THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Business Weekly editor Ted Evanoff described Decatur Avenue in Norfolk accurately: ``(A)n industrial artery . . . you must tilt your head back to see the end of the flight decks. You are that close. . . .'' And so it is and so it must continue.
I am concerned that transforming Decatur Avenue and other Naval Station Norfolk areas into a Hampton Roads economic-development area will make it nearly impossible for 2nd Fleet ships to transform themselves into fully loaded and sustainable fighting units. A pleasing-to-the-eye Naval Station, earning revenue for a budget-constrained Navy, is a compelling alternative. It has the look and feel of a win-win. Operating costs can be matched against a revenue base; military retention is bolstered; a geographic area is economically improved.
In time, as has been the case in every decade since World War II, Norfolk will mobilize its fleet. When it happens, and it will happen, in a matter of hours numbers of our ships will be ordered to deploy to troubled places. Supplies will be rushed to those piers at all times of day, without regard for any event other than the singularly encompassing effort to send the ships to sea ready for sea.
I was the commanding officer of the Norfolk Naval Supply Center during Desert Storm. At the time of the initial loadout of our battle and service groups, in a two-week period of around-the-clock operations we delivered down Decatur Avenue enough pallets of supplies to make a two-lane highway to Atlanta.
It did not end with the battle group sortie. Remember the logistics effort that Naval Station Norfolk sustained over many months. As the war progressed, the demand on the Naval Station infrastructure continue unabated. We desperately missed the rail right of way that would have made intermodal transportation a time-saving reality. The pace of pallet trucks on Decatur made driving a private vehicle a serious problem.
This was not Festevents friendly business. Naval Station Norfolk performed majestically as an industrial-support base without equal. At the conclusion of Desert Storm and as the DOD re-engineered downsizing began, we on the military waterfront noted in our lesson-learned log books to never give up on capability to operate from an efficient logistics platform.
Bottom line: A naval station that tries to mix its industrial mission with the neighboring communities cannot return to wartime support in the nick of time, and there is no alternative to sending our ships out ready for sea.
I do not want Admirals Flanagan and Cole to ``think like businessmen.'' I want them to think like the war fighters that I know them to be. Let Decatur Avenue remain as it is - a superb logistics highway, smelling of jet and diesel fuel, stores and sweat, ready and able to put ships to sea.
CHARLES E. SMITH
Captain, U.S. Navy (ret.)
Virginia Beach, Feb. 19, 1996 by CNB