A Tale of Three Carriers

[thedrifter]

08-08-2003

From the Editor:

A Tale of Three Carriers

By Ed Offley

Three weeks ago, thousands of U.S. Navy sailors marched up the gangway in Newport News, Va., and brought their ship, the USS Ronald Reagan, to life. On Thursday this week, thousands of sailors marched down the gangway in San Diego, Calif., bringing their service life of their ship, the USS Constellation, to an end.

Around that same time, the Navy announced that the decommissioned carrier USS Midway will be donated to a nonprofit organization in San Diego to be used as a naval museum.

What was revealing about those two ceremonies three thousand miles apart (and the museum announcement from Washington) is how much they confirm the enduring role of the aircraft carrier in both the Navy?s 20th century history and in the military operations of a new century that opened in blood and fire nearly two years ago.

For a time in the 1980s and early 1990s, critics of the giant flattops derided them as grossly expensive anachronisms that consumed billions of construction dollars and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual operating funds, merely to exist. With the long twilight confrontation between the United States and Soviet Union defining national security policies, many observers dismissed the carrier fleet as limited to a peripheral and declining relevance. The role of the ?blue water? Navy dominated by the carrier fleet seemed less and less important.

Yet a funny thing happened along the way: The Cold War ended, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and the world saw ? not peace ? but an outbreak of crises, emergencies and small-scale conflicts across the planet. With the number of fixed airbases and established Army posts overseas steadily shrinking, the aircraft carrier suddenly enjoyed a renewed relevance in military planning.

Look beyond the surface appearances of the three ships ? the long, lean hull capped by the massive flight deck and island superstructure ? and the answer for why these behemoths retain their military value becomes clear. Years before the Midway joined the fleet on Sept. 10, 1945, and years after the Reagan is slated to leave active service sometime in the 2050s, the United States needs a mobile strike platform capable of demonstrating political resolve and carrying out aerial combat operations from the sea.

With the long U.S. military presence in Europe, South Korea and other places suddenly under review and subject to debate, Pentagon planners must regard the aircraft carrier fleet as an element of stability in a world of rapidly changing assumptions.

At the same time, the Navy has ensured that the carriers have adapted to new technology and modified their operational strategy to meet new challenges.

In its 42-year career from 1945 until 1992 (including a four-year decommissioning in the late 1960s), the Midway typified the first ?revolution in military affairs? of carrier aviation. Her first aircraft were straight-wing prop-driven fighters, and on her final deployment, she operated the Navy?s newest F/A-18C jets. The angled flight deck, which revolutionized carrier operations by enabling the ship to simultaneously launch and recover aircraft, was a mid-career enhancement.

Similarly, the Constellation, which entered service in 1961, served as a steel platform on which the Navy continuously adopted new weapons and systems to maintain its superiority at sea. During its 42-year career, navigators shifted from hand-held sextants to global positioning satellites, and its air wing became one of the first to launch the revolution in precision-guided munitions in North Vietnam in 1970.

The Reagan is the ninth carrier of its class. But entering service 28 years after the USS Nimitz joined the fleet in 1975, the ship enjoys an array of design improvements and new equipment that did not exist when the Nimitz first went to sea, particularly in advanced computer networks and fiber-optic communications lines.

Even more significant, the Navy in 1994 and 2002 demonstrated the flexibility of the carrier as a warfare platform by using it to transport Army Special Operations units to Haiti and Afghainstan, respectively.

The histories of both the Midway and Constellation chronicle most of the major military campaigns of the late 20th century up until today. From the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean in the 1950s to the U.S. West Coast and Western Pacific in the three decades after that, the Midway saw combat in Vietnam, endured nine-month deployments off Iran, and fought in Operation Desert Storm. The Constellation, too, served in the Tonkin Gulf and Arabian Sea, and fired some of the opening shots in Operation Iraqi Freedom this spring on her 21st, and last, deployment.

The Reagan will be about one-third through its service life in 2022, when the U.S. Navy celebrates the 100th anniversary of its first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley. The Reagan will be about three-fourths of the way through its service life in 2045, when the Navy commemorates the centennial of the USS Midway?s commissioning.

With a little bit of luck and good maintenance, long after most of us who served on the Midway or Constellation have passed, the ever-younger crew of the USS Ronald Reagan in 2061 ? deployed far away in hostile waters ? may enjoy toasting the 100th anniversary of ?America?s Flagship,? the USS Constellation.

Ed Offley, Editor of DefenseWatch deployed to Vietnam on the USS Midway in 1971. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.

Midway
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/...41-midway.html

Constellation
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/...tellation.html

Reagan
http://www.reagan.navy.mil/building.htm

USS Langley.
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/...1-langley.html

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c...59488241763205


Sempers,

Roger

[Jerry D]

I wonder if we can get something small like a Dingy or a coal tender named after William Jefferson Clinton so he won't get some big Carrier or Frigate named after himself "the world famous Slick Willy draft dodger and Jane Fonda Admirer"