DATE: Wednesday, October 15, 1997           TAG: 9710111025

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A12  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Special Report: The Changing Face of the Navy Sailor 

SERIES: Future of the Fleet 

                                            LENGTH:   88 lines

TECHNOLOGICAL MILESTONES THAT CHANGED THE NAVY'S WARFIGHTING

Graphic

1862 - Ironclad warships square off for the first time in the

Civil War's Battle of Hampton Roads. The duel between the federal

Monitor and Confederate Virginia ends in a draw, but marks an

everlasting change in warship design, construction and tactics.

1895 - The Texas, America's first battleship, is commissioned,

and a tremendous building program follows as the country invests

heavily in the capital ship. By 1907, the Atlantic Fleet alone has

16.

1910 - Seven years after the Wrights first fly a heavier-than-air

craft at Kill Devil Hills, aviator Eugene Ely launches a Curtiss

biplane from a wooden ramp built on the forecastle of the cruiser

Birmingham, anchored off Old Point Comfort. His flight ends with a

landing on Norfolk's Willoughby Spit - and with the Navy convinced

that the airplane is a valuable reconnaissance tool.

1914 - The Panama Canal opens, clearing the way for a mutually

reinforceable, two-ocean Navy. Its width fixes the maximum beam of

American warships for decades to come.

1921 - Gen. Billy Mitchell, the military's chief advocate of air

power, leads a squadron of spindly bombers in an attack on the

captured German warship Ostfriedland off the Virginia capes. The

demonstration stuns naval observers, and spawns doubt about the

invincibility of the capital ship.

1922 - America's first aircraft carrier, the Langley, is

commissioned, its flight deck fitted over the hull of a converted

collier. The ship is a platform for aviation experiments, rather

than a signal that the Navy is strongly pursuing carrier-based

aviation.

1933 - Newport News Shipbuilding launches the Ranger, the first

aircraft carrier built as such, but remains wedded to the

battleship.

1941 - The aircraft carrier's rise to prominence is foreshadowed

by the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, which demonstrates that a

carrier-borne air force can hammer land or water targets.

1942 - The Battle of Midway seals the carrier's future as the

centerpiece of naval battle groups.

1954 - The nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus is commissioned,

marking a quantum leap over conventional subs in range, speed and

ability to stay submerged. Like later Los Angeles-class attack subs,

it can theoretically steam underwater for years without surfacing.

1955 - The Navy commissions the world's first supercarrier, the

Forrestal. Its angled flight deck and steam catapults, borrowed from

the British, enable it to rapidly launch a large number of jets from

an armored flight deck.

1961 - The world's first nuclear-powered surface ship, the

cruiser Long Beach, is commissioned. The Navy eventually would

abandon nuclear power for all of its surface combatants but

carriers, but the Long Beach is also the first Navy ship with guided

missiles as its main weapons - a standard in years to come.

A few months after the Long Beach, the carrier Enterprise is

commissioned. Several years pass before the United States returns to

nuclear reactors to power its mighty Nimitz class of carriers.

Iwo Jima, the first amphibious ship designed specifically to

operate helicopters, joins the fleet, marking a shift in the tactics

anticipated in Marine Corps landings.

1965 - The Harpoon anti-ship missile, providing stand-off

capability in attacks on surfaced subs and ships, is conceived.

1973 - The Defense Department orders cruise missile studies that

spawn, a decade later, the Tomahawk cruise missile. A

quarter-century later, the Tomahawk is the standard American

sea-launched strike weapon for use on ground or sea targets.

1983 - The guided missile cruiser Ticonderoga is commissioned,

bringing the Aegis weapon system to the fleet. The quick-reacting

system mates sophisticated sensors - which enable the tracking of

128 targets amid a remarkably clear ``air picture'' of the ship's

surroundings - with missile targeting and control. This is a ship

with huge offensive and defensive muscles.

1991 - The guided missile destroyer Arleigh Burke, commissioned

in Norfolk, becomes the first Navy ship designed with special

hatches and a pressurized interior to better withstand an attack

from nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

1995

The Navy begins buying the equipment that will spawn the Smart Ship

program. KEYWORDS: U.S. NAVY TIMELINE CHRONOLOGY

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