The Great, Constantly Changing Picture Gallery...part DEUX

[Catmando]

At the end of the Vietnam War, we briefly had six aircraft carriers floating within the unfriendly confines of the Gulf of Tonkin, with at least four conducting combat flight ops. With the ever increasing "buffer zones" from Chicom Hainan Island and mainland China, along with the North Vietnam threat, we JOs laughed. We thought we would be squeezed-by-buffer-zone out of the Gulf and could go home.

With multiple carriers trying to conduct simultaneous flight ops within such a confined space, the expletives heard over surface ship-to-ship VHF would burn your ears! Especially after an Alpha Strike launch IFR into another carrier's IFR recovery stack!

The red line below is about 160NM. Given the ever increasing 20-30-50 NM buffers in the Gulf from land, we damn near 'buffered' ourselves out of the war.

 

[jmcquate]

Ya, but "feet wet" must have given you a warn and fuzzy on egress.

 

[Hozer]

what was it A4's was so fond of saying?...a mere 27 years ago..yep, mickie D's is there as if Moses himself poured the slab....

 

[MIDNJAC]

Flew over all 5 of them today heading home for the holidays....was a cool sight. Also flew over CV-67 in her current glory (or lack thereof), as well as CV-59. Just thought I'd mention that given how nice the JFK looks above compared to now

 

[Pags]

Squorch was one of the last folks to fly off of JFKs deck during her (his?) decom trip to Beantown. This was after the "worst cruise ever" during JFKs last war cruise. The stories say that JFK was rough for years after her last trip to the Philly yards and an attempt at a reserve carrier.

 

[KBayDog]

Yes, I'm retired, but have always been a WestPac sailor....

Oh...so you were a West Coast Sailor.

 

[revan1013]

Squorch was one of the last folks to fly off of JFKs deck during her decom trip to Beantown. This was after the "worst cruise ever" during JFKs last war cruise. The stories say that JFK was rough for years after her last trip to the Philly yards and an attempt at a reserve carrier.

what was it A4's was so fond of saying?...a mere 27 years ago..yep, mickie D's is there as if Moses himself poured the slab....

The more things change... minus the hull numbers and photo quality, Norfolk hasn't changed much.

 

[Pags]

The more things change... minus the hull numbers and photo quality, Norfolk hasn't changed much.

It's somewhat odd that ships named after men are called "her". In fact, I think the Germans insisted that Bismarck be referred to in the masculine.

 

[Alpha_Echo_606]

Flew over all 5 of them today heading home for the holidays....was a cool sight. Also flew over CV-67 in her current glory (or lack thereof), as well as CV-59. Just thought I'd mention that given how nice the JFK looks above compared to now

How bad does the Forrestal look now? I still get weepy when I talk about the the Ole floating turd barge, miss that girl.

 

[revan1013]

How bad does the Forrestal look now? I still get weepy when I talk about the the Ole floating turd barge, miss that girl.

Wasn't Forrestal in Newport a few years ago? And Oriskany? Am I remembering that right?

 

[Alpha_Echo_606]

I do believe it was, I thought they were going to sink her somewhere off the Florida coast, maybe I'm remembering wrong though. The mind gets hazy with every year and every beer!

 

[CommodoreMid]

Oriskany is now a reef in the Gulf

 

[EM1toNFO]

The Forrestal aka Forest Fire was still in Newport when I was last there in April of 08'. Google Earth still shows it there as well.

 

[helolumpy]

Forrestal departed: http://www2.turnto10.com/news/2010/jun/15/supercarrier_moved_from_newport-ar-108924/

Sara is still there. She's a test bed for new hull paints, so she looks a bit like the dazzle pattern ships of WWII.

 

[BusyBee604]

Wasn't Forrestal in Newport a few years ago? And Oriskany? Am I remembering that right?

Oriskany is ~20 fathoms deep as an artificial reef off Pensacola. Forrestal is/was tied up in NSY Philadelphia awaiting scrapping.

Below, lousy satellite photo of FID (R), and FDR rusting away together in Philly. Sad... Ol' Warriors never die, the just corrode.. sink.. or become new cars & razor blades!

BzB