The Enterprise was underway on schedule on 26 October 1965, bound for Puerto Rico and two days of simulated Vietnam strike operations using live ordnance against the Vieques Island practice ranges. This was the first time the Enterprise and her aircraft had operated together since her refueling overhaul at Newport News Shipyard more than a year earlier. Remarkably, both the air wing and the carrier received an overall grade of excellent for the live-ammunition exercise. Then, without a port visit, the ship’s bow swung southeast and headed for the Cape of Good Hope, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea. The first task was to top off combat consumables, jet fuel and ammunition. The carrier spent the entire first night alongside the oiler Sabine (AO-25) loading jet fuel, and an ammo ship, the Shasta (AE-6), from which more than four hundred tons of bombs and missiles were loaded.
With the nuclear-powered frigate Bainbridge (DLGN-25) in company, the Enterprise broke away from the replenishment ships, ringing up twenty-eight knots. The combat deployment of the first nuclear-powered carrier battle group had begun. Steaming at twenty-eight to thirty knots across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the carrier conducted full-scale flight operations for nine days of the three-week transit. Officers on board the Enterprise had been told the ship would be committed to combat immediately upon arrival in the Gulf of Tonkin. No warm-up period would be possible. So these flight operations en route were vital. In fact, it was not until reaching the Straits of Malacca that we found the solution to servicing a flight deck packed with ninety airplanes. Because of the sheer numbers of aircraft, we had to invent new procedures for aircraft handling and flight deck patterns never used before on U.S. carriers. In the final days before arriving in the western Pacific at the Straits of Malacca, I was on the flight deck convincing the aircraft handling officer that the only solution to the problem was the most unorthodox scheme of having the first planes to land taxi up to the bow on the portside then circle down the starboard side to park for refueling and rearming. Neither the pilots nor the aircraft handling crews liked taxiing aft on a flight deck with a steady wind of forty knots coming from the bow of the ship and other aircraft landing on the angled deck. But it turned out to be the basis of the new standard operating procedure, which allowed all forty aircraft in a single launch to be recovered, refueled, rearmed, and then launched an hour later.
When the Enterprise reached the Straits of Malacca, the ship’s aviation fuel tanks were low because of the extensive flight operations en route. A U.S. Navy oiler was waiting in the approaches to the straits. At 1900 that evening, the Enterprise hooked up to the USS Navasota (AO-106) and remained alongside for eleven hours, taking on 1.3 million gallons of jet fuel as the tanker negotiated the turns in the narrow strait with the Enterprise maintaining station alongside — with only a seventy-foot gap — over which the fuel lines were pumping aviation fuel forward and black oil aft. The black oil was for the carrier’s escorting destroyers, most of which would be conventionally powered.
The following day the Enterprise turned north to head for Vietnam at thirty knots. That morning a COD transport aircraft landed on board with members of the staff of Task Force 77 to brief the Enterprise crew on operations in Vietnam. The Enterprise was to commence combat operations immediately upon arrival. The air wing components were new to each other and to the ship, and the Enterprise had not completed a shakedown, but no one on board questioned our being ready. Training and work-up, though, would not be easy. More than 6,250 people were in the crew and their average age was under twenty-two. Most of the sailors, in fact, were on their first cruise. The brief time to prepare for the transfer from the Atlantic Fleet to the Pacific Fleet, the additional two squadrons in the wing, the special considerations of nuclear power, and the immediate requirement to handle maximum loads of live ammunition all added to the dimensions of the task.
The ship’s officers, with the exception of the commanding officer, executive officer, reactor officer, chief engineers, and supply officer, all of whom were nuclear trained, had not been handpicked for the Enterprise assignment. All were individuals who were routinely qualified and due for a tour of duty on an aircraft carrier. The Enterprise was to be their duty station for the next three years.
In the air wing, all of the squadron commanders were veterans of previous combat tours in Korea or Vietnam. These were the hearts and minds of the ship’s fighting capability, the combat leaders. Either the commanding officer or executive officer of each squadron led virtually every combat flight. The leader was the plane first in on the attack. The professional and courageous leadership of these strike leaders in Vietnam was clearly a deciding factor in the effectiveness of the carrier air war, but the Navy paid dearly for it: Sixty-seven air wing commanders, squadron commanders, and executive officers were lost in combat during the conflict.
A profile of the squadron commanders who served on board the Enterprise on the 1965–66 deployment would be typical of that found in any naval air wing at that time. All were mature officers, in their early forties, with more than twenty years’ experience as commissioned officers, most of it flying planes off carriers. About half were graduates of the United States Naval Academy, and the others were products of the Naval Aviation Cadet Program at Pensacola, Florida, and the “regular” NROTC program. More than 60 percent had advanced degrees, mainly master’s degrees in personnel management, aviation ordnance engineering, and aeronautical engineering. Four of the squadron commanders went on to become rear admirals, and all of them made captain. Three were killed in action as squadron commanders, and one died as the result of an accident landing on the Enterprise at night. All were competent aviators and fine leaders. In the Navy, squadron commanders were not assigned on the basis of seniority alone. Each one was the product of a selection board convened in the Bureau of Naval Personnel that picked only the very best from those naval officers with the requisite qualifications and aviation experience and demonstrated competence. These officers were all exceptional leaders admired by their junior officers and crew and absolutely committed to their responsibilities.