USS Independence Forrestal Class CV-62 ?

I served on the Ranger (CVA-61) from 1972-1975, she differed (among other things) from the other Forrestals in that she retained her forward gun sponsons (the guns had been removed by the time I was onboard). That is the main superficial difference that I can remember without doing some research. The three others in the class had their sponsons removed because in the Atlantic where they operated the sponsons were a liability in heavy seas. Ranger was a Pacific based ship. If I recall, the flight deck was about 60 feet above the waterline and the hangar deck was about 30 feet. The navigation bridge (08 level) was 90 feet.

Subfixer, I wanted to get back to you and thank you for your information. I am looking at the outboard profile starboard drawing from the BOGP of the USS Ranger circa 1978. I got these drawings from the Floating Drydock. The flight deck shows a dimension of 97 feet from baseline and the Nav.Bridge - level 08 shows 127 feet.

There is nothing called out for the hangar deck but your recollection agrees pretty well with what I measure at 60.5 feet. I arived at that number by scaling the distance from the flight deck to base line. On the drawing this distance scales an average of 6.25 inches. The hangar deck scales 3.9 inches. So I took 97/6.25 x X/3.9 and cross multiplied and X came out to 60.53 feet.

Regarding the gun sponsons, my brother served on the Independence CV-62 in 1960. He said the reasons they removed the 5 inch guns was that the wings of twin engine bomber the A-3 over hung so far they interfered.

We carried A-3s also and flew them off both the waist cats and bow cats. I don't remember any other explanation other the one I stated earlier, that the sponsons were a liability in very heavy seas. Maybe if the five inch gun mounts were still installed it might be a problem with the A-3s, I don't know. We still had the four five inchers mounted aft when I was onboard as late as 1975.

If you still have questions, I'll try to help. I was on Indy from 92 to 97. Jim

These are two scratch builted Forrestal class papercard/plastic 1/350 builds I did years ago. One is the Ranger the other Indy.

Planing on building a 1/350 from the Trumpeter Kitty Hawk hull. I just gotten in the mail yesterday the Shapeways 1/350 Indy island. Steve Larson design the island. Anyway old photos of 1/350 sratchbuilted Ranger and Indy from papercard.

What division were you in Jim? I was in V-4 division from Feb 93 - Jun 95