Posted on 05/05/2015 7:11:56 PM PDT by artichokegrower
The world’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier was moved into its birthplace dry dock at Huntington Ingalls’ Newport News Shipbuilding this weekend as part of the ongoing inactivation process.
The aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise (CVN 65), was moved Saturday from Newport News’ Pier 2 to Dry Dock 11, where the super carrier was constructed over 60 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at gcaptain.com ...
We’ll just call the Ford the Enterprise.
“ongoing inactivation”????
Apparently English is a dying language...
We didn't all die.
/johnny
Yeah, definitely feeling old.
The BFF of carriers.
Wow. I do feel, as many sailors do, a sentimentality towards ships, and even though I never served on her, the Enterprise means something more, and not some schmaltzy Star Trek sentimentality.
I definitely feel a tie through her back to CV-6. CVN-65 was a worthy successor.
Granted, some ships suck, some you don’t want to be on at a given time, but if you lived on it, sailed on it, or fought on it, it does generate a tie to you.
Even if you sometimes hated being on it...:)
A decommissioned ship is a sad thing really. With no crew it is just a floating ornate metal box, a ghost town with no life.
I just watched the video...I found it depressing.
Sigh.
I once saw a book in a bookstore and paged through it...it was a book of photographs of US Navy ships that were being broken up for scrap.
It saddened me in a way that I am sure many people would find puzzling, but there was one picture that really hit me in a way that kind of made me understand why I felt that way.
It was a WWII heavy cruiser, and the entire bow had been sawed right off from about the second current forward.
Looking at it was like looking at the face of a woman that has been disfigured in some way, almost as if it would look if her nose was simply removed from her face, and a gaping hole was left there.
I have never been able to find that book, and I have looked.
I feel that an inanimate object like a warship does acquire something from the thousands of sailors who pass through her. But I also know that special “something” doesn’t exist in HER, per se, but does palpably exist in the minds and hearts of those sailors.
So, it does exist.
I never saw her but I still miss the USS South Dakota. BB 57.
There was no use for her except as a museum piece and we have plenty of those.
I still think that it should be the USS Pennsylvania at Pearl instead of the Missouri
The name has been designated the future Gerald R. Ford-class carrier CVN-80 to be laid down in 2018.
Ford / Kennedy / Enterprise replacing Enterprise / Nimitz / Eisenhower.
What!?
The Original Cost to Build was $451.3 million!
Defueling and inactiviation costs 65% MORE than building her!
I find it interesting that there are several of that class that are preserved as museums...the South Dakota had a far more interesting history than the USS Massachusetts, which I have had to opportunity to visit a few times.
That is the cost of working around 50 years of radioactivity buildup on all of those pumps, pipes, and valves in eight reactor plants. It must all be safely removed and put in secure storage before the other parts of the ship can be broken down for scrap.
Actually, in Star Trek, this version was held in high esteem as one of of many ships carrying the name with pride. There were scenes in several episodes where the models of all the prior Enterprise ship models (some real, some imaginary) can be seen in Captain's board room.
It was a tribute to her by Roddenberry, who was a WWII Army Air Corps pilot with 89 combat missions.
Even if you sometimes hated being on it...:)
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
The TWO best ships one ever served on was the one they were going to and the one they just left....
I liked my ‘Gators’ just fine during and after....
I'm surprised that Obama didn't sell her to the Chinese to save the bucks. (That's his mindset.)
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