You know what? Now that I look at it... the Long Beach is prettier like this. That was one ugly silhouette.
You know what? Now that I look at it... the Long Beach is prettier like this. That was one ugly silhouette.
True but the Long Beach was never mistaken for something else. Maybe they could take that hull and refit her as a "low profile stealth cruiser."
Maybe. But let me relate a true tale: 1966, I'm on a carrier Kitty Hawk) in the Gulf of Tonkin. Long Beach manuvers along side for an unrep. (For non Navy folks, that's UNderway REPlenishment.) We highline them provisions, mail, some new movies, and ammo. Getting ready to separate, a bagpiper steps out on the port bridge wing of the cruiser and, when the connections are severed, begins playing Amazing Grace as she peels away.
All you hear (remember the Long beach is nuclear powered, so there's no combustion or stack noise) as the distance increases between us is the slowly fading sounds of the pipes and her wake noise. Makes me shiver just to remember it.
She wasn't ugly then. I cried... so sue me.