Original Item. One-of-a-Kind. USS Bennington (CV/CVA/CVS-20) was an Essex-class aircraft carrier in service with the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946 and from 1952 to 1970. She was sold for scrap in 1994. 

This is a lovely U.S. Navy sailor’s aluminum suitcase from the Vietnam War era, painted and stenciled for the sailor who carried it. One side is painted with a depiction of the USS Bennington (CV-20), an aircraft carrier that saw service from WWII through to the Vietnam War. The other side of the suitcase is stenciled:

R.W. POSEY
USS
BENNINGTON
CVA.20

This denotes the name of the sailor and the ship. One of the hinges are broken and the steel fittings all have heavy oxidation. The paint is in good order. The stenciled side of the suitcase has four circular felt pads for display. The suitcase measures 21 ½ x 7 ½ x 14”.

A great piece, ready for further research and display.

Bennington's final seven years of active service, which included four more assignments with the 7th Fleet, coincided with the period of direct involvement of United States armed forces in the Vietnam War. The first deployment of this phase of her career started peacefully enough in early 1964, but the Tonkin Gulf incident in August extended her Far Eastern tour and brought duty in Vietnamese waters in October and November. Her next 7th Fleet tour of duty, during the summer and fall of 1965, brought more duty off the coast of Vietnam, but the service was not nearly so extensive as the she would perform during her final two deployments.

On 18 May 1966, while cruising off of San Diego, California, Bennington hosted the experimental LTV XC-142 aircraft as it executed 44 short takeoffs and landings and six vertical takeoffs and landings, the ship steaming at various speeds to generate different velocities of wind-over-the-deck. She was the prime recovery vessel for the unmanned Apollo 4 mission and on 9 November 1967 recovered the spacecraft which had splashed down 10 mi (16 km) from the ship.

On 4 November 1966, Bennington embarked upon her next to last 7th Fleet assignment. Throughout that tour of duty, she served with the larger carriers on Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin. In addition to providing antisubmarine protection to Task Force 77, she also had the responsibility for tracking and identifying all ships operating in the vicinity of the task force and for providing search and rescue services for downed aviators. The deployment ended on 21 April, and Bennington headed for Australia to participate in the celebration commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Allied victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The carrier departed Sydney, Australia, on 8 May and, after a stop at Pearl Harbor on the 18th, arrived in San Diego on 23 May 1967.

After almost a year of normal operations along the west coast, she stood out of Long Beach, California, for the final deployment on 30 April 1968. She made a stop at Pearl Harbor from 15 to 20 May and arrived in United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka on 29 May. Her last deployment brought more of the same duty that she had seen on the previous one, antisubmarine protection for TF 77, ship identification work, and search and rescue services. She concluded that tour of duty on 28 October when she departed Yokosuka to return to the United States. Bennington arrived in Long Beach on 9 November and, on the 14th, entered the Long Beach Naval Shipyard for a five-month yard overhaul. The aircraft carrier resumed active service on 30 April 1969 and conducted normal operations along the California coast for the remainder of the year and into January 1970. On 15 January 1970, Bennington was placed out of commission with the Pacific Reserve Fleet at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington, and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 20 September 1989. The carrier was finally sold for scrap on 12 January 1994, being subsequently towed across the Pacific for scrapping in India