THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 29, 1994 TAG: 9410290217
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DENNIS JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 214 lines
You might have to go back to 1861 to find a ship overhaul in Hampton Roads that compares to the one just finished at Newport News Shipbuilding.
The first one changed history when the Virginia, created at Portsmouth's Gosport shipyard from the burned hulk of a Union frigate, carried the Confederate flag in the furious standoff that was the Battle of the Ironclads.
This one required four years, $2.06 billion and a feat of engineering that the captain likens to building a space station. The result is, in many ways, the most advanced aircraft carrier in the Navy - the new Enterprise, made from a ship three decades old that came dangerously close to the scrap heap.
``The work was some of the most complex in the world,'' said Chief Petty Officer Curt Joiner, the senior enlisted man in the machinery division. ``The novelty was in knowing we were doing some things that had never been done before.''
But in an era of downsizing, when nuclear submarines and ships are leaving service well before their time, usefulness is determined more by the cost of refueling than by the strength of the steel or the pages on the calendar.
So it was with relief as well as pride that the crew guided ``The Big E'' out of the shipyard Sept. 27, later putting the carrier through sea trials, then landing and launching jets for the first time since the turn of the decade.
``I would tell the crew every day, `Pretty soon, you're going to sea,' '' said Capt. Richard J. Naughton, skipper of the Enterprise for the past 14 months. ``A lot of them didn't believe me. A lot of them looked at me like I was purple.''
Fueling their doubts were the debates in Congress about whether the Enterprise was worth the biggest overhaul the Navy had ever done, and later, whether the United States really needs 12 carriers.
Then there was the final five-month delay, in part because of a nuclear accident that cost as much as $10 million.
In the end, the Enterprise was in the yard so long that many sailors served their entire tours of duty at Newport News Shipbuilding - never going to sea, never witnessing what a carrier was built to do.
Chief Petty Officer Joiner, 37, is one of the few who was there from beginning to end. After five years with the Enterprise, he is transfering this week.
``I was determined,'' he said. ``I was going to bring her back out.''
Even Virginia congressmen were among those who once questioned whether the Navy should just build a new carrier instead. In hindsight, few disagree that the $2 billion was a good investment, considering the $4.6 billion price tag on the new carrier Newport News is building.
``It was a one-of-a-kind reactor design that presented very significant challenges and cost,'' said U.S. Rep. Herb Bateman, a Peninsula Republican. ``But it was a project that would give us a fully capable nuclear-powered carrier at a small portion of the cost to actually make a new carrier.''
Getting to this point was one of the toughest jobs the Navy and the shipyard had ever undertaken. Considering the complexity of refueling nuclear-powered ships, Naughton's space station analogy isn't far off, said Charles Wilson, who worked with the Navy's nuclear program as manager of the marine division at Babcock and Wilcox Co.
``You've got to open every damn thing up,'' said Wilson, who retired in 1980. ``Moving an element out and around is a relatively simple thing in a (nuclear) utility plant; I can add 10 stories if I want for more room. But moving it around in the bowels of an aircraft carrier, you have to take the whole ship apart.''
Capt. Naughton likened the process to going through a car's dashboard to change the spark plugs. The scars from that work still show on the Enterprise: Where holes were cut between decks and fuel rods hoisted up, steel panels are welded - to the floors of the ship's hangar deck, a medical area, an officers' wardroom.
With eight reactors turning four propellers, the Enterprise is the fastest carrier in the Navy; it reportedly outran a destroyer when it first put to sea in the early 1960s. But it has more power than its propellers can use, so all those reactors are more a burden than an advantage, especially at refueling.
Why so much power? It's the legacy of the nuclear Navy's founder, Adm. Hyman Rickover. The number eight was chosen because that's how many boilers that conventionally fueled carriers had, Wilson said. The Navy just replaced them with submarine reactors.
``Rickover was successful because he wasn't worried about costs,'' Wilson said. ``He was worried about results and safety. Once the Navy put in the basic submarine reactor, he was very protective about the design. He figured, `I did it right, I'll do it again,'' and for 15 years we really didn't develop anything new.''
Washington, on the other hand, was scared off by the cost of the Enterprise - $444 million, or $170 million more than its contemporary, the conventionally powered Constellation. Plans for the six carriers that were to follow in the Enterprise design were scrapped.
The Nimitz-class ships that have succeeded the Enterprise have only two reactors. They are designed especially for a carrier, which, unlike a submarine, must power up often, to land and launch its jets.
While structural requirements prevent engineers from reducing the number of reactors on the Enterprise, they have been able to modernize. The first refueling, for example, lasted only three years; this one and the past one, about 20.
About half the cost of refueling any Navy nuclear reactor, Wilson said, is for safety measures - robots for the hottest work, encasements to isolate huge sections of the ship, casks to haul away the highly radioactive spent fuel.
Adding to the risks in Navy work are fuel rods enriched with uranium to a level of about 50 percent, compared with less than 10 percent for utility company reactors. In addition, the Navy reactors remain sealed for years at a time, while utility companies can look inside more often, even moving their fuel rods around for consistent burning.
Once the Enterprise work began, Naughton said, it became clear that the power plant needed more repair than he had planned.
``Some things we got into were just harder. It's like when a $28 wheel balancing becomes a $550 ball joint replacement. We had a few ball joints.''
Nuclear work accounted for 52percent of the Enterprise job, the Navy said. The rest included work on nearly every system aboard and in nearly every one of the 3,500 compartments: replacing half a million feet of cable, rebuilding aircraft elevators and launching catapults - even adding a few feet to the angled landing deck.
Naughton estimates that 35 percent of the work was done by the crew, including the tedious task of donning protective body suits and chipping and scraping away old paint with pneumatic tools.
``It was not uncommon to hear some of the younger guys saying, `I didn't join the Navy to do this. I didn't go to school to do this,' '' said Chief Petty Officer Mark Merrill, 35. ``It took constant reminding that there is light at the end of the tunnel.''
Some sailors eager to get to sea were temporarily assigned to other ships. Jeremy Spaulding, a 23-year-old airman, spent a few days aboard the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower.
``Seeing an aircraft carrier get aircraft was nice,'' Spaulding said dryly. ``I said I wanted to go to sea, to see what it's like, to see a different culture. Being in the shipyard, I never got to.''<
The trip helped him decide to stay his course as an airman. He even decided he wants to stick with the Enterprise. ``I didn't think so at first, but now that they've shown the effort, that they can definitely achieve their goal . . . I was thinking we'd never make it out of the shipyard, but we made it.''
At the same time they've been pitching in aboard their ship, crew members have been helping out in the neighborhoods that have been their homes for so long.
The size of the crew has ranged from 2,500 to 3,500 during the four-year overhaul.
``When they came aboard they were told, `This is your community for the next four years. You want to be a part of this community, that's up to you. You want to be an outcast, that's up to you, too,'' said Command Master Chief Ralph S. Herzog, the ship's senior enlisted man.
Many took the Navy up on the offer. Herzog rattled off a list of charitable causes and other activities the crew participates in. A petty officer aboard even came up with the idea for the Helping Hands program, which earned the Enterprise one of President George Bush's Thousand Points of Light.
Said U.S. Rep. Bateman, ``The crew of the Enterprise is so substantial. . .
A symbol of how long the Enterprise has been out of commission is the A-6 Intruder. At the time the Enterprise entered the Newport News yard, in the winter of 1991, the attack jet was a workhorse in every carrier's air wing. Within months, it was delivering more ordnance than any Navy plane in the Persian Gulf war.
But when the Enterprise makes its next Mediterranean deployment in May 1996, it is scheduled to carry the last squadron of Intruders.
The A-6 was the newest, most potent bomber in the Navy force when it first came aboard the Enterprise during one of the ship's four tours of duty in Vietnam. A news account from aboard the ship in 1967 said Intruder squadrons, penetrating monsoon clouds that had grounded older planes, were ``carrying the bombing load in the air war over Vietnam.''
During the ship's four years in the yard, the Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War ended and the military started cutting back wherever it could. The A-6 was one victim.
``It makes things a little more difficult,'' said Capt. Bob Davis, who is coming aboard as commander of the Enterprise's 2,000-member air wing. ``It will be more of a challenge. We won't have the long-range, all-weather type of delivery system.''
He's confident the Navy's versatile plane of the future, the F/A-18 Hornet, will help make up for the loss. The Enterprise brought aboard and launched Hornets for the first time earlier this month.
With pilots grounded last summer as a Pentagon cost-saving move, Davis is working to update their carrier certifications before the Enterprise heads back to the yard once again; from January to June, it will be fitted with the newest electronics.
Davis' command, Carrier Air Wing 17, served aboard the Saratoga until the ship was decommissioned this summer. Its members are just getting accustomed to the quirks of the new ship - including the ``burble,'' a movement of air around a carrier's island that sucks planes toward the deck.
The Enterprise, with an island 20 percent wider than other carriers, has the biggest burble in the fleet.
``I knew it was there, I could feel it,'' Davis said after landing aboard the carrier last week. ``It's something you have to be aware of and adjust for.''
With the whole crew just recently moved aboard, everyone is still adjusting to the carrier's quirks: the mural of earlier Enterprises covering the hangar bay door (there have been eight of the ships); the small berthing spaces (with all those nuclear technicians, it has the biggest ship's crew in the Navy), the unusual steering characteristics (it's the only carrier with four rudders).
Chief Petty Officer Terry Hensley, 38, has just learned he cannot park radar-jamming EA-6B Prowlers in the spaces next to the island. But he's enjoying the process of learning this unusal ship's characteristics.
``You ever been aboard a carrier before?'' asked some visitors to his flight deck as he motioned a Hornet pilot toward his parking place.
``The George Washington,'' one yells over the engine noise. ``The Nimitz,'' adds another.
``So you've never been aboard a carrier?'' quips Hensley, who transfered aboard just a few weeks ago. ``This is the greatest ship in the Navy.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photos by MOTOYA NAKAMURA/
The deck crew of the Enterprise checks for any objects that could
destroy aircraft engines. Political pressures, a huge price tag and
the technical difficulties of working on a nuclear-powered giant all
brought ``The Big E'' close to the scrap heap.
Photos by Motoya Nakamura
At left, a helicopter on the Enterprise receives a waxing. On duty
are, from left, aviation mechanic hydraulic Brian A. Rowe, aviation
machinist mate Paul Mackowsky and airman John Cox. Above, Capt.
Richard J. Naughton, skipper of the ship for the past 14 months,
talks with a crew member on the phone.
by CNB