The BIG "E" is making it's last cruise.50 Years in service

[dnoblett]

I just read about the Enterprise is making it's last deployment, 7 months and then decommissioning.

 

50 years is the longest service of any US Navy ship with the exception of the USS Constitution.

 

The Enterprise is unique, it is the only carrier of it's class, it is also the only ship in the fleet with 8 reactors, at 342 meters or 1,123 ft, the USS Enterprise is the longest naval vessel in the world.

 

http://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_free_images/0420-0907-3019-1001_nuclear_powered_aircraft_carrier_uss_enterprise_in_the_persian_gulf_m.jpg

 

More: http://www.ksl.com/?...57&sid=19532929

http://en.wikipedia....se_%28CVN-65%29

http://www.enterprise.navy.mil/

http://www.tucsonsen...s-final-voyage/

Edited March 11, 2012 by dnoblett (see edit history)

[Doug]

You know I thought the new class of carriers were going to lead off with a new Enterprise, but I see it is the Ford making the Ford class replace the Nimitz class. So.......

[Thomas Promise]

When the Big E's hull was laid Eisenhower was in office and when it was commisoned JFK was the President. A proud ship. The US Navy got its moneys worth from this ship.

[dnoblett]

When the Big E's hull was laid Eisenhower was in office and when it was commisoned JFK was the President. A proud ship. The US Navy got its moneys worth from this ship.

Enterprise was meant to be the first of a class of six, but construction costs ballooned and the remaining vessels were never laid down. But yes the Navy did get it's money's worth out of her, the ship had an original design life of 25 years, it served double that.

[A Mafan]

And the USAF still uses bombers and refueling aircraft older than the Eisenhower...

[dnoblett]

And the USAF still uses bombers and refueling aircraft older than the Eisenhower...

Talking about CVN 65 Enterprise which was commissioned 1961, not the Ike CVN 69 which was commissioned 1977

 

But yes, the air-force is flying aircraft older that the Enterprise, most notably the B-52, and C-130, but they do not have to contend with operating in a hostile environment like the ocean, the Enterprise is an extremely complex machine wit parts that when break, have to be manufactured from scratch because there are no spare parts for some of the things on it.

 

The Enterprise was so expensive to build that the next nuclear carrier was not commissioned until 14 years later when the Nimitz (CVN 68) was commissioned 1975. (CV 66 America and CV 67 JFK were conventional oil burners that were decommissioned well before the Enterprise)

 

CVN 79 will be named JFK, perhaps CVN 80 will be named the Enterprise.

[A Mafan]

And the USAF still uses bombers and refueling aircraft older than the Eisenhower...

Talking about CVN 65 Enterprise which was commissioned 1961, not the Ike CVN 69 which was commissioned 1977

 

But yes, the air-force is flying aircraft older that the Enterprise, most notably the B-52, and C-130, but they do not have to contend with operating in a hostile environment like the ocean, the Enterprise is an extremely complex machine wit parts that when break, have to be manufactured from scratch because there are no spare parts for some of the things on it.

 

The Enterprise was so expensive to build that the next nuclear carrier was not commissioned until 14 years later when the Nimitz (CVN 68) was commissioned 1975. (CV 66 America and CV 67 JFK were conventional oil burners that were decommissioned well before the Enterprise)

 

CVN 79 will be named JFK, perhaps CVN 80 will be named the Enterprise.

I'm sorry, yeah: the Enterprise.

 

We are flying 60 year old bombers and refueling aircraft, racking up more than a trillion dollars of debt every year without cutting any discretionary spending at all...

 

...except for the military.

 

The military starting taking budget cuts last year.

 

To the best of my understanding, nothing else in the govt has.

 

Ya gotta love the priorities in DC.

[tsap seui]

Yes, the B-52 is an old bird....with old technology which is constantly upgraded. It goes through rigorous inspections at set intervals with high tech tools and methods. I can't recall hearing of one fall out of the sky because of it's being old or from maintenance, but I don't keep up with any news of any sort, getting most all of my updates in the world situation from Candle.

 

I once sat beside a B-52 pilot as we flew to Hawaii. The guy was much younger than me and this was maybe 8 years ago....young enough to be my son. You hsould hear what it has to say about a B-52. HIs exurberance was over whelming.

 

I don't like the government for much of anything and it is often easy to critize them but some things just don't need to be refigured every 10 years. Fighters, yes.

 

Let's make a plane to replace the B-52. We have B-1 and B-2's but let's make a plane that has the payload of a B-52. Let's see, it would need to be long to hold plenty of bomb racks as new technology can't make up for room, it will need to have a huge wingspan to carry the load and the fuel it takes to fly so far to drop it's load. Hmmm, the thing is still gonna look like a B-52. No matter we can spend billions producing it and tout it to the heavens. We'll even make it cary 10 more bombs than the B-52 so we can say it's payload is higher than that old plane. The public won't notice. We'll call it the YHBS-53. (You have been screwed--53)

 

And they wanted to replace the A-10...the best and most lethal close ground support plane ever devised. It's flies low and slow, packs a punch that nothing can stop and the pilot sits in the most protection any plane ever had. All they can do is make another one that looks like it...maybe call it the A-10 1/2.

 

tsa pseui

[dnoblett]

I have a friend I worked with a few years ago who served in the Air Force, he was a radar navigation repair tech on the B-52 he has many fond memories of the "buff", and many stories.

 

A depressing video..

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbITzCI2AU0

[tsap seui]

Thanks for the name "Buff" Dan. I knew they had a nickname but couldn't think of it to save my life.

 

When I was in primary helicopter school in Ft. Wolters, Texas we once traveled to Dallas on a weekend. I can't remember the name of hte city that those giants flew out of but we got to see one go right over us as it landed. It literally blocked out the sun briefly.

 

Sometimes myself and a crew would be loaned out to the air calvary to carry one of their guys as the comand and control ship in a hunter killer team which was made up of our H model slick flying in tight circles at 5,000 feet, a cobra in larger cirles at 3,500 feet, and a scout flying tree tops looking for targets of opportunity.

 

We would fly deep into Cambodia lookin' for stuff coming off of some of the branches of the Ho CHi Minh trail. Stuff, including a whole hidden by triple canopy jungle north Vietnamese truck depot with an estimated 50 gal'dang trucks in it. Usually we'd find base camps and what not. IF Charlie was home he'd try and take out the scout. Part of my job was to fly in tight left hand circles so I could keep his white painted rotor tops in view. He looked like a tiny white fly zooming around on the ground from altitude. Twice we had ot drop down in a steep out of trim spiral to pick up the crew when they got shot down. It was the quickest way down and smallest target we could make. Scary as hell up there in Indian territory wiht nothing but a cobra for backup if you got shot down yourself....you were as good as dead no matter what in that situation.

 

ANyhow, we would often spot targets and the the back seat guy would plot their 8 digit grid co-ordinates into a box which would quickly be sent off to air force schedulers. In a day or two we'd go back for the Arc Light unleashed by 3 to 5 B-52's flying out of Guam or Thailand .

 

We would go out to an area close to the drop and burn holes in the sky shootin' the shit with each other as we waited on the big boys.

 

All of a sudden you'd hear this ultra calm voice coming on the emergency freq advising any aircraft to stay out of the box of grid co-ordinates. Sometimes they voice would start out " Attention, attention, atention....Good morning ladies and gentlemen, please be advised of a temporary no flight zone from grid FZ 87260014 to grid FZ 99723764 to grid JZ 65872183 ending on grid JZ 994590327. At 6:15 am this box will cease to exist due to an Arc Light. Beware, our bombs are very accurate....they always hit the ground."

 

Now, if you've ever seen an arc light you know how awesome and surreal they are. We'd be miles from the box and as we saw the first string impact we'd head as quick as we could to the area....all hte while feeling the concushions of hte boms in our chests...even at 5,000 feet. We'd get on station and the scout would buzz around lookin' to access the damage in the short time we had before the dust storm blocked out any visuals all the way up over 5,000 feet.

 

The scout pilot laughing and telling us about tunned NVA wandering around in circles as you could hear his "oscar" (observer) working them over with a minigun....a hand hear, a leg there, a torso, or lump of something beneath us...it went on and on.

 

Now, one very incredible thing about missions like damage assesment after an arc light....both times I had to drop down to pick up scout crews were JUST AFTER arc lights!!!!!! How in the hell Charlie could even see straight, much less shoot down a scout buzzing around, with blood coming out of his eyes, ears, and mouths from the concushions was simply unreal.

 

Some strange stuff up in Cambodia, made you wonder if Charlie was even human...LOL

 

Those B-52's rain hell from above. It's no wonder they are still in service all these years. There's nothing that can take their place on such a scale with such a payload.

 

May they live another 60 years. Shows you what Boeing can build.

 

tsap seui

[dnoblett]

Arc-Light! Great term... I guess people forgot what the mighty buff could to, at the end of the first gulf war the road out of Kuait..

 

http://colophon.corbis.com/CorbisImage/compwm/11194686/TL014874.jpg

[tsap seui]

All over south Vietnam there where endless beautiful bluish green "swimming pools" from Arc lights. The sun would hit them just right at whatever altitude you happened ot be at and they turned into shimmering silver swimming pools.

 

I swear lots of them had fish in them....from birds dropping fish in midair I reckon. While the craters didn't start out as pools, you throw in the monsoon season and even as large as they were they soon filled up. During my last tour the American grunts were being pulled out and as dangerous as things had been with those great soldiers, things got even worse and unsafe for us choppers crews as we started carrying only south Vietnam grunts into combat assaults. I can only describe them as horrible...for the most part.

 

We were used to American grunts running off the choppers at a dead run to set up posistions all around the open LZ. Those guys were fantastic and quickly made our next insertions safer. Then came the poorly trained and de-moralized (even often high as a kite) ARVN troops (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) OR.....Marvin the Arvn or Marv the ARV as we called them.

 

Running combat assaults with them put our butts in a meat grinder....very unsafe. Charlie would hear the racket of the first insertion, know we were coming back and race for the LZ. Second and third insertions are where you got the crap shot of you and we started losing so many crews. They either didn't understand perimeter security, didn't care, or were too afraid to spread out and set up security for us. Instead they would usually all bunch up in the down wind side of the LZ...where we flew over to land....no security in front of us and Charlie had himself a huge shooting gallery. Horrible loses when the dodo hit the fan.

 

Good God, when the feces hit the rotating blades of the fan our door gunners would literally have to beat the soldiers off our choppers with 3 foot long screw drivers they used on the transmission. Over the ping ping of incoming you could hear the crack of metal on helmets as the doorgunners tried to get the, grunts on the chooper off and fight off the ones that had already been in the LZ off as well.

 

We were used to coming in hot bouncing off the ground one time and go nose in the dirt to get out of LZ's with Americans. Now we had to hover a few precious seconds while the crew beat off our own grunts.

 

Back to those "swimming pools"...LOL In cold LZ's were starting hovering over the pools as Marvin made his pathetically slow egress.....OPPPPS.... many Marv the ARV's started getting unscheduled baths as they "slipped" off the skids (pushed) into the swimming pools. Poor bastards would go completely out of sight, what with their packs and M-16's.

 

Sometimes, I swear this is true, I saw it myself, we would come in for the second and third insertions into cold LZ's and see ARVN troops huddled around bomb craters FISHIN" That is how we realized they had fish in them.

 

The USAF B-52' crews were literally flying 8 hours one way to build swimming pools and fishin' holes for south Vietnamese soldiers. Your tax dollars hard at work ladies and gentlemens.

 

What a funny life, I scream into this manicured wilderness.

 

tsap seui

[A Mafan]

Adding new technology maintains and increases capability. But it doesn't repair metal fatigue.

 

The aircraft were overdesigned, absolutely.

 

But I flew on some KC-135s 10 years ago...and even then, at the end of every mission, they would radio in what broke during the mission. It wasn't a matter of "if", it was a matter of "how many different things".

 

The race on the ground wasn't to get the aircraft to normal condition, it was a race to get it air-worthy so it could take off on time.

 

This was 10 years ago.

 

And this is on aircraft that had already been through a refurbishing depot.

 

The next generation 767 refueler was killed 10 years ago because we would waste money just leasing them. The price Beoing put on them was probably overpaying. But even overpaying and "wasting" money on leasing would have saved money we throw down a hole maintaining 50-year-old aircraft.

 

Bottom line: just because our military kicks ass, even with broken down equipment doesn't mean having to make do with broken down equipment is okay.

[chilton747]

 

 

But I flew on some KC-135s 10 years ago...and even then, at the end of every mission, they would radio in what broke during the mission. It wasn't a matter of "if", it was a matter of "how many different things".

 

 

My son was a KC-10 pilot and he said the same exact thing. Happened every time on every start up he said.

[tsap seui]

Well, you guys see it your way and your gracious Uncle sees it his. Good luck with changing him. I haven't read of B-52's or KC's dropping out of the sky en mass, that is usually what it takes to change birds like those. Maybe in another 10 or 15 years they will start coming fallin' apart on the tarmac and your wishes will come true.

 

Most any combat troop from any war has to put up with a helluva lot worse....faulty equipment, food from WW II that is rotten when you open it,...the hilarious list goes on. It's usually the R.E.M.F's that do the most complaining and who get all the good stuff the combat troops should be getting....while the R.E.M.F.'s sit there safely in the rear writing up each other for medals.

 

tsap seui

Edited March 14, 2012 by tsap seui (see edit history)