Posted on 08/13/2015 9:46:47 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
Watch the USS Theodore Roosevelt navigate through the new Suez Canal with all of its fighter jets on deck. It’s super cool because the aircraft carrier is so big and the water of the canal is so calm that it feels like the Earth is moving around the land formation that is the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
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What’s the speed limit?
New Suez Canal????
Newly widened. Previously I don’t think a carrier would fit.
Wonder what kind of security prep was done. It seems like the carrier was a sitting duck in the canal.
Scuttlebutt says US Navy ships go directly from Condition V (pierside) to Condition III (wartime steaming), with few geographic exceptions.
Young sailors are being told to never expect Condition IV (peacetime steaming) for their entire careers.
16 km / hr. for ordinary vessels (should be 8.6 knots)
Actually the Suez Canal was used by carriers up till the Six Day War thereabouts and then suspended until 1981. USS America CV 66 was the first carrier to transit the Suez again in 1981. Technically before that we really didn't have to have it because we had sufficient number of carriers. However all east coast carriers as far as I know or rather the super carriers from Forestall on made the transit around the Horn to get to S.E. Asia during Nam after the six day war.
Sure hope there was some serious night vision gear all around the bridge and deck as well once night fell. M-2 .50 cal locked and loaded, I am sure, the whole way.
Were you on board when it did?
No my ride ended in October 1980. But I do know for a fact it did the Suez transit in 1981. America came out of a one year overhaul in October of 1980 a few days after I got out.
We did almost go to the Indian Ocean in 1979 though when the hostage crisis started. The ships went on alert for about 12 hours. As a matter of fact they took the brow down. We were a few days away from going from the base upstream to the shipyards for a year when the hostages were taken. It took about 12 hours for the Pentagon to decide which carrier was going. I think the JFK drew the short straw and we went into overhaul. It would have meant a trip around the Horn to get there too.
Cool, thanks for the info and thanks for serving Sir.
Don’t you the Cape of Good Hope not Cape Horn?
Horn is South America Good Hope is Africa. Going to Asia it would be faster to go around Africa than cross the whole Pacific.
That is correct. In 1979/1980 the Ike and our task group had to traverse the “horn” to go from Norfolk to Iran.
Actually you are correct, Africa is “hope” America is the “horn”. Very rough waters there.
But yeah your right it would be Good Hope and the quickest. I was looking at some of my ships history her first Nam deployment she went via Hope but stopped off in RIO first I guess that's what had me assuming it was The Horn.
I was in the South Atlantic one time in 1977 for a three month South Atlantic deployment to Salvador, Brazil, {Salvador the city} and down to Rio.
I’m not certain why the carriers stopped using Suez. We were on decent terms with Egypt we even had Liberty there in 79 I think it was. The riff with Isreal was short lived. Intrepid was the last carrier before the Six Day War to go through. I haven’t looked to see if a Forestall class and later went through it earlier or not. If they could the Kitty Hawks should have been able to also. It could have been a Cold War issue or construction for super tankers accommodations had began about that time.
It was determined to be vulnerable to land born attack.
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