The USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier arrived in Crete in the early morning hours of Tuesday and docked at the Souda base, giving its 5,500 crew members a Greek island break after seven months at sea and over 2,000 missions launched against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria.
The U.S. Navy extended the Truman’s deployment by one month to “keep the pressure” on Islamic State until the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier arrived to take over, Vice Admiral James Foggo, commander of the Navy’s Sixth Fleet, told Reuters.
USS Harry Truman will remain docked in Souda for four days.
The 1,096-feet (334-metre) Truman, as long as the Empire State Building in New York City is tall and with a 4.5-acre (1.8 hectare) flight deck, is due back home in Norfolk, Virginia in mid-July.
On June 3rd, the USS Harry S Truman launched air strikes against positions of the Islamic State positions in the Mediterranean Sea. It was reportedly the first time after 2003, that airstrikes were launched from an aircraft carrier in the area of responsibility of the 6th Fleet.
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has already ‘blocked’ area in the Myrtoo Sea, between Peloponnese and the western part of the Cyclades island group, for a firing exercise on June 24th 2016.
With this move, Washington apparently wants to balance the military activities of Russia and to speed up the fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State.
PS Have you been on an US aircraft carrier? It’s an impressive town pressed into a compact form, where smokers need to climb down and up 8 floors for a cigarette. The most exciting thing: leaving the aircraft carrier from the catapult. A real W-O-W experience!
