THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 10, 1996 TAG: 9608100251
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 109 lines
With sailors streaming from its innards and pennants stricken from its mast, the aircraft carrier America retired from the fleet Friday, ending 31 1/2 years and more than a million miles at sea.
Nineteen of the flattop's 23 skippers looked on as the ship's enlisted ranks, gleaming in white under a sunny, near-cloudless sky, marched down a bunting-draped gangplank to end the America's active life at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
Roughly 3,000 others - former crew members, their families and top Navy brass - joined in their goodbyes to a ship that launched jets into combat in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf and carried the flag into the Mediterranean 15 times.
And many of them bid farewell to a piece of themselves.
``Look at it,'' said retired Vice Adm. Frederick C. Turner, the America's third captain, gazing on the flattop with members of his old crew. ``Put together so well, and still beautiful.
``If I were the captain, I'd get up in my cabin and get on the bullhorn and say, `I'm not coming out. I'm not giving it up.' ''
Bob Petrell, a sonarman on the America's first crew who traveled from San Diego for the ceremony, said: ``I expected to retire a long time before she did. Somehow she beat me to it, and that's a shame - especially for a ship that bears the country's name.
``I was aboard when this ship was under construction,'' Petrell said. ``I think I sat in the captain's chair, up on the bridge, before he did.''
The 90-minute ceremony beside the Elizabeth River's Southern Branch evoked memories of the ship's commissioning, in exactly the same spot, in January 1965.
The shipyard berth bore the trappings of a happy occasion: colorful bunting, a Navy band belting out Sousa marches, reception tents dispensing cookies and ``bug juice.''
But melancholy lurked.
The America was leaving service ``proud, competitive, on top, and in the lead,'' speaker Vice Adm. John J. Mazach, commander of the Atlantic Fleet's air force, said.
First, he noted: ``It's great to see so many familiar faces, but I gotta be honest with you - I wish it were under different circumstances.''
Afterward, his voice cracking, Turner said: ``What really got to me was the crew coming off - the life of the ship leaving. That got to me.''
He was echoed by retired Rear Adm. Lawrence Heyworth Jr., the America's first captain. ``It really didn't come to me until the final part of the ceremony, when the sailors walked off the ship,'' he said. ``I shed a few tears at that point.
``I never thought about it at the time, and I don't think it occurs to any skipper of a ship, that it will someday be decommissioned. But when the Forrestal was decommissioned, I realized, hey, I guess this is going to happen to the America someday.
``It just happened a bit sooner than I expected.''
Friday's speeches ended with the America's last commanding officer, Capt. Robert E. Besal of Virginia Beach, signing the ship's log as his audience suppressed sobs.
``United States Ship America, CV-66,'' he wrote, ``decommissioned and deck log closed.''
Still, Friday's sendoff was no gloomy affair. It resounded with praise for the vast ship, as well as the sailors and aviators who have lived aboard it.
``We are here today to pay tribute not only to a piece of hardware,'' Mazach said, ``but to the experiences of her crew, to their accomplishments, to shared joy and suffering, to tearful partings and even more tearful homecomings.''
``America's sons and daughters made this great ship,'' said keynote speaker Adm. Leighton W. ``Snuffy'' Smith Jr., a former America skipper who rose to four stars and command of the Navy's European forces and the Allied Forces Southern Europe.
``And we who sailed in her did not know whether the hands that crafted her were black or white, red or brown, male or female.
``More importantly, we didn't care,'' he said, the stars and stripes of an enormous hanging flag his backdrop. ``We just knew that this nation designed, built, equipped and deployed this ship exactly where it would make a difference: at the point of freedom's spear.''
Sheathed in fresh paint, its smartly turned-out crew at parade rest, the carrier wore its age well - a facade, given that its interior had been stripped, its berthing spaces sealed, its ventilation system shut down in preparation for its layup.
By summer's end, most of its remaining 1,200 crewmen will have moved on to other assignments. By next spring, the 1,047-foot carrier will be mothballed in Philadelphia, its accomplishments the stuff of memory and history books.
Three nine-month tours in Vietnam. Nineteen major deployments. Some 319,504 aircraft ``traps,'' or deck-top landings, and 346,843 catapult ``shots'' from the deck.
``I had an in-port cabin,'' said Turner, who commanded the ship on its first trip to Vietnam. ``I don't think I saw it but one time while we were deployed. We were busy.
``But we were in the Gulf of Tonkin one night, and I went up on deck. There was a full moon, and as I stood there, looking at the sea and the flight deck in the moonlight, I thought to myself: `What a life. What a thrill.
`` `What a thrill to be the captain of a ship named for my country.' '' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
BETH BERGMAN
The Virginian-Pilot
The America, behind crew members at Friday's decommissioning
ceremony, will be mothballed in Philadelphia by next spring.
BETH BERGMAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Bill Dale, center, of San Antonio, Texas, came to the America's
decommissioning ceremony because he was a flight deck petty officer
when the aircraft carrier was commissioned in 1965.
KEYWORDS: DECOMMISSION USS AMERICA by CNB