Warbird Information Exchange

I have heard nothing about saving Enterprise as a museum ship, and am in contact often with former and current crewmembers. As we previously discussed, when they're done getting all the nuc stuff out of her, her innards are going to be pretty much gone. Also, the best "intel" I have on the subject (a colleague is a PHD and been involved in MUCHO museum stuff) indicates that several of the museum ships are in financial extremis, so adding a new one - even the venerable Enterprise - seems unlikely to me. The last I heard about it (from a current crew member) is that she will be scrapped after the reactors are removed. God Bless her and all who sailed on her.

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"Thou shalt maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground reach up and smite thee."

They also had the island to the Iwo Jima? Did that meet a similar fate?

The Cabot's island that was demolished was not anything like original island. The CVLs had the same type of island that was found on the CVEs. I don't recall if the Cabot's island was either a new one installed for Spanish service, or the original was so heavily modified that it was unrecognizable from the original.

The island from USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2) was taken apart and sent to the Museum of the American GI in College Station, Texas where I think it is still awaiting reassembly and restoration.



You're right. The original WWII island was much shorter and smaller. I've never been able to learn if any of that structure was incorporated into the later version (either in Spanish service or when the ship was first reactivated to train US pilots for Korea) or if they just sliced off what was there and built from scratch. In any case, it's all gone now.

CVN-75 was laid down as the United States (see below, from the CVN-75 page on Wiki). I was in DC at the time, and remember how the whole soap-operaesque thing played out. Or at least how I read about it in the Washington Post and heard about from friends a lot closer to the situation than I was.

The Republican Congress was elected in late 1994. One of the things at the top of their list, apart from the Contract with America, was naming a LOT of stuff after Ronald Reagan. This included what became the Reagan Building in DC (Federal Triangle) and what was once known as "Washington National Airport". They also asked that CVN-76 be named after Reagan.

Clinton's SecNav refused. So the GOP Congress overruled him and tacked a rider directing that the name used for CVN-76 onto an early bill. By both law and tradition the SecNav gets to name ships, so this really ticked him off as not only politically-motivated boosterism but also an infringement upon his office and authority.

Apparently he was also ticked off that the Navy brass in the Pentagon were pretty close to being unrepentantly enthusiastic about hanging Reagan's name on CVN-76. So, with approval from the White House (Clinton was also a big fan of David McCullough's biography of Truman, which was recently out at that point) he decided to exact a measure of payback, and even going an extra mile to add insult (hanging Truman's name on CVN-75) to injury (changing the name of an already-named and laid-down ship).

The "insult" with it being Truman is that it was under Truman that the previous "United States" (CVB-58 - which was going to be the first super-carrier) was cancelled only a few days after having been laid down ... in favor of the USAF's B-36 bomber. An act that sparked the 1949 "Revolt of the Admirals" within the Navy. On top of that, CVN-75 developed something of a rep as a jinxed ship - a couple workers were killed in an accident during her construction and she had some problems during her builders trials - nothing major but enough for the superstition to build. The icing on the cake was how a good number of prominent GOP Congressmen and Senators (including iirc John Warner) deciding to boycott either her Christening or Commissioning because of disputes with the Clinton Administration.

Morale was so bad on the ship that the Navy actually sent the Blue Angles out - in their display jets - to do CarQuals on her in order to help improve things. I think it was the first time the Blues had gone to sea since their stint as an active combat squadron during the Korean War.

Anyways, nothing more than a bit of petty political drama/theater. But I'd assume, like other USN ships, that the name she was laid down under is welded onto her keel. A few decades from now, when she gets broken up, that's something that should probably be saved and make its way to Pensacola.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _Cover.jpg

Wow! Thanks for sharing! I actually kind of doubted my hypothesis about the name change, but I figured I'd just float it out there. (You can kill me now.)

Seriously though, that was an interesting read, I never realized that much political maneuvering went on behind the scenes. I wonder if Reagan knew anything of it? I doubt it.

(I didn't bother quoting your whole passage - just enough to indicate what I was responding to. I hope you don't mind)

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Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

Both Hornet (CV-12) and Lexington (CV-16) were laid down with different names. Hornet was Kearsarge, which is still on the keel, and Lexington was supposed to be Cabot. I'm not sure if that is on her keel. Considering the Navy's stigma and superstition on changing names, I'd say the Hornet was exceptionally lucky, as it was the only Essex-class carrier that was never hit by a kamikaze (not including the ones that arrived late-war), and it later became the recovery ship for Apollo 11. Lady Lex went on to be the longest serving carrier in history at the time of its decommissioning (which was eclipsed by Enterprise), and both survive today.