USS Enterprise: The aircraft carrier that changed everything turns 50

Daily Press ^ | September 24, 2010 | Peter Frost

[sukhoi-30mki]

USS Enterprise: The aircraft carrier that changed everything turns 50

Task Force One, headed by the USS Enterprise, left Gibraltar on a trip around the world. The task force was comprise of three nuclear-powered surface vessels. Crewmen of the Enterprise formed the famous Einstein equation, E=mc2, on the flight deck symbolizing the development of nuclear propulsion. (Daily Press archive, Daily Press / September 22, 2010)

By Peter Frost, pfrost@dailypress.com | 247-4744

11:28 AM EDT, September 24, 2010

NEWPORT NEWS — Fifty years ago today the largest dry dock in the world filled with water from the James River, setting afloat the world's largest ship and first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

At 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 24, 1960, Mrs. William B. Franke, wife of the Secretary of the Navy, smashed a bottle of champagne across the bow of the USS Enterprise as the rushing seawater freed it from its last keel block.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Arleigh A. Burke told some 12,000 guests at the christening ceremony that the 1,101-foot Big E was "the largest ship ever built of any kind by any nation," containing the most powerful nuclear power plant ever constructed anywhere in the world.

Yard president William E. Blewett Jr. paid tribute to the thousands of workers who "labored with imagination, skill and pride to build a vessel worthy of its name."

Today, the Enterprise sits across the harbor at Naval Station Norfolk, preparing for two final, six-month deployments before it's decommissioned in 2012.

Neither the Navy nor the ship's crew has planned an event to celebrate the milestone, preferring to wait until Nov. 25, 2011, the 50th anniversary of the Enterprise becoming an official member of the fleet.

Nonetheless, when the one-of-a-kind supercarrier was launched that Saturday five decades ago, it

[xvq2er]

I beg to differ. John Warner was Secnav; he was never the CNO.

[tanknetter]

I beg to differ. John Warner was Secnav; he was never the CNO.

My bad, I stand corrected. Thanks!

[Al B.]

You'd think they'd mention ships of the Yorktown & Essex class before Forrestal.

Or the first carrier built from the keel up, Ranger (CV-4), launched in 1933. Carrier construction in the '30s (Ranger, Yorktown, Enterprise, Hornet) kept my grandfather working during the depression. A stimulus program that worked....