A new aircraft carrier, CVA(N)-65, was commissioned in November 1961 as the USS Enterprise, the eighth U.S. Navy ship to bear that name. She was originally designed for a 25-year service life, but the builder’s high quality of construction and the crews’ continuing dedication to upkeep and maintenance have extended her operational life to 50 years in the active Fleet. Engaged in nearly every major combat operation in the past five decades, as she marks her Golden Anniversary this year, the Big E becomes both the oldest operational warship in the Navy and the first U.S. aircraft carrier to reach that half-century milestone.
But the Enterprise’s fame goes well beyond her longevity. Not only was she was the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in history; of greater significance, the Enterprise also was the first nuclear-powered ship to engage in combat. A message from Rear Admiral Henry Miller, the embarked carrier division commander, to Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze recognized that event: “I have the distinct honor and pleasure to announce to you that on the Second Day of December 1965 at 0720H, the first nuclear-powered task group of your Pacific Fleet and the United States Navy engaged the enemy in Vietnam.”
It was a “warm grey morning” when, at 0700, the Enterprise commenced air operations. “The carrier’s bridge and every available spot on the superstructure were covered with newsmen and military observers watching this unprecedented first in the history of war at sea: the use of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in combat operations. With the Enterprise’s entrance into combat, a new era was opened before the world.” So reported a wire-service dispatch covering the occasion.
The Enterprise and Air Wing (CVW) 9 completed every mission on that daily flight schedule. CVW-9 flew 125 strike sorties on that date, unloading 167 tons of bombs and rockets on the enemy. From that day forward, the Enterprise embarked on an operational career that not only set performance records among the carriers conducting combat operations in the Vietnam War, she also established the persuasive justification for the incorporation of nuclear power in all future U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. In spite of being a relatively new ship, fighting in a high-tempo war for the first time, the Enterprise won the Battle Efficiency “E” award for being the best carrier in the Pacific Fleet for 1965.
The Genesis
It all began in the 1950s, when Captain Hyman G. Rickover and his Naval Reactors group in the Navy Department produced a pressurized water reactor that was sufficiently powerful and safe enough to install in a U.S. submarine. That became the propulsion plant for the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the world’s first nuclear-powered vessel and true submersible. In 1954, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson advised the Atomic Energy Commission that “It is now timely and highly desirable from the military standpoint to undertake active development of a practical working prototype of a reactor . . . for the propulsion of large ships.”
With the success of the Nautilus, Admiral Arleigh Burke, the visionary and practical Chief of Naval Operations who led the U.S. Navy for six critical years during the Cold War, had seen the potential for nuclear power in surface ships, especially aircraft carriers. As a result, the Navy’s Fiscal Year 1958 budget included a request for the procurement of nuclear reactors for an aircraft carrier. The proposal squeaked through the House Appropriations Committee on an eight-to-eight vote.
The carrier was ordered from Newport News Shipbuilding Company in November 1957. With a full-load displacement of 89,000 tons, the 1,123-foot-long Enterprise would be the largest ship yet built. She was based on the improved Forrestal-class aircraft carriers in design, but was about 9,000 tons larger to accommodate the additional space needed for eight reactors and radiation shielding.
From a propulsion-plant standpoint, the Enterprise was a straightforward nuclear conversion of the Forrestal conventional engineering design. Eight reactors replaced the eight oil-fired boilers to provide steam to four main engines and four screws. Each reactor could develop about 35,000-shaft horsepower, providing the ship with a total propulsion power of about 280,000-shaft horsepower.
First Refueling
In 1964, after completing Operation Sea Orbit, an around-the-world “show-the-flag” cruise with the nuclear-powered cruiser Long Beach (CGN-9) and the nuclear frigate Bainbridge (DLGN-25)—the first all-nuclear battle formation in history—the Enterprise spent a year in the shipyard refueling. The first reactor cores were short-lived. Those installed in more recently constructed carriers have much longer lives and require refueling only once in the life of the ship.
The Enterprise was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and halfway through her post-refueling shakedown period when the situation in South Vietnam began to unravel. On receiving orders to Southeast Asia, that training was quickly terminated with a successful operational-readiness inspection, and in all haste the carrier was dispatched to the Tonkin Gulf to reinforce the Seventh Fleet. En route, her air wing was flown aboard, consisting of two squadrons of F-4B Phantom fighters and four squadrons of A-4C Skyhawk attack planes—nearly 80 strike aircraft—along with squadrons of reconnaissance aircraft, electronic-warfare planes, tankers, and rescue helicopters. All of it was tailor-made for the war in Vietnam.
To the notable credit of Rickover’s design engineers, everything worked properly on board the Enterprise from the day the first reactor was scheduled to go critical. In her early operations in Vietnam, the ship demonstrated the unique military capabilities of a nuclear-powered carrier. The Enterprise raced halfway around the world from her homeport in Norfolk, Virginia, passing south of Africa and across the Indian Ocean, maintaining an average speed of more than 25 knots and conducting air operations en route without going into port or replenishing at sea until reaching the Pacific.
After one day’s stop at Subic Bay in the Philippines to replace some non-flyable aircraft, the Enterprise went into combat on 2 December 1965, with no further warm-up or preparation. By her third day of operations, the air wing flew 175 combat sorties, the highest daily number achieved to that point in the war in Vietnam.
High-Performance
The Navy was enthusiastic over the performance of the Enterprise, citing the advantages of a nuclear carrier as the capability to proceed at high speed to any place on the high seas without pausing to replenish or refuel. She could also conduct defensive air operations en route to her objective area and launch her initial offensive strikes during the approach to the target, more than 600 miles out. Then she could continue around-the-clock air operations while closing the target area. And she would have enough fuel and ammunition in her capacious magazines and aviation fuel tanks to remain on station for two weeks without refueling or rearming, until the situation was resolved or underway replenishment groups arrived to deliver jet fuel and fill the magazines to rearm the ship’s strike aircraft.
The large amount of uranium fuel packed into the ships’ reactor cores provides the unrefueled CVN’s range. Space in the hull that would normally be reserved for the ship’s fuel oil makes it possible to carry larger stocks of aviation fuel and ammunition. Nuclear power epitomizes the logistical independence of the carrier.
Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are proving to have very long lives. Since 1961, the Enterprise has been actively operating in the Fleet, having recently been deployed to the Indian Ocean for combat in support of the war in Afghanistan. Her weapon systems have remained modern over her 50-year life span, because her military capabilities reside in her embarked aircraft. In a sense, an aircraft carrier’s performance can be modernized in as little time as it takes to fly one aircraft off and a newer model aboard.
‘A Real Hero’s Welcome’
The Enterprise returned from the first deployment in Vietnam to San Francisco in late June of 1966 to a real hero’s welcome. At that time, the ship had an impressive cachet. She was the largest ship in the world, the first and only nuclear carrier, and her eight reactors increased her top speed. Then, too, at that time the majority of the American people supported the war. The Bay area had declared the day of return “Enterprise Day,” and any sailor with an Enterprise shoulder patch could get a free drink in most of the bars in San Francisco.
There was a feeling of outright patriotism in the atmosphere. All three of the Bay area’s main newspapers devoted their full front pages on 21 June 1966 to the Enterprise’s return from Vietnam to her new homeport, Naval Air Station Alameda. The country was looking for a tangible hero to fuss over, and for the time being the Enterprise was IT.
The San Francisco Chronicle, with a full front-page picture of the Enterprise and one-inch headlines, went on to say, “Enterprise homecoming snarls Marin County traffic” . . . “2,000 persons line the sidewalks of the Golden Gate Bridge to watch the homecoming of the Enterprise” . . . “traffic on Highway 101 was backed up from the Bridge to San Rafael” . . . “crowds gathered wherever they could get a view of the Bay” . . . “all of the bridge’s parking lots were jammed and the overflow spilled into the Presidio and they too were quickly filled” . . . “despite the traffic there were amazingly no reports of accidents. They were moving too slow for anything to happen.”
The Oakland Tribune summed it up: “The Enterprise, the largest warship in the world, had done her job. It is only fitting that her welcome should be the biggest in the Bay area since that accorded the battered cruiser San Francisco during World War II.” The homecoming was later covered in Life magazine, which had a picture of the Enterprise on its cover. The article also compared the attitude of the crowds as reminiscent of World War II, welcoming a heroic ship of the U.S. Navy home from the war.
Tallying the Second Combat Tour
In June 1967 the ship completed her second combat tour in Vietnam and again headed for Alameda. The Enterprise had been 230 days out of homeport and served five uninterrupted 30-day stints at Yankee Station, flying a total of more than 14,000 sorties from her flight deck—of which 11,470 were combat sorties—and delivering a total of 14,023 tons of ordnance. That amounted to 114 tons of TNT per day against a well-defended enemy.
As in all combat tours, the Enterprise and her air wing paid a price, losing 20 aircraft and 18 air crewmen to hostile fire. The finest recognition of the ship and her embarked air wing was the award of the coveted Navy Unit Commendation for the 1965–67 combat deployments to Vietnam.
Although the Enterprise’s early Fleet operations included the circumnavigation of the globe and successful combat tours, follow-on nuclear-powered carriers did not immediately appear. The stumbling block was Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who cited the increased costs of nuclear power in the carrier and was unable or unwilling to quantify the improved operational advantages that resulted. In his view, the nuclear-powered carrier was not “cost-effective.” Consequently, the next two carriers, the USS America (CV-66) and John F. Kennedy (CV-67), in the FY 1961 and ’63 programs, respectively, were conventionally powered improved versions of the basic Forrestal design.
Selling McNamara
Then, in the fall of 1966, Rickover invited McNamara and members of his staff, accompanied by Secretary of the Navy Nitze and Admiral David L. McDonald, the Chief of Naval Operations, and selected members of his staff, to Bettis Laboratory in Pittsburgh for a briefing on a surface-ship reactor that would be rated at 70,000-shaft horsepower. Secretary McNamara was impressed by the presentation, and on his return to Washington he wrote to Secretary Nitze, asking if two of those reactors could power an aircraft carrier, and if so, would the Navy be interested in such a design.
The initial reaction in the Pentagon was only lukewarm. At that point, Admiral Rickover personally injected himself into the deliberations, and after a quick but intense consultation with his staff affirmed that he could boost the output of his large surface-ship reactor from 70,000- to 90,000-shaft horsepower.
Dr. Harold Brown, director of the Department of Defense Design, Development, Research, and Engineering (DDR&E) Directorate and later Secretary of Defense, observed:
Bob [Secretary McNamara] has been so inflexible on opposing nuclear power for carriers in spite of the technical advances by the industry and the remarkable performance of nuclear ships in combat at sea, that he can’t change his policy without an overriding reason. The two-reactor carrier now gives him that excuse.
The demonstrations in the Bay area of support for our sailors and carriers, our Navy, and our nation, inspired by the spectacle of the world’s largest ship exploiting America’s advanced technology and competence in nuclear power, and then the debates in Congress favoring the naval appropriations for nuclear carriers, were early evidence of the powerful legacy of the Enterprise. That legacy has manifested itself in the construction of 11 large-deck carriers to create today’s all-nuclear carrier force as the main battle line of the U.S. Fleet. The Big E’s compelling motto, “Ready on Arrival,” has deservedly evolved into today’s “We Are Legend!”