Riding at anchor six miles off Egypt's war-battered Port Said was a strange sightthe 18,300-ton U.S. helicopter carrier Iwo Jima. For nearly two decades, the warships of America's Sixth Fleet have been regarded by Egypt as unfriendly and unwanted. But now the U.S. Navy is playing a major role in helping the Egyptians clear the Suez Canal of the explosives and wreckage that have blocked it since the Six-Day War of 1967. TIME's Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn visited the Iwo Jima last week. His report:
Even before the carrier anchored, U.S. Navy RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters had begun the clearing operation....