Admiral Shinn established himself in the ship captain’s in-port cabin, which was unoccupied. It was always made available for visiting VIPs at sea when the captain was living in the sea cabin. Shinn invited me and the two rear admirals at Yankee Station, assigned as Commander, TF 77 and Commander, TG 77.0, to join him and his small staff aboard the Enterprise for a general discussion of the carrier operations.
Admiral Shinn opened our session with an almost emotional discussion of the competition for the Pacific Fleet Battle Efficiency Pennant for carriers in 1966. Shinn started by saying that he and his staff had done everything possible to prevent the USS Enterprise from winning the award. His reasons were, first, the Enterprise had joined the Pacific Fleet only in December 1965 at Yankee Station. Second, as the fleet’s only nuclear-powered carrier, it had received plenty of public visibility and recognition. By virtue of that he saw no reason why further honors should not be spread around a little more in his carrier force.
Initially, when the competitive scores had been tallied and computed, the Enterprise had won the overall Battle Efficiency E (award for excellence) as well as Es in four of the six departmental areas. Shinn said he sent his staff back to their statistics and adding machines to find some way to keep the Enterprise from running away with all of the prizes. At this time I was not entirely sure whether or not Al Shinn was speaking entirely in jest. But everyone else in the room was still smiling.
Shinn then quickly concluded by saying that after several recomputations of the competitive scores in an attempt to eliminate the Enterprise, he gave up. There was nothing else to do but confirm that the Enterprise had won the E for top overall performance among the nine carriers and had also carried off departmental Es for the CIC and Communications Departments. With that, Shinn turned to the senior aide accompanying him, who pulled from his briefcase a large bronze shield with the “E” for excellence on it, the actual award plaque for the E. Shinn then mellowed a bit and explained that they all knew the Enterprise had really earned this award, but his staff had somehow hoped that an older, conventional ship with a long tenure in the Pacific Fleet could have won the award just for sentimental reasons.
The ceremony broke up with me heading for the bridge, the E award firmly in my custody, and the admirals, their staffs, and the Enterprise and I all got back to the business of fighting the war in Vietnam.
THE WAR COUNCIL MEETS
In the early spring of 1967, C7F proposed a conference of the U.S. principals in Vietnam along with their allied counterparts to be held on board the Enterprise. General Westmoreland was enthusiastic and the conference was laid on. But frankly, it was an awful burden to be imposed on a warship in the middle of an active military campaign. The Enterprise was pulled off the line for a day and took station thirty miles off Saigon. The U.S. ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge; the overall U.S. military commander in the area, General Westmoreland; the U.S. Army commander, General Abrams; the South Vietnamese president, General Thieu, and Prime Minister Ky, plus their aides and staffs and all of the U.S. Navy flag officers in the Seventh Fleet, were flown on board. Most of the conferees arrived as passengers in the eight-seat C-1 COD aircraft.
Prime Minister Ky, as the air marshal of the South Vietnamese air force, insisted on flying on board in the copilot’s seat of a COD and almost outwrestled the Navy pilot on the controls during the carrier landing. The U.S. ambassador, General Westmoreland, President Thieu, and the U.S. Navy aviation flag officers all requested to be flown aboard in the bombardier/navigator’s seat of an A-6 Intruder. This was a real test of naval resourcefulness as each of these dignitaries had to be equipped in flight harnesses then checked out in combat jet safety procedures.
The guests landed between 1100 and 1130, and the conference took place in the Enterprise’s war room. At 1300 an elegant lunch was served in the senior officers’ end of the wardroom, replete with speeches from the leaders of both nations and glasses of nonalcoholic champagne. After lunch there was an impressive ceremony on the hangar deck during which Thieu and Ky presented medals to Seventh Fleet flag officers and the CTF 77 carrier skippers. This was followed by departure honors for each of the principals as they were lifted to the flight deck on the ship’s deck-edge elevator. They then climbed into their planes and were flown off to the military airfield at Saigon.
Then, at 1800 that afternoon, the Enterprise launched sixteen A-4s and eight F-4 Phantom IIs to resume their schedule of air operations against the Vietcong.
SHOW OF SHOWS
Not all of the visits on board the Enterprise were on official business. In May 1966 a USO troupe visiting the ground troops in Vietnam agreed to come on board to put on a show in exchange for a freshwater shower, a hot meal, and a night between clean sheets. Carrier hangar decks provided excellent venues for a USO revue. The Enterprise was off Saigon, on the 0800 to 2000 flying shift with a relatively undemanding schedule typical of Dixie Station.
The USO group, which included Danny Kaye and Martha Raye, landed two carrier-capable passenger aircraft at about 1500. The show was put on at 2000 on the hangar deck after flight operations had been concluded. Virtually all members of the crew not actually on watch were in attendance, some literally hanging from the rafters. With troupers like Danny Kaye and Martha Raye, the routines were funny and the acts mostly musical. Because the shows had to fit into the carrier’s schedule of operations, the timing required that the troupe spend the night on board ship. To fly from Point Dixie to Saigon at 2200 in the evening was considered too risky. So Martha Raye was put up in the commanding officer’s in-port cabin — mine.
The next morning, before the USO group boarded their two CODs for the trip back to Saigon, they spent the morning visiting the sailors in their work spaces. Kaye, an experienced pilot himself and owner of a twin-engine personal plane, visited the pilots’ ready rooms. Before departing, he collected phone numbers of the pilots’ wives so he could call them, upon his return to Hollywood, to report that all was well on board the Enterprise. My wife Dabney confirmed that he carried out this offer in a very courteous and delightful way.
I had gone down to my cabin to escort Martha Raye to her plane on the flight deck, and in an aside, told the Filipino steward, “Don’t remove those sheets.” A week later, at a “smoker” on the hangar deck for the crew, the scented — according to the young sailor auctioneer — sheets slept on by Martha Raye, unwashed, were auctioned off, and after a round of hot bidding, sold for two hundred dollars. The money went to the Enterprise recreation fund, and the original buyer at the auction turned around and sold each of his two sheets to shipmates for $125 each. It is remarkable how much fun a group of sailors can extract from a single visit from home.
For the remainder of the cruise, the Enterprise was able to live up to the standards it had set for itself, as well as the fleet, by winning the Battle Efficiency award. Not only did the Enterprise continue its top performance in the area of combat air operations and replenishment, but the ship’s crew was also “mentioned in dispatches” when in May the carrier visited Hong Kong and elicited from the senior officer present, a British vice admiral, the following message: “Your fine bluejackets have again earned my admiration for their exemplary conduct ashore on liberty during your recent visit to Hong Kong.”