'Big E' Will Soon be the Oldest
The U.S. Navy’s first nuclear-propelled aircraft carrier - the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) - will soon be the Navy’s oldest “flattop.” Today the oil-burning carrier Kitty Hawk (CV 63) is the oldest. Both ships were completed in 1961. The Kitty Hawk is based in Yokosuka, Japan; the only American carrier based overseas. She will be retired next year, and be replaced in Japan by the nuclear-propelled George Washington (CVN 73).
The Navy has recently awarded contracts for more than $40 million to the Northrop Grumman Corp. - and to the firm’s yard at Newport News, Virginia - to continue maintenance of the Enterprise and for inactivation planning. The “Big E” is schedule to be decommissioned in 2013, having been in service for 52 years - a record for U.S. aircraft carriers.
Decommissioning of the Enterprise will be the most complex effort yet undertaken to remove a nuclear ship from service. Previously the Navy has decommissioned nine nuclear cruisers (each with two reactors) and more than 100 nuclear submarines (all with one reactor except for a radar picket craft, the USS Triton [SSRN 586], which had a two-reactor plant).
The Enterprise has an eight-reactor nuclear plant. The cost of removing those reactors and providing burial for them, “cleaning” portions of the ship’s massive engineering spaces, and other decommissioning procedures are expected to cost several hundred million dollars.
With the Enterprise’s decommissioning, the number of large carriers in the Navy will drop to ten. However, the Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is expected to be completed in 2015, raising the number of carriers back to the authorized 11-ship force.
-- Norman Polmar
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The Enterprise should be retired and Converted to a Museum ship. The CVN-65 is a piece of Maritime and Aviation History. How many of America's Great Pilots both those Military and now civilian landed and took off from teh Flight Deck of that Massive Ship.
If as Americans let our Government reduce one of the most well known and most recognisable Nuclear Carriers in the world to Scrap metal then we have failed as a people to preserve our own Culture and History. Other people of the other nations of the Earth will find ridicule that we do not honor our own History and Greatness. We as people of the United States should respect and be proud and recognizant of our technological accomplishments.
The CVN-65 replaced another and earlier Aircraft Carrier with the same name .The Role that that ship played in America's and in the world's role to defend the Free world from the Axis Threat has bordeline been forgotten by tghe public. The earlier Enterprise should never have been scrapped.
People of the years that ship was in existence and all the people who would have benefitted from touring that ship to ponder their careers,and own abilities can no longer be influenced positively by a creation that to us was the seagoing "Valley Forge" of our time.
The mistake of scrapping another historic ship should not be repeated. If we don't respect, Honor, Remember and keep in the public eye our own Great Ships and Military then no one, both individual and as a Group whole Governments will have any respect for the United States and it's own History and place in the world both past and present.
Posted by: Dave at November 19, 2008 08:50 PM