to an effort to bring a retired U.S. aircraft carrier to the Columbia River to serve as a museum.
The ship is the USS Ranger, one of the Navy’s first so-called supercarriers. In five decades of service to the United States, the oil-fueled Ranger saw combat duty in Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm — and appearances in movies such as “Top Gun” and “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” — before it was decommissioned in 1993 and retired to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
Berthed near several other retired capital ships near the end of Sinclair Inlet, Ranger fires the imagination of anyone driving up Highway 3 toward Bremerton.
That included a group of retired Navy veterans who saw a permanent home for the Ranger on the Columbia River, across the river from Clark County in Fairview, Ore.