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Though it was inevitable that a carrier would be named after FDR in 1945, up through the 1960's, most of our carriers were equally given historically important names, either being named after important battles or after earlier ships. But beginning with the John F. Kennedy (one of about ten thousand things sentimentally named after JFK after 1963) that tradition was broken. The next carrier which was launched was named after Admiral Chester Nimitz, but to me that was appropriate since Nimitz was the naval commander who won the Pacific war, and commanded the greatest concentration of air craft carriers the world has ever known (more than 35 at a time). When Eisenhower died, they named a carrier after him, though I'm not sure he ever saw a carrier while serving. Then a carrier was named after Carl Vinson, a US Congressman -- and the floodgates were opened. Now nearly all our carriers are named after politicians, and I don't like it. I suppose I can accept carriers named after Washington and Lincoln, though a carrier named after Teddy Roosevelt is a bit strange, and who the hell was Carl Vinson? Fortunately, that idiocy isn't percolating down to our light carriers and cruisers, which still carry names honoring military history. Wasp, Essex, Kearsarge and Bonhomme Richard are named after honored ships from the past. Boxer, Bataan, Tarawa, Saipan, Belleau Wood, Nassau and Peleliu are named after battles where the US Marines fought well -- which is appropriate because our light carriers are designed to support Marine amphibious landings. It is proper to commemorate battles this way. Nearly all of our cruisers are named after famous battles; to a student of US military history those ship names bring back strong images (except for Thomas S. Gates; I don't have the faintest idea who that was). Our destroyers are nearly all named after individuals from military history. Attack subs are named after cities and states, and boomers are named after states. Except Seawolf, but I think that's a pretty cool name for an attack sub, and that in turn harkens back to the old convention of naming attack submarines after predatory fish, the convention used during WWII. Names like Narwhal, Shark, Tuna, Dace, Darter and the oddly-named Wahoo bring back memories of brave and desperate men to the student, and Squalus is a source of much sorrow (as, indeed, is Wahoo). I am disappointed that there is no longer a USS England. She was a destroyer-escort (sort of a cut-rate destroyer) named after Ensign John C. England who was killed at Pearl Harbor, and she was part of a group of destroyers deployed as a hunter-killer squadron for anti-submarine warfare. The Japanese often used their submarines for scouting duty, and an order to a group of them was intercepted and decoded by the Americans, who determined where they would be. This DE group was dispatched to the area, and rolled up the line of submarines. Over the course of about about two weeks, despite being one of about five ships in this group, England was responsible for sinking six Japanese submarines, a record unmatched in history. The Chief of Naval Operations radioed: "There will always be an England in the US Navy." Alas, there no longer is. I am happy to see that the newest light carrier in the US Navy will be commissioned with the honored name Iwo Jima. It almost removes the sour taste I have in my mouth from knowing that our next big-deck carrier will be named Ronald Reagan. (God forbid we should ever name one "Clinton".) (discuss) Update 20010701: A reader writes in with this link which describes who Thomas S. Gates was. Based on that, I have to say it was completely reasonable to name a ship after him. |
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