This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
What’s in a Name?
T^olitics continue to be the dominant factor in naming major U.S. Navy ships. The White House recently has renamed lhe aircraft carrier CVN-75 the Harry S Truman and named the CVN-76 the Ronald Reagan. Thus, six of the nine Nimitz (CVN-68)-class aircraft carriers are named for presidents, two members of Congress, and one for an admiral.
Traditionally, U.S. carriers were named for battles and historic ships. This scheme began when the U.S. Navy’s first two large carriers were converted from unfinished battle cruisers t° carriers but retained their original names: the Lexington (CV-2) and the Saratoga (CV-3), being named in honor of Revolutionary War battles. (The first U.S. carrier, the experimental Langley [CV-1], was named for aviation pioneer Samuel R- Langley.)
The Lexington and Saratoga were followed by carriers named Lm historic ships—the Ranger (CV-4), Yorktown (CV-5), Enterprise (CV-6), and Wasp (CV-7). This tradition was broken in 1942, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the press that the Doolittle raid against Japan had come from Shangri- htt. the mythical Asian kingdom of James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon. The Navy promptly assigned the name Shangri-La to a new ship (CV-38) to honor the carrier Hornet (CV-8), the actual base of Doolittle’s bombers. After the Hornet was sunk in action later in 1942, another carrier (CV-12) was given that name. Thus, the first carrier Hornet was honored twice.
With the exception of the CVB-42, however, other war-built carriers had battle and historic ship names. On 8 May 1945, a month after President Roosevelt died in office, the then-build- lng large carrier Coral Sea (CVB-42) was renamed the Franklin
Roosevelt. The full name apparently was used because there was another Roosevelt in the fleet, the engine-repair ship Hermit Roosevelt (ARG-16).
The first carrier built after the war, the CVA-59, was named the Forrestal, to honor the first Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal, who committed suicide shortly after leaving office. The next seven carriers remembered older ships, although the Hitty Hawk (CVA-63) was named mainly to honor the North Carolina location of the Wright brothers’ first airplane flight on '7 November 1903 rather than the war-era aircraft transport of that name. The CVA-67 was named the John F. Kennedy for Mother president who died in office. There already was a destroyer named for his older brother, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. tUD-850), hence the full name was used.
The next carrier essentially changed the scheme for naming aircraft carriers: the Navy named the second nuclear-powered carrier the Nimitz (CVN-68), honoring one of the four fleet admirals. The three other five-star flag officers—Ernest J. King, William D. Leahy, and William F. Halsey—all were honored hy guided-missile frigates, later reclassified as guided-missile Cruisers and destroyers.
There were two other ships named for five-star officers: the Rolaris submarine SSBN-654 George C. Marshall, for the Army chief of staff in World War II who subsequently served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense; and the Air Force’s missile range instrumentation ship General H. H. Arnold U -AGM-9), honoring the World War II commander of the Army
Air Forces. Thus, of nine five-star officers in the U.S. armed forces, seven have been honored by U.S. ships—all except Generals of the Army Omar Bradley and Douglas MacArthur.
The Navy’s naming of the CVN-68 for a person who did not die while in office set a precedent for carrier names: The Nixon White House named the CVN-69 the Dwight D. Eisen-
Named by the Nixon White House, the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower followed the new tradition created by the naming of the CVN-68 for Admiral Chester Nimitz, who had not died in office.
hower. When a Navy spokesman observed that the ship should properly be named simply Eisenhower, the point was made that President Richard Nixon had served under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Carl Vinson (CVN-70) honored the still-living, long-time chairman of the House Armed Service Committee. The Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) was named for the 26th president, who previously had been remembered by a Polaris submarine (SSBN-600). Secretary of the Navy John Lehman hastily named the Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and George Washington (CVN-73) after the forced retirement of Admiral H. G. Rickover in early 1982, to prevent Congress from naming a carrier for the head of the Navy’s nuclear-propulsion program. Both carrier names had been carried by Polaris submarines, the SSBN-602 and SSBN-598, respectively.
The next carriers were named the John C. Stennis (CVN-74), for a strong Navy supporter who served in Congress from 1947 to 1988, and the United States (CVN-75). The first United States was one of the six sailing frigates authorized by Congress in 1794 and the first to be launched; the other ships in the series included the famed Constitution and Constellation. The second United States (CC-6) was a battle cruiser laid down in 1920 but canceled; two of her sister ships were completed as the carriers Lexington and Saratoga. The next ship to be named United States was the first supercarrier (CVA-58), laid down in 1949 and promptly canceled, leading to the highly publicized carrier-versus-bomber controversy. Truman was the president who approved cancellation of the CVA-58.
There is thus a bit of irony in the CVN-75 being renamed to honor Truman. As one wag observed, “President Truman has twice stopped a carrier from being named United States.”
89
Proceedings / June 1995