What’s in a name?
Posted by Lex, on October 25, 2006
Lots, especially when it comes to naming ships. In an (offline) article in the Newport Daily News, Peter Dujardin notes the upcoming struggle over the name of the next aircraft carrier – a struggle between veterans who manned ships, and the Congressmen who appropriate for them:
NEWPORT NEWS — What has a better ring to it?
The USS America and the “America-class” of aircraft carriers? Or the USS Gerald R. Ford and the “Ford-class”?
Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, is pushing for the latter. He wants the next generation nuclear powered carrier – now being designed at Northrop Grumman Newport News – to bear Ford’s name.
Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Carl Levin, D-Michigan, the ranking member on that panel, co-sponsored an amendment to the defense authorization act that says it’s the “sense of the Congress” that Navy Secretary Donald Winter should name the new carrier after Ford.
That idea, however, isn’t sitting right with the USS America Carrier Veterans Association, which has been fighting that notion with e-mails and phone calls to lawmakers in recent months.
The group, many of whose members served on the original carrier USS America, succeeded in watering down Warner’s and Levin’s proposal before the law’s passage: What in the original language would have been a directive to Winter to name the ship the Gerald R. Ford is now merely a strong suggestion.
“We just find it appalling that the name of the country has been pushed aside in favor of living politicians,” said Walt Waite, the association’s vice president. “The name of the country belongs on a carrier well before individuals and politicians … especially living ones. What better way to start the new class than the America?”
Politicians are fine names for smaller surface ships or submarines, Waite asserted, but not carriers. “The reaction I get from people I talk to is, ‘Why? What did he do?’ ” Waite said of Ford. “Since when do we reward (the naming of a carrier) to a mediocre politician at best?”
That Congress would call for naming the nation’s newest flattop after a one-term president who was never elected over the country’s name, Waite says, shows how far removed they are from the American people.
I’ve got nothing against Gerald Ford, and wouldn’t ever characterize the man’s career as “mediocre,” but on the other hand I believe I’ve made clear my preferences on the issue of ship naming conventions:
One of the things I liked about the older carriers were the names they carried – they evoked famous battles fought and won, or were the names of brave ships from an earlier era recycled to the new age. We had the ESSEX, YORKTOWN, INTREPID, HORNET, TICONDEROGA, LEXINGTON, BUNKER HILL, WASP, BOXER, BON HOMME RICHARD, ANTIETAM, PRINCETON, KEARSARGE, ORISKANY, SHANGRI-LA (?), TARAWA, VALLEY FORGE, and PHILLIPINE SEA. We had KITTY HAWK, CONSTELLATION and AMERICA. We had an ENTERPRISE.Then we named a ship JOHN F KENNEDY in memorial of Camelot lost, and the gates were opened to all manner of political monikers. After NIMITZ, we had EISENHOWER, VINSON, ROOSEVELT, LINCOLN, WASHINGTON, STENNIS, TRUMAN, REAGAN and finally BUSH (the elder). Politicians. I guess once the floodgates are open, everyone wants a drink. And for $5billion or so, who are the uniform guys to complain? Call it “FUSCHIA” or “PUMICE” so long as we get her on schedule and she floats. Please don’t get me wrong, I admire all (or most) of these men. Still, I sometimes envy the Royal Navy, with their INVINCIBLEs and BROADSWORDs and DEVASTATIONs. Those are names to wear on your sleeve or cap with pride.
Someday perhaps, we’ll even have a ship named the USS BILL CLINTON.
Won’t be a frigate though. A frigate only has one screw.
I always thought the best named vessels in the fleet were the PC’s and the Naval Academy yawls. The PC’s have names like Hurricane, Typhoon and Firebolt. The yawls have names like Audacious, Courageous, Invincible, and my personal favorite, Frolic.
So, I’m pretty much lining up for the America-class. Personally.