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10 - E=mc2(Part 2)
Proving the Big E's Worth
Despite a controversial start, the Enterprise was commissioned on November 25, 1961, under command of Captain
Vincent dePoix. Her flight deck was 1,123 feet in length and covered an area of 4.5 acres, resulting in her being known
-- like her World War II predecessor -- as the "Big E." Her square island superstructure and beehive-shaped radar dome
gave the Enterprise a unique, one-of-a-kind profile. Her nominal aircraft compliment was 84 aircraft, including
(later in her career) F-14 Tomcat and F/A-18 Hornet fighters, A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair attack bombers, and a variety
of other aircraft for early warning, electronic countermeasures, and antisubmarine duties.
Although, as mentioned earlier, Admiral Rickover was not successful in his attempts to put a submariner on board the
Enterprise as her first captain, he did have a hand in requiring that Captain dePoix receive some specialized
training. Admiral Rickover demanded that the commanding officer of every nuclear-powered vessel qualify under the
standards of the Atomic Energy Commission as a "chief nuclear reactor operator." This ensured that the commanding
officer could relate to problems that other officers on the ship might experience with the nuclear power plants. In
this way, when someone came to the captain with a problem, they came for advice and not just to tell him that something
was wrong. This had a tremendous impact on the confidence of the ship's entire crew, especially during the early days
of nuclear propulsion. On February 20, 1962, while on her shakedown cruise, the Enterprise
played a role in the early history of space exploration by serving as
a tracking ship for the United States' first orbital space mission,
John Glenn's 3-orbit flight in Friendship
7. This early service provided a symbolic link between the ladies
of the sea and the ladies of space which followed in future years.
More controversy followed the "Big E" in planning for a July 4, 1962 visit to Boston. Some top Navy and Atomic Energy
Commission officials were reluctant to allow the visit because of over-cautiousness about the unproven safety of nuclear
power. This escalated to the point that the Atomic Energy Commission, Admiral Rickover, and the Secretary of the Navy
all became embroiled in a heated debate that went on over a period of days. Vice Admiral Lawson Ramage, Assistant Chief
of Naval Operations, interceded in favor of the Enterprise's visit to Boston pointing out that:
Politically we couldn't possibly not send her in there because Mr. [John] McCormick [Congressman from Massachusetts] has got all the radio and TV and news media all alerted to this thing and the city all alerted to it. So if we turned around and said it was unsafe to send the Enterprise into Boston it would be all over the papers and if this occurred then what chance do we have of ever deploying the Enterprise to the Mediterranean. All these countries in Europe would say this is a real bomb and we don't want it over here. And you might just as well take this brand new ship that has never been deployed and put it in the back channels and forget about it.62
The Enterprise sailed on her first operational deployment on August 3, 1962 to join the Sixth Fleet in the
Mediterranean. She was recalled to the Caribbean in October 1962 to participate in the blockade of Cuba during the
stand-off between President John Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev over the deployment of missiles in Cuba.
She returned to her Mediterranean patrol in February 1963.
Some years after the incident, Vice Admiral Gerald Miller, at the time commanding officer of the USS Franklin D.
Roosevelt, relished in telling the story of how his Korean War-era carrier beat the shiny new Enterprise
during a war game exercise near the Greek islands. The two carriers were pitted against each other in the Ionian Sea
in the middle of the night with instructions to discover the location of the other ship and send planes to make a mock
bombing run on the opponent. The experienced Captain Miller realized that by using his ship's radar to search for the
Enterprise and to locate her aircraft would mean also emitting radar waves which would act as beacons back to
his ship. Instead, he pulled the Roosevelt as close as he dared next to one of the Greek islands so that she
would blend in with the island on the Enterprise's radar, and waited for the "Big E" to give away her own
location.
When the exercise started, I launched our search aircraft, I launched them right alongside this island and I turned into it. I can still remember we were about 5,000 yards off this island.... We went around the south tip of that island, hugged it, went up on the east side of the island to a cove that was there, and I backed into the cove and we just sat there.... I never opened up with anything for the Enterprise to detect. And he's not going to be able to pick me up with his radar because I merged with this island.... Well, of course, I have the search aircraft out looking and they're going to report back. Once they find the Enterprise, I'm going to have to come out of the cove and launch my strike group. So, sure as hell, about two hours after the exercise starts, our guys pick up the "E" in the Ionian [Sea], pick up the Enterprise. We come out of the cove, steam around, launch the strike aircraft.... [Later,] our airplanes started coming back, as they were supposed to. They knew where we were, they landed on board.... Along about noon of that day, a couple of A-4s or something came over from the Enterprise and that was the end of the exercise. They finally found us, after the whole thing was over.... You can imagine what an impact that had on the crew. We were the underdog and we were playing the game and so forth. And one of the best messages I ever got was from Michaelis [captain of the Enterprise] who is a great gentleman and a wonderful guy. He said, "If you're going to be had, being had by a pro is the only way!" Little things like that are what make the Navy. The crew enjoyed it.63
After the Enterprise was operational for a couple of years, the Navy decided that her capabilities should be
showcased in some unusual or spectacular way. This led to the formation of Task Force One, which consisted of the
Enterprise, the nuclear-powered cruiser USS Long Beach, and the nuclear-powered frigate USS
Bainbridge. On July 31, 1964, these three ships departed from Gibraltar on a 30,656-mile, unreplenished
circumnavigation of the globe. Known as "Operation Sea Orbit," the cruise ended on October 3, 1964, when Task Force
One arrived at Charleston, South Carolina. The Enterprise then underwent her first overhaul and nuclear refueling
from November 1964 to June 1965 at the Newport News shipyards.
On August 2, 1964, while the Enterprise was underway on "Operation Sea Orbit," the American destroyer USS
Maddox, operating in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam, was attacked by North Vietnamese patrol
boats. Three days later, the carrier USS Ticonderoga made the first naval strikes against North Vietnam,
signaling the beginning of what was to become the Vietnam War.
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| Copyright ©
1996-2008 Arnold E.
van Beverhoudt, Jr.
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