3. The aircraft assigned to the embarked air wing would be determined for each deployment. If the CV were deploying to combat in Vietnam, for example, the air wing would be tailored for that mission and consist mainly of fighter and attack planes.
4. If the CV were deploying to the Sixth Fleet where combat was not in progress, but where Soviet submarines would be routinely encountered in both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the CV’s air wing would be mainly ASW aircraft, the S-3 Viking and ASW-configured helicopters. The dollar cost to prepare a CVA of the Forrestal class to operate an ASW-oriented air wing was $925,000 for shops and support equipment, as opposed to the price tag of about $500 million for a new CVS.
5. The capability to change the carrier’s air wing would normally take place prior to a carrier’s deployment but could in an emergency be changed with the carrier deployed at sea.
This change in air wing composition while at sea did occur on two subsequent occasions within the next three years, and I was involved in both operations, first as the commander of the Carrier Striking Force, Sixth Fleet (CTF 60) in 1970 and in 1972 as the deputy commander, Atlantic Fleet, at which time the USS Saratoga’s air wing was changed from an attack type to an ASW wing, with the aircraft staging in both directions through the U.S. Naval Air Station in Bermuda.
The CV Concept exploited the arrangement of “base loading,” instituted in conjunction with the introduction of NATOPS, whereby when the carrier squadrons were not embarked in a carrier between deployments, the individual squadrons were based at naval air stations segregated by type. Light attack planes (A-4s and A-7s) were consolidated at NAS Jacksonville and NAS Lemoore, fighters (F-4, and later F-14) at NAS Oceana and Lemoore, and all-weather attack planes (A-6) at NAS Whidbey Island and NAS Oceana. The replacement air wings, which provided both initial and refresher operational training by type aircraft, were located at the stations where the same type fleet squadrons were based.
Previously, the different kinds of squadrons assigned to an air wing would remain together at one air station under their shipboard wing commander. Now, each kind of aircraft would have its own type aircraft wing commander, a flag officer experienced in that particular type, to oversee the training and logistics of that branch of carrier aviation. Squadrons had become much more efficient when shore based between cruises, with the special supply support, training facilities, and target areas, concentrated in a single geographic area, readily available to the single-mission type aircraft based at the airfield.
This arrangement greatly improved the aviation maintenance situation, with the supply support and the overhaul facility located on the naval air station with the type of aircraft supported. These features of the CV Concept were phased in over 1968 to 1970 and are still in effect in naval aviation in 2007, a quarter of a century later.
Adm. Bud Zumwalt, Admiral Moorer’s relief as CNO, also was impressed with the CV Concept. In his book On Watch, he states, “This idea [the CV Concept], originated by then Rear Admiral Jim Holloway, was to make all carriers which customarily had been designated as either attack carriers (CVAs) or antisubmarines (CVSs) into dual purpose vessels…. All that this involved was modifying the deck-loadings so that each ship carried both attack and anti-submarine planes instead of one or the other, adding some minor command and control apparatus, and of course installing the spare parts and the maintenance equipment that such a change in deck-loading necessitated. The cost of changing a carrier over was $975,000, a sum minuscule by comparison with what almost anything else in the DoD costs nowadays.”
JUSTIFICATION FOR LARGE-DECK NUCLEAR CARRIERS
It was the testimony of Senator Mondale’s witnesses in 1970 that best identified the main arguments of the anticarrier groups, or at least the issues they considered to be the most vulnerable in the rationale for the aircraft carrier program. From this testimony, the basic justification and defense of the carrier in the debate were articulated in a point paper called “The Case for the Nuclear Carrier.” This point paper was distributed through the Navy Department for the guidance of naval officers and senior civilians to prepare them for appearances before Congress, meetings with OSD officials, delivering prepared remarks, drafting magazine articles, and meetings with the press — in fact, for just about any occasion when the subject of aircraft carriers might be broached. This was not the sort of position paper that could be handed out to the public. The paper tried to cover all of the many aspects about carriers that needed to be known to appreciate their role as the principal ship in the U.S. Navy. Consequently, the paper became so lengthy that it began to lose its usefulness as a handy reference.
The one aspect of aircraft carriers that seemed to evoke the most criticism was vulnerability, which I attempted to recast as carrier “survivability.” Because of the mindset on carrier vulnerability that had been established among the public, we worked hard on getting this message across. Our rationale ran along the following lines:
1. No U.S. Navy aircraft carrier has been damaged by enemy action since 1945, although the carriers have been in the forefront of every U.S. war since that time. The critics have attempted to downplay this evidence of carrier survivability because of the limited nature of these wars, but it is nearly certain that those are the kinds of wars we will encounter.
2. Carriers have demonstrated in the most intense levels of conventional naval warfare that they can survive concentrated and repeated attacks and still retain sufficient operational capability to carry out their mission. In World War II, the Japanese launched 2,314 aircraft in kamikaze attacks against the U.S. fleet, with the carriers as the main target. In spite of the fact that the kamikaze was for all practical purposes a guided missile with one of the most sophisticated guidance systems possible — a human being — not one U.S. fleet carrier was sunk in those attacks. In fact, not a single modern fleet carrier — Essex-class World War II design and subsequent — has ever been sunk. Some were hit and damaged in World War II, but all eventually survived.
3. Modern carriers are very durable ships, built to absorb considerable punishment as well as to deal it out. If a carrier does sustain hits from conventional bombs, torpedoes, or missiles, there will be damage, of course, but that doesn’t mean the carrier will be destroyed or even put out of action. The hardness designed into modern attack carriers is illustrated by the accidental fire in 1969 aboard the nuclear-powered carrier Enterprise, when nine major-caliber bombs (750 to 1,000 pounds) exploded on its flight deck. The ship could have resumed air operations in four hours, as soon as the debris was cleared from the after end of the landing platform. Three of the multiple installations of arresting gear and two of the catapults were operational, and the holes in the flight deck were quickly covered with sheet steel by damage-control parties.
4. In contrast, during the Korean War, all friendly tactical airfields were overrun and captured by enemy ground forces at least once. In Vietnam, more than three hundred Army and Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft were destroyed by enemy action on U.S. airfields, and about three thousand more aircraft were damaged. On the other hand, since World War II no naval aircraft has ever suffered enemy damage on board one of our aircraft carriers. These unique advantages of basing U.S. military forces and logistics in international waters, where they are available around the world to respond to trouble sites, have become the controlling considerations in the future military strategy of the United States.