Quote:
Originally Posted by James1978
The Saratoga went into the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1980 for a SLEP overhaul that lasted 28 months. Material-wise, she wasn't the same ship after the SLEP that she was in 1978.
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The SLEP program was a ships systems and equipment overhaul and upgrade. Though some work MAY have been done on the hull. The ship was launched in 55, making her already 23 years old in '78. Even with the SLEP program, which was botched at the navy yard in Philly and required additional work, that would have made her 40 years old by '95 and near the end of even the SLEP program's project life span. No overhaul program can compensate for the effects of salt water on the ship's structure over the course of 4 decades.
She was decommissioned in 1994, which would have made her a candidate for recommissioning and deployment in a reasonable amount of time, but her lifespan on the battlefield would have been short.