The U.S.S. Forrestal (CVA 59) was the first of the Navy’s super carriers, built from the keel up with an angled deck, hurricane bow, steam catapults and all the other refinements and improvements on carriers designed and built for World War II, before the time of jets.  It was the ship that signaled the survival of naval aviation after a long, bitter, political fight to eliminate it from the nation’s defenses and named for the secretary of defense, James Forrestal, who had taken the Navy’s side in that fight and suffered what was called a “nervous breakdown” that led to his suicide.

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