Within a week the Enterprise had completed voyage preparations and the loadout of supplies and was underway for the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There the ship would report to the Naval Training Command under the command of the crusty Rear Adm. John Bulkeley, who had received the Medal of Honor in World War II as a PT boat squadron commander for evacuating General and Mrs. MacArthur and their son from the island of Corregidor in Manila Bay after the Japanese captured Manila.
Admiral Bulkeley was one of the most senior rear admirals in the Navy, and he was certainly the most crotchety. He was a perfectionist, demanding adherence to the basic Navy standards of maintaining a shipshape man-of-war. He was very tough on all of the people and units under his authority as the training officer for the Atlantic Fleet. He was especially focused on carriers and their squadron commanders. I believe this preoccupation was the result of his feeling that carrier commanding officers had spent little time in commanding ships but had simply flown airplanes from their decks, with little understanding of what made the big ships run. In a way he was correct, except that the quality of the officers who successfully screened for carrier command guaranteed that future carrier skippers would be bright, technically competent officers who clearly understood that the aviation aspects of their carrier command were the counterparts to the guns and torpedo tubes of the destroyers, cruisers, and battleships. They certainly understood their responsibilities for the safe navigation and most effective management of the ship and crew.
OFF TO WAR
The Enterprise had progressed well into her first four weeks of the programed six-week shakedown syllabus when there came a surprise message from commander, Air Force, Atlantic Fleet, relaying a message from the Pentagon, instructing the Enterprise to cut short its shakedown training and return immediately to Norfolk to prepare to deploy to Southeast Asia. This was understandable to those of us who had been following events through the classified intelligence briefings, but to 90 percent of the crew and their families, the change in plans came as a shock.
The U.S. government had committed its support to the fledgling democracy of South Vietnam in its defense against the North Vietnamese intrusion and Vietcong guerrillas, who were armed and supported by China and the Soviet Union. The North was determined to unite all of Vietnam under its Communist regime. By the fall of 1965, the situation in South Vietnam had deteriorated to the point where the Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended to the president that substantial reinforcements be sent to assist our allies in Southeast Asia if they were to survive the threat. The Navy decided that the Enterprise, instead of going to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean as a unit of the Atlantic Fleet based in Norfolk, needed to be where the action was, in the Gulf of Tonkin. The reason for this was obvious. The Enterprise at that time was the largest warship afloat and ostensibly the most powerful of all time. During the first refueling, nuclear cores with a three-year lifespan in fleet operations had been installed. She had been built under the fiscal year (FY) 1958 program and commissioned in November 1961, but subsequent carriers — the America (CVA-66) and John F. Kennedy (CVA-67), funded in FY 61 and FY 63, respectively — had reverted to oil fuel rather than nuclear power. The Navy had asked for a nuclear-powered carrier in each case, but Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his systems analysis staff had rejected nuclear power as not being cost effective. So the nuclear-powered carrier was on its way to extinction unless it could be demonstrated that nuclear power would so improve combat effectiveness that its additional cost was justified. The field of battle was obviously the test that could make or break the justification for nuclear power in carriers.
The JCS orders had directed the Enterprise to return to homeport and then proceed directly to the Gulf of Tonkin. Within twenty-four hours, refresher training in Guantánamo was terminated and Enterprise was en route to Norfolk at high speed to load combat stores and ammunition and to embark a special air wing for Southeast Asia, a combination of squadrons that had not yet even been determined.
The CNO, Adm. David L. McDonald, decided to take advantage of the ship’s unique capabilities by adding two squadrons of attack aircraft from the West Coast to the carrier’s normal air wing complement. The Enterprise’s ability to operate the additional aircraft was not so much because of the size of her flight deck, which was not appreciably larger than those of her conventional sister ships, but because of her enormously increased capacity for aviation fuel and ammunition. Without the need to carry black oil for her own propulsion, she could carry 90 percent more jet aircraft fuel and 50 percent more aviation ordnance than could the largest conventional carriers, in addition to carrying black oil fuel for escorting ships.
Carrier Air Wing 9, as the reinforced Enterprise wing was designated, consisted of two squadrons of F-4B Phantom IIs, the most advanced and capable tactical aircraft in the world at that time. Originally designed and produced by the Navy as its standard fighter, the Phantom II was eventually adopted by the U.S. Air Force, NATO, and most free-world air forces. With a ceiling of more than forty-five thousand feet and a maximum speed of Mach 2, the F-4 could outperform any other fighter in any air force. Added to the air wing were four squadrons of A-4C Skyhawks, the relatively small and easy to maintain attack bombers capable of nuclear as well as conventional weapons delivery. The Skyhawk’s utility for carrier use lay not only in its small size but also in its large load-carrying capability. Empty, the Skyhawk weighed less than nine thousand pounds, but fully loaded with bombs and fuel on the catapult, it grossed more than twenty thousand pounds. These two Navy tactical combat planes were also favorites of U.S. allies. For example, on Armed Forces Day in Israel in 1969, the traditional “flyover” by the Israeli air force consisted exclusively of F-4 Phantom IIs and A-4 Skyhawks, both U.S. Navy — designed carrier planes sold to the Israelis to constitute the first line of their combat air force.
Also included in Air Wing 9 was a squadron of six RA-5C Vigilante reconnaissance aircraft, detachments of three A-3B Skywarrior tankers, E-1B Tracer radar surveillance aircraft, and UH-2A Seasprite rescue helicopters. Additional splinter groups of electronic countermeasures planes and a twin-engined passenger and cargo transport (carrier on-board delivery, or COD) would join the air wing when the Enterprise arrived in the South China Sea.
Only a one-week window was available to have the West Coast squadrons fly into the Naval Air Station Norfolk and be hoisted on board the carrier. Their personnel would be flown to Norfolk by U.S. Naval Reserve transport squadrons to walk on board with their personal gear. The support equipment for the air wing, much of it specialized for the type of plane assigned, had to be flown by Military Air Transport Service (MATS) planes from the air stations where the squadrons were based to Norfolk and then loaded on board ship. The biggest problem, however, was the change in personnel. It was the Navy’s policy at that time to make every effort to assign its sailors and officers to the coast of their preference, East or West. The Enterprise, upon departure for shakedown, had been destined to remain in the Atlantic, homeported at Norfolk. As a consequence, most of the personnel now on board were men who preferred East Coast duty. When the homeport was changed to San Francisco, which was the case when the Enterprise was ordered to deploy to the Pacific Fleet for combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, the Navy was obligated to transfer the sailors in the crew who had an East Coast preference and replace them with sailors who had indicated a preference for the West Coast. The problem caused the most difficulty for BuPers and the Atlantic Fleet personnel offices, but it still resulted in headaches for the Enterprise when sailors had to be transferred from their duty assignments and divisions where they had several years of experience and replaced with new men, who, although competent, were moving into a new ship with new shipmates.