THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608080369
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 126 lines
At the exact spot where it was ``born'' 31 1/2 years ago, the aircraft carrier America will be retired Friday, closing a seagoing career that sent the massive warship on 19 overseas cruises and saw aircraft slam onto its deck nearly a third of a million times.
It was between berths 42 and 43 at the historic Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth that the America was commissioned into service in January 1965. It will be tied up there again at 10 a.m. Friday, when the Navy bids the flattop farewell in an invitation-only ceremony.
Jets will fly over to salute a ship that spent three deployments off the coast of Vietnam and carried its country's flag and name to myriad peaceful ports.
Adm. Leighton W. Smith Jr., a former America skipper who rose to four stars and command of the Navy's European forces and the Allied Forces Southern Europe, will speak in the carrier's shadow.
Then, the crowds dispersed, more than a thousand of the America's remaining crew members will move on to other assignments, other ships.
By April, the carrier will have been towed to Philadelphia and placed in mothballs, facing an uncertain future: In today's nuclear-powered carrier fleet, the oil-fueled America will not likely return to active duty.
But there is little doubt that it could, said Capt. Robert E. Besal, the carrier's captain.
Last February, on the night before the ship arrived in Norfolk from its last Mediterranean deployment, ``We ran her through the paces,'' Besal said. ``Full power, back and forth. We did everything.
``There's a lot of miles left in her.''
On the chilly morning of the America's commissioning, then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk's keynote speech warned against the West's growing complacency about the danger of war.
``To relax,'' Rusk told his Portsmouth audience, ``would be to invite aggression.''
Neither the America nor the rest of the fleet have relaxed much since.
The ship spent the equivalent of 11 solid years under way, steaming into the Mediterranean 15 times, to Vietnam three times, and once into the Middle East in support of Operation Desert Storm.
More than half of those deployments were seven to nine months long each, rather than the six typical today.
Three of those nine-month deployments passed in the waters off Vietnam between 1968 and 1973 - hard years, during which the ship lost men in combat and dropped thousands of tons of munitions on North Vietnam.
Its wartime work earned it the attention of anti-war protesters, who in 1972 tried to block the America from leaving Norfolk Naval Station for a Vietnam deployment.
Two dozen people manned a ragtag flotilla of canoes, kayaks and sailboats beside the ship's towering hull before they were routed by six Coast Guard boats and an array of determined, but laughing, Coast Guardsmen.
Other statistics from the America's history underline the length and bustle of its service: 23 commanding officers; 319,504 aircraft ``traps,'' or deck-top landings; 346,843 catapult ``shots'' from the deck; hundreds of thousands of miles steamed.
As Besal understated: ``It didn't sit still for long.''
All of this came at a bargain price, by today's standards: The America cost $156.5 million to build at Newport News Shipbuilding.
Of course, it's also true that in 1965, the year the ship was commissioned, a new Ford Mustang cost $2,800. Still, the America was a lot of ship for the money, even before it started its globe-trotting.
It stretches 1,047 1/2 feet and displaces 85,490 tons under a full load. The nation's newest carrier, the John C. Stennis, is 52 feet longer and displaces 99,050 tons fully loaded - but it also cost $3.5 billion to build.
America was the 19th flattop launched by Newport News Shipbuilding, following a tradition that began in 1933 with the Ranger, the first American ship designed and built as an aircraft carrier.
Its flight deck first held F-4B Phantom fighters, A-4B Skyhawk attack bombers, and a new low-level, electronically controlled attack bomber, the A-6 Intruder.
RA-5 Vigilante heavy bombers and reconnaissance planes, E-2A Hawkeye early-warning planes and UH-2A Seasprite helicopters rounded out its airborne arsenal.
Most of those models are gone from the Navy now, replaced by F/A-18 Hornet and F-14 Tomcat fighter/bombers, E-A6B Prowler electronic warfare jammers, more-modern E-2C Hawkeyes, S-3B Viking sub hunters and SH-60 Seahawk helicopters.
The A-6 Intruder, its name rarely put into print without the word ``venerable'' in front of it, is on its last deployment aboard the carrier Enterprise.
President John F. Kennedy gave the America its name. Virginians had wanted it called the Williamsburg, but they could hardly protest the moniker it got.
With the America's retirement, no Navy warship will bear the nation's name. The service twice came close to naming a carrier the United States, first in 1949 and again more than a year ago, when President Clinton agreed to scrub the idea in favor of naming the next nuclear-powered carrier the Harry S. Truman, and the one after that the Ronald Reagan.
The America's retirement cannot be blamed on mishap or miscue. The ship's most notable accident, a fender-bender that left a 25-foot buckle in its port side, came when an oil tanker bumped the anchored carrier in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1965. Otherwise, besides minor engine room fires, it has been accident-free.
And it cannot be blamed on any failure of the ship to live up to its mission. The America has rarely been idle - and, ironically, that's probably one of the reasons it is being retired.
``Due to operational commitments, she wasn't available to receive the service-life extensions that some of the other carriers did, notably Kitty Hawk and Independence,'' Besal said, referring to ships five and seven years older, respectively.
``One part of it was scheduling,'' he said. ``She was shot right out of here for Desert Shield/Desert Storm. I think the decision was made to keep her operational because of requirements around the globe.''
No longer.
``She's a sleeping giant right now,'' Besal said.
Most of the ship's electronics have been removed, much of it sent to Newport News Shipbuilding to be installed on new carriers.
Its ventilation system has been shut down.
Its 4,965 berths have been emptied and sealed.
It awaits only Friday's goodbye, and a lonely trip north. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
BILL KELLEY III/The Virginian-Pilot file
The America, which sailed to the Mediterranean 15 times, returns
from a 1986 deployment.
Photo
MORT FRYMAN/The Virginian-Pilot file
The aircraft carrier America has a glorious past - steaming into the
Mediterranean 15 times, to Vietnam three times, and once into the
Middle East in support of Operation Desert Storm - but an uncertain
future as an oil-fueled dinosaur in a nuclear-powered fleet.
KEYWORDS: DECOMMISSIONED SHIPS U.S. NAVY by CNB