More than 7,000 sailors and Marines will deploy next week when the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group leaves San Diego for the western Pacific.
The commander of the Navy's Third Fleet says the Nimitz will leave San Diego on January 24th to take over in the Pacific for the USS Kitty Hawk while it undergoes scheduled maintenance in Yokosuka, Japan.
Among the ships deploying with the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton and the destroyers USS John Paul Jones, USS Higgins and the USS Chafee.
The Nimitz carrier group returned in September 2007 from a six-month deployment in the Persian Gulf.
