The USS Saratoga — the legendary aircraft carrier that played a key role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and Gulf wars and made Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi back down — is destined for dismantling after the Navy paid one penny to a Texas firm to recycle the 81,101-ton behemoth.

The once-mighty vessel is the second of three conventionally-powered carriers to set to sail to the scrapyard, following another one-cent deal involving the USS Forrestal in October. ESCO Marine, of Brownsville, will pay to tow, dismantle and recycle the ship, which was decommissioned in 1994 after more than 38 years of service. Efforts to spare the ship failed, as they did with the Forrestal last year.
The ship, currently berthed at the Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island, will depart for Texas later this summer. It was available for donation to a state or nonprofit organization for public display as a museum or memorial for 12 years, but no viable applications were received. The price reflects the net price proposed by the company, Naval officials said.

The massive carrier — as long as the Empire State Building is tall — also saw its share of atypical operations. In 1985, during a routine deployment in the Mediterranean, the Saratoga launched seven F-14 Tomcats to force a jet carrying terrorists who had just hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship, killing an American, to land. A year later, the ship was sailing off the Libyan coast in the Gulf of Sidra when it crossed what Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi had called the “Line of Death.” When three more U.S. Navy warships crossed the same navigational line, Libyan forces fired surface-to-air missiles at U.S. jets. The missiles missed, and U.S. jets later turned back two Soviet-made Libyan fighter planes sent toward the ships.

Five years later, 21 crew members who served aboard the carrier were killed when a ferryboat they were traveling on sank while returning from Haifa, Israel. And in 1992, USS Saratoga crew members mistakenly fired into a Turkish ship during NATO exercises, killing five Turkish sailors.