Carrier Ranger May Be Retired by the Navy : Military: The flattop, one of three whose home port is San Diego, is scheduled to be decommissioned under the proposed U.S. budget. It is now in the Persian Gulf.

Under the federal budget proposed Monday, the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Ranger is slated to be decommissioned in 1993, a move that will mean a $100-million loss to the city in Navy contracts, services and payroll.

In San Diego, which has traditionally been the home port for three carriers, the new budget signaled that the community may have to become accustomed to two. And, for the ship repair industry, which has suffered tremendous losses in the past decade, the news was a kick in the teeth.

“It’s a shrinking market,” sighed Art Wardwell, vice president of operations for Service Engineering Industries, the third largest shipyard in San Diego, which cut back its employees from 1,100 last year to 621 this year.

Under the new budget blueprint, the number of aircraft carriers in the Navy will drop from 14 to 12 by the end of fiscal 1995. The carriers slated for retirement are the Ranger, Midway, Forrestal and Saratoga.

The Ranger, now in the Persian Gulf, and Independence are now homeported in San Diego. The Navy’s third San Diego-assigned carrier, the Constellation, is now in Philadelphia undergoing a 29-month refurbishment that will be completed in 1993. All three carriers are conventionally powered by steam turbines.

Later this year, the Independence will be reassigned to Yokosuka, Japan. And in 1993, the carrier Kitty Hawk will once again call San Diego its home. Under the current homeporting scheme, San Diego will end up in 1993 with two carriers, the Kitty Hawk and Constellation.

But Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) held out hope that San Diego would gain a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier when construction is completed at North Island Naval Air Station piers that would enable nuclear carriers to dock there. The $5-million construction is scheduled to be finished in two years, he said.

“You don’t just invest millions of dollars to have an additional port of call. The possibility looms large that two nuclear carriers in Alameda will leave the Bay area, and at least one will come to San Diego,” Lowery said. “San Diego will yet remain the major West Coast operating port of the U.S. Navy.”

Alameda Naval Air Station, once named as a possible candidate for closing under a more austere defense budget, has two nuclear carriers: the Carl Vinson and the Lincoln. If the Northern California base is shut, those carriers would be reassigned. A new carrier, the George Washington, is still being built and has not yet been assigned a home port.

But Navy officials have long insisted that there are no plans to permanently dock nuclear-powered carriers in San Diego, and that the North Island piers would be used for visiting carriers.

“You are going to see the old carriers replaced by nuclear ones, and the real issue is whether San Diego is going to have its nuclear facilities up to speed,” said Mark Baker, a vice president in charge of military affairs with the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. “We certainly would not want to see San Diego carrier levels fall below two, and we would hope that we will return to three carriers. . . . It’s to our advantage to keep as many of those ships here as we can.”

The Ranger, commissioned Aug. 10, 1957, touts the nickname, “Top Gun of the Pacific Fleet.” Last summer, the Ranger lurched into the public spotlight when a San Diego-based ship repair company was accused of exposing employees and sailors to asbestos when workers sloppily removed the cancer-causing substance from the carrier.

In the past 200 years, eight U.S. ships have carried the name Ranger. The first one was built in 1777. The recent Ranger was first summoned to combat in 1964, when it was deployed to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. The Ranger also was deployed to the Persian Gulf for 130 days during the Iranian hostage crisis.