The USS Ger­ald R. Ford, the world largest air­craft car­ri­er, re­turned home to Vir­ginia on Sat­ur­day af­ter an 11-month de­ploy­ment, the longest since the Viet­nam War, that saw it sup­port the U.S. war with Iran and the cap­ture of Nicolás Maduro when he was Venezuela’s pres­i­dent.

The most ad­vanced U.S. war­ship and two ac­com­pa­ny­ing de­stroy­ers docked at Naval Sta­tion Nor­folk with about 5,000 sailors wait­ing to see their fam­i­lies for the first time since June. Be­sides com­bat op­er­a­tions and tra­vers­ing con­ti­nents, the sailors aboard the car­ri­er faced a non­com­bat-re­lat­ed fire that left hun­dreds with­out places to sleep and forced lengthy re­pairs on the Greek is­land of Crete.

De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth was on hand for the ar­rival of the war­ships, which in­clud­ed the de­stroy­er USS Bain­bridge.