USS Nimitz: The 1981 Prowler Crash, the Tic Tac UFO and a 2027 Farewell

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USS Nimitz, CVN-68, was commissioned in 1975 by President Gerald Ford and is the only carrier of its class named by surname alone. It is now the oldest serving aircraft carrier in the world. Its first crises came fast: in 1979 it deployed to the Indian Ocean during the Iran hostage crisis, and in 1980 it served as the staging platform for the failed rescue attempt that ended with a helicopter crash in the Iranian desert. In May 1981 a Marine EA-6B Prowler, low on fuel after a night bolter, crashed into parked aircraft on the flight deck, killing 14, injuring 45 and destroying or damaging nearly 20 aircraft. Several deck crew who died tested positive for marijuana traces that toxicologists said could not prove impairment, and the case led President Ronald Reagan to set the military's zero-tolerance drug testing policy.

In August 1981 Nimitz aircraft shot down two Libyan jets in the Gulf of Sidra incident. In a 1997 demonstration its air wing flew 771 strike sorties in four days and dropped more than 1,300 bombs. In 2004 its F/A-18F fighters, sent after the cruiser USS Princeton tracked unidentified objects, recorded the Tic Tac video the Pentagon declassified in 2017. A Russian Tu-95 bomber passed over the deck at 2,000 feet in 2008, the ship recovered the first carrier landing of an F-35C in 2014, and its air wing struck ISIS at Tal Afar in 2017. A 2020 COVID-19 outbreak forced a 27-day quarantine. Planned retirement slipped to March 2027 because of Ford-class delays and an 11-carrier mandate, sending the ship around Cape Horn in 2026 and to New York for the Fourth of July naval review.

• The ship displaces about 100,000 tons, roughly the weight of 350 loaded Boeing 747s.
• Two A4W reactors push it past 31.5 knots and allow 20 to 25 years between refuelings.
• Studies after the 1997 exercise found the equipment could have sustained that pace another 12 to 24 hours.
• In late 2025 in the South China Sea, an MH-60R and an F/A-18F crashed 30 minutes apart, and both crews were rescued.
• The carrier logged its 350,000th arrested landing in 2023.