In addition to the Mount Whitney, U.S. ships under Odyssey Dawn included the Kearsarge and Ponce and the guided-missile destroyers USS Stout and USS Barry, along with logistics and refueling ships.

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Shoffner died in 2006, and Lewis bought the plane from the Shoffner family the next year and spent millions more to dispatch her and a handful of escorts on a re-enactment of her fateful trip, launching from New Jersey's Teterboro Airport, circling the Statue of Liberty and heading up the Eastern Seaboard, over Greenland and on to England, with refueling stops along the way.

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Convenient refueling accessibility, along with vehicle lifecycle economy and choice, are prerequisite for success.

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