Description & Facts: Post war: Operation Magic Carpet: Restored to peak condition, Enterprise voyaged to Pearl Harbor, returning to the States with some 1100 servicemen due for discharge, then sailed on to New York, arriving on 17 October 1945. Two weeks later, she proceeded to Boston for installation of additional berthing facilities, then began a series of Operation Magic Carpet voyages to Europe, bringing more than 10000 veterans home in her final service to her country. During one trip to Europe, she was boarded by the British First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Albert Alexander, who presented Enterprise with a British Admiralty Pennant, the most prestigious decoration of the Royal Navy. Enterprise is the only ship outside the Royal Navy to have received this award in the more than 400 years since its creation. The end of the "Big E": Enterprise entered the New York Naval Shipyard on 18 January 1946 for deactivation, and was decommissioned on 17 February 1947. In 1946, she had been scheduled to be handed over to the state of New York as a permanent memorial, but this plan was suspended in 1949. Subsequent attempts were made at preserving the ship as a museum or memorial, but fund-raising efforts failed to raise enough money to buy the vessel from the Navy, and the "Big E" was sold on 1 July 1958 to the Lipsett Corporation of New York City for scrapping at Kearny, New Jersey. A promise was made to save the distinctive tripod mast for inclusion in the Naval Academy's new football stadium, but