Navy officials on Friday extended the deployments for two aircraft carrier strike groups – Nimitz and Harry S. Truman – by nearly two months each to cover the expected gap in carrier coverage caused by shipyard delays in the maintenance overhaul of the carrier Enterprise.
Each deployment will run just under eight months, U.S. Pacific Fleet officials in Hawaii and U.S. Fleet Forces Command officials in Virginia announced in a joint statement. “The Navy remains committed to its general policy of maintaining deployment lengths to manage personnel tempo as essential components of force readiness,” officials said…
Enterprise had entered the Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding shipyard in Newport News, Va., last year for an extended dry-dock selected restricted availability that initially would have been completed this summer.
But now Navy officials expect that work on the 48-year-old Enterprise, which the Navy plans to decommission in 2014, will be completed by December, Rosi said. “The need for the work came up as the ship proceeded through the availability,” he said.
I’m not privvy to the inside scoop on this one, so I won’t hypothesize. Sympathies for the bubbas on Nimitz and HST.
Again, Carter-esque symptoms of the underfunded military. Anyone else recall the very long deployments of Nimitz and Ike in the late 70′s with the Iran hostage crisis? With one port visit to Diego Garcia, if I recall correctly…
George V.
George V/
Being AF don’t remember Nimitz, Ike, etc., but I DO KNOW that among the many depredations Carter visited upon the USAF was the closing for “cost-saving” measures the grand old mansion on Bayswater Rd opposite Hyde Park in London that was the AF O-Club called the “Columbia Club,”–for which I PERSONALLY WILL NEVER FORGIVE HIM.
Ah, so that’s how you ended up in the double long Quonset hut O’club! I wondered about that, particularly in ole Blighty. Didn’t sound at all Air Force.
Ike left Norfolk NOB Pier 12 on 15 April 00. Returned to Norfolk NOB Pier 12 on 22 Dec. 00. One port visit (Singapore) 17-22 July 00.
Suck it did. But Bugis Street was wild, if you’re into that sort of thing.
“Want you take me to……Funky Townnn”
Whoah, I should have typed ’80′ instead of ’00′.
And after a bit of scholarly research, it’s “Won’t…” instead of “Want…”. Details, details,…
- 347 days underway on nuclear power in 1980 alone (IKE/CVW-7) followed by
- 90 days in Iceland to ring in the new year and
- a “bonus” NORLANT/Northern Wedding w/J.O. Tuttle followed by
- a 7 month Med deployment.
Oh, and one cancelled port visit to Perth thrown in for good measure, no thanks to the peanut farmer.
- SJS
8 month deployments were right at the top of why I decided to pursue another career when my term expired in the ’70s. That 1974 deployment schedule of the USS America and the fallout thereof convinced me, the broken marriages, the broken relationships, and being E4 and constantly broke in a foreign port (and this was AFTER Zumwalt’s changes and the pay increases). So my sympathies guys. Hang in there. I know it will be a shock to know your deployment is extended due to political (and maintenance) issues, but even long cruises eventually end. Don’t do something stupid and jump ship (thinking of you Ken…wherever you ended up in Europe) (or worse, jump overboard and cause the rest of us to circle for hours looking for you sorry *) 3 hots and a cot courtesy of the Navy is better’n the same provided by the Feds in some facility stateside.
“The need for the work came up as the ship proceeded through the availability,”
You have to love newspeak. Why does a period a inability to conduct naval missions get to be an availability?
My dead relatives are conducting an availability throughout our farm even as we speak. Don’t expect the chores to get done any faster.
Sounds to me like “The more we dug into the ship the more stuff we found that was broke that we didn’t know about.”
My car was burning a lot of oil. I took it into my mechanic and he said something like this:
“Well, what you need is a valve job. But if I do a valve job, that’ll up the compression and then you’ll need a ring job. If I tear it down to do a ring job I’ll probably have to replace the crankshaft bearings and maybe even turn the crankshaft, and it might not true up and you’d need a new one. You’re better off not doing any work at all. Just throw a quart of oil in every 1000 miles until you can afford to buy a new car.”
Gotta love an honest mechanic that will turn down work so as not to cheat a customer. Maybe he should be in Congress and sit on the Armed Forces committee.
Availability in this case means being available to the yard.
Typical on an older ship that when you start work and dig a bit deeper than the part that made the CASREPs that you find more ugliness. I see it every day, and smart NAVSEA planners usually front-load the time and money to account for issues not easily apparent. Good chance the reason why the Big E ran into issues is if the project managers for NAVSEA wrote up how much they really thought was buggered, then Congress would scream for decom, thus truly screwing the deployment schedule…saw it happen to Yosemite back in the day.
And the “availability” comes from ESRA: “Extended Ship Repair Availability”…that it’s available to go into repair cycle.
I was on Indy right before she went into SLEP in 1985. I can remember seeing pictures of the holes in her hull when she finally got into drydock. This isn’t even mentioning the bent prop shaft that shook the rear of the boat above 15 kts. I was doing my mess deck time while we were making a run to Singapore for liberty and my berthing space was 3rd deck near the fantail. It was like being in one of those old-fashioned vibrating beds that they used to have in motels, except no quarters were required.
Byron
So how do you replace the bottom plates on a CVN when you’re walking around the bilges and thunk – you step through a weak spot? Just kidding but I’m sure they open up stuff and look inside and find out that the manufacturer of swidget went out of business in 1983. Happened all the time when I was at NavSea but back then we had the 8 public shipyards that could build the Saturn moon rocket if you asked – nicely.
Can’t say we all didn’t see this coming. Give the sailors more liberty and the aero-bubbas more flight time and both will be happy – since naval aviators don’t do liberty and alcohol and such.
G-Man/
Your point about org. manu going out of business (and taking plans with them) brings to mind this cheery thought. Do you realize how much REALLY KEY statistical data of ALL KINDS is stored on stone age govt computer systems from 1st decade of massive computerization that may be TOTALLY beyond recovery if system breaks–as not only are the manufactures and plans out of existence but programmers that wrote these mostly custom programs with only knowledge of how to recover are also now DEAD in most cases! And with NO hard cy or micro-fiche backup!
The coolest thing about being CHENG on two ships built in the early 50′s was the Log Rooms on each ship. Both ships had the drawings for everything on the ship in the Log Room after 30 plus years. When the controlled torque slip coupling of the anchor windlass sh#t the bed in front of ASRY and needed replacement, the navy supply chain responded to my CAT 4 CASREP with an estimated one + year for a replacement. We were able to take the drawing for that part from the Log Room to the repair yard in Bahrain and they made a replacement and installed it in 2 days. Hard copy!
No, some poor bastard like myself crawls all those tanks, looking for rust and erosion from things like pick-up tubes (you’d be amazed how much erosion you can get in HY-80 plate from nothing more than water swirling around it). Then you ultrasound test it, and if more than 20% degraded under nominal, you break the torches out and open the cash register. I can tell you from experience that crawling carrier tanks doing inspections really sucks…I mean, REALLY sucks.
And finding out that there is no longer a maker of a widget is very common. The guy that does will charge 10 times as much, because it is a niche market.
Exceedingly niche and most widgets will both be one-off and a rush job/Naval equivalent to AOG.
Admittedly, this engineer likes working with prints made from far before he was born, but finding them can be a pain.
HST’s extended deployment is confirmed.
(I’m the STRIKE OPS / OPSADMIN YN from a recent deployment). I talked to my contemporaries and the STRIKE guys, this is happening and they are not happy about it.
Was on ENTERPRISE. All the nuclear engineers had to be top or near top of their class apparently and most had been on previous nuke ships or subs. To a tee they all reported CVN 65 was unfortunately the most broke-di%k ship they had ever seen and doubted it would ever come out of the yards. None of this comes as a surprise, but it sadly means certain commands can’t relieve their brothers our at sea and the pain of deployment for the Nimitz and Truman BG’s has increased geometrically . My sympathies for them.
8 reactors and 45+ years of sea time makes for a lot of work.
Byron, didn’t the Big E go through RCOH just a few years back? Seems to me they did. Either way, sux to be the gang on NIMITZ and TRUMAN.
Kind of how it used to be with RANGER around. You never knew if they were ever going to get around to relieving you.
The Coral Sea also spent an embarrassing amount of time dead in the water near end-of-life. Sucked if she was your relief. But always a thrill to see her underway. Living history.
But she did make Med cruises where you got 90 days in port. Every cloud has a silver lining. The 87-88 cruise was the best liberty cruise I ever had.
Saw pics of Coral Maru in the yard being dismantled. It was a real shock to see her shredded down to the hangar deck. Makes me think the ‘O’ boat and America-shima got the better deal.
First person perspective here from NIMITZ CSG…
- SJS
All I’ll say about the ENTERPRISE and the IKE are this: You could eat off the floor of the IKE because it was so clean. On the other hand, you could eat food off the floor of the ENTERPRISE because there was food on it.
Yes it sucks big time right now. I am out here with CVW-11 and NSG. We have known for months that we were going to be extended. The only questions was when and for how long. Now the question is when we get back are we going to be surged as part of FRP? If we are going to be surged then that means total time home will be four months in CY10. A number of us are grumbling. Myself I am just looking at the future of potential port visits and more money in my pocket. I hate it but it is part of the JOB! I just wonder how the wife is going to handle all of this.
A couple of my family remember departing on cruises in the 70′s for 11 to twelve months. My father left on the Connie on the 3rd of January and didn’t come home until the 23rd of December.
Enterprise did go through a EDRA back in 02 but it was cut short by 9 months because of issues with the Kennedy. So instead of spending 18 months in the yards (with 8 of that in dry dock) it was cut back to half the time and no $$$$ to do any of the important things. ON top of that we had NNGN and thier lowest-bigger sub contractors onboard. It wasn’t fun. Fires every so often and CHT pipes blowing out because they were improperly welded or used the wrong thickness of pipe. Bad scene all the way around. I was glad to leave that ship in 2003.
Oh, the humanity! A 6-month cruise being extended by a couple of months! We all weep deeply.
But have we become so wimpy as a warrior nation?
Vietnam cruises were longer, ships by far lacked today’s vastly improved amenities and creature comforts; and they also sadly brought back far less people than they deployed with.
Just a quick, back of the envelope check reveals a few aircraft carrier cruises back in the day:
Ranger – Sept. ’70 to June ’71…….. almost 9 months
Connie – Nov. ’71 to July ’72…………………..9 months
Midway –April ’72 to March ’73………………11 months
Coral Maru – Nov. ’71 to July ’73…………….8 months
Sara – April ’72 to Feb. ’73 ………………….10 months
Kitty – Nov ’72 to June’73 ……………………..7 months (but they started their cruise from Yokosuka, not home)
America – June ’72 to March ’73……………. 8 months
[There are others, some longer in different years. Sorry if I missed some of the longer ones. This is just a quick random look]
Not only were the cruises longer back then, but unless a ship went into the yards, the turnaround periods were much shorter – as short as four months on occasion.
Of course there was a war going on then – as unpopular as it was by the ’70s – to justify the longer cruise lengths and less turnaround time. So never mind we have two active wars today, and various other threats with less carriers available. Apparently that doesn’t count for an extra month at sea.
Sailors whine as sailors always do, to keep themselves happy – but today with seemingly far, far less justification.
Fliterman,
I have no serious problem with being extended. The problem I have is when leadership, both military and civilian; gives us the E-1 salute about whether we are going to be home for a short time and then surged or are we going to stay home. Most of us were promised by leadership that with the new Fleet Response Plan, there was supposed to be more time at home due to the ability to flex schedules and gap billets where carriers were supposed to be with MAG’s and USAF Fighter Wings. It seems that isn’t happening. I was always taught that leadership are supposed to be honest people and honorable people. So don’t blow smoke up my rear claiming that we have fixeddeployments and schedule style “A” is what your going to expect from not on. Then go back on your word by saying “oops we didn’t know what to do except this.”
Oh and I know all about deployments being extended and modified from the 60′s on. My father did 22 years in the Navy. He did an eleven month on the America that was extended becauce of the USS Pebuelo prevented the Enterprise and the Midway from relieving the America on Yankee Station. He told me he left Norfolk with CVW-9 on 3rd of Jan and didn’t come home until the 24th of December that same year. Watched as his 6 month on the Connie in 1972 was extended into an 8 month because of Linebacker and the end of Vietnam war. Then again while he was on the America watch a cruise that was supposed to be home for Christmas in 82 be extended into 1983 because of the Embassy bombing in Lebanon and then needing to relieve a carrier from Gonzo station. His final cruise in 86 was extended a few months to provided carrier air for Op El Dordao Canyon.
I myself have experienced five cruise extensions since 2001. The first one was on the Big E because of September 01. Everything else since then was from the DCNO for Air trying to fix the messed up deployment schedule from the start of the war, along with fitting in the first round of refueling of the Nimitz class carriers that are starting to come due right now. Most of those refuelings are taking three years in only one yard and that is Newport News, so those cruises to and from espically for the PacFleet carriers are a round the world cruise to and from home port.
Being extended is part of the job if your in the military. Deploying away from your loved ones is also part of the job. It would just be nice to go home for a little bit to relax. Not go home to wash your clothes and pack right back up again or not even get home until the kids are out of college and when you left they were in diapers. The unit that I am in right now had deployed seven times in a four year period. Something is going to give whether that is safety or personnel is the question. The US Army and the US Marine Corps ais already seeing it with increased sucides and divorice rates in thier ground forces.
+1
AT1 B/
The sad fact is that there are not enough keels in the water nor sailors to man them because we have a Congress that has for years been dominated by those congenitally adverse in the main to all things military and good luck with our present President. And Bush didn’t have the courage of his convictions in pushing for modernization as well as war funding for fear if he asked for both he would get neither out of a Congress perfectly willing to do so out of spite. Combine that with a MSM which has enveighed 24/7/365 against all things military as well as the war, and the picture gets pretty bleak in terms of public support. I am not optimistic it will get any better anytime in the near future, either. Sadly.
IIRC, the reason we went to a 500 ship Navy under Reagan was to 1. shorten cruise periods, allowing more time home with family and such, and 2. to get the ships into the yards (notice that I used the plural) on a more timely schedule.
After all the work of building the Navy to an adequate force level, I was very dismayed that Bush Sr & DOD started undoing every good thing that had been done. Obviously it was a DOD wide program of downsizing/right sizing/gelding/do more with less, but the whole notion of a larger force level had absolutely nothing to fighting wars. We needed to take care of our people, we needed to take care of our equipment (big & small), and should a firefight break out we needed to be able to take care of it without surging 3/4′s of the damned military.
It really gripes me to see our Reserve forces being used so extensively today, and all because leadership at the top got this notion of ‘do more with less’. Instead of being kept in reserve for an emergency, today’s Reserve forces are being utilized more like a second shift at the factory. I fear that we are going to pay for that mistake one day very, very soon.
Looking at where we are right now, we simply could NOT conduct another engagement at the force level of Desert Storm; never mind getting involved in a second theater (and I’m not talking the Af).
Happy Friday, y’all.
I’m not military. No one in my family ever had to serve and non volunteered either.
So why am I commenting?
Because I can’t help it – Flit is a wanker for his comment. I had to say it. Especially with active military commenting here and having to deal with this latest extension as we speak.
A little more respect would be nice.
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