The USS Enterprise

Back in the early ’60s, I was with the 1st Battalion 6th Marines and we were going from somewhere to somewhere on an AKA that docked alongside the USS Enterprise and to go ashore we had to take a gangplank from the AKA, whose name escapes my memory having been on so many of them (nor do I remember the port that we were docked at), to the flight deck of the Enterprise, and then use its gangplank to go ashore.

I do remember that we got rip-roaring drunk that night, but all made it back to ship before our Cinderella Liberty had expired.

I also remember putting to sea with the fleet on the USS Boxer because a hurricane was on its way. When they sounded general quarters I hid out on the fantail of the hanger’s deck so I could watch the fleet stretched out behind us the Enterprise was two ships back. we went through soum rough seas that day, the waves would pick the Boxer’s screws completely out of the water and while the were free of the wathe it engines would rev up sending vibrations through the shi[, and grown like hell when they went back into the water.

From where I sat on my perch on the fantail I could see the Enterprise with a broadside view as the fleet was making a great circle, and watch it shutter as its screws were lifted out and fell back into the sea. I do not remember where we were going, but it was near the time, just before or after, the Cuban Blockade was happening.

Semper Fi

Internationales Maritimes Museum HamburgtesSoorndphN4e0A0 21M3881g 6acrmgaa23:eb a0vh11t1cg9mm0g c5o  · She was the 8th vessel of the U.S. Navy with her name, the longest naval vessel ever built and the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of all times: the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). She was supposed to be the first of a class of 6 sisters, that was cancelled for financial reasons. Her construction took place at the Newport News Shipbuilding Norfolk shipyard between 1958 and 1960. She was then the largest warship ever built and she would keep that record until the mid 1970s. She was operated by a crew of 4600 and her full complement could go up to 5828. Her long career spanned between her commissioning in 1961 and she being retired in 2012, during that time she participated in almost every military conflict and crisis the USA was involved in. Between 2012 and April 2018, the complicated process of her deactivation took place. She was the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that underwent this procedure and the deactivation of her eight nuclear reactors proved to be a great and expensive challenge. Also, the many voices that called for her to be transformed in a museum ship had to face the fact that the maintenance cost was considered way too high. She is now stored at Hampton Roads and awaits a concrete disposal plan.A fascinating fact about this incredible miniature in a scale of 1:1250 is that it was Bild from scratch using only cardboard as material by our late friend Heinz Peter Weiß. It is displayed on deck 9 of the museum together with many other of his cardboard masterpieces.