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In article ,
"HEMI-Powered" wrote:

Bouler added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

A tribute to Einstein?;-)

I would think so given that the aircraft carrier is a CVN (CV is the
designation for an aircraft carrier, as you probably know, and N is for
nuclear. The other two vessels appear to also be nukes.

The other two ships are USS LONG BEACH (CGN-9) and USS BAINBRIDGE
(DLGN-25) which was later reclassified as a cruiser with hull number
CGN-25.

These three nuclear-powered ships made a round-the-world cruise without
any logistic support (fuel, food, water, spare parts, etc.) None!

The purpose of the cruise was to demonstrate the tremendous mobility and
consequent global striking power of nuclear-powered surface warships.
This is the reason they spelled out "E=mc2" with a formation of the crew
on the flight deck of the Enterprise.

For the cruise, they had the designation Task Force 1.

This was in the early 1960s. The three ships were all built just before
then:
-Enterprise at Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Newport
News, VA
-Long Beach at Bethlehem Steel Fore River Shipyard, Quincy
Massachusetts; the shipyard was later purchased by Electric Boat and
then by general Dynamics
-Bainbridge I think was built at New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New
Jersey, where USS TRUXTUN (DLGN/CGN-35), the next of the DLGNs was built.

ENTERPRISE, LONG BEACH and BAINBRIDGE were the first three
nuclear-powered surface ships of the U. S. Navy. Later, after much
argument and promotion by Admiral Rickover against the opposition of
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, new nuclear-powered warships were
built: The NIMITZ-class carriers, and the CALIFORNIA and VIRGINIA-class
cruisers.

These ships repeatedly demonstrated the advertised mobility and reach of
nuclear-powered ships.

During the Vietnam War, ENTERPRISE steamed from Norfolk, Virginia to the
Gulf of Tonkin in 1966, at high speed, without stopping. On the day she
arrived, she flew more air strikes than any aircraft carrier up to that
time, and then remained on the line for at least 30 days before going
into port, flying hundreds of sorties daily against targets in Vietnam.

At the time of the seizure of the American Embassy in Teheran, the
aircraft carrier NIMITZ, with nuclear-powered cruisers CALIFORNIA and
TEXAS, was heading back to Norfolk, Virginia, after a six-month
deployment to the Mediterranean. The three ships were sent instead to
the Indian Ocean. They steamed around Africa and spent ten months in the
Indian Ocean before finally heading back to Norfolk. Their transit from
the Straights of Gibraltar into the Indian Ocean was completed at high
speed, without stopping. They provided the first naval air striking
power in the region.

All the CGNs have been decommissioned since the collapse of the Soviet
Union. The nuclear-powered aircraft carriers remain, and today nearly
all of the American carriers in active service are nuclear-powered.

--
Bill Collins
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