WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The US aircraft carrier Enterprise has been retired, the US Navy announced in a press release.
"The ship was put to sea in 1961 and safely steamed more than 1 million nautical miles on nuclear power over its entire career of more than 50 years," the release stated on Friday.
The ship’s history included a 1960 deployment to track the flight of the late astronaut John Glenn as he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
Two years later, the carrier deployed when President John Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba in what became known as the Cuban missile crisis.
On September 11, 2011, the Enterprise turned around during a voyage home to the United States and headed back to Persian Gulf, where it sent its aircraft on hundreds of sorties over Afghanistan in the weeks that followed.
