Last Mission for the USS Enterprise

Here's a fun story pointed out to me by my brother this morning. The U.S. naval aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, activated back in 1962 as the world's first nuclear powered carrier, is on its final deployment. After this, it will be deactivated, decommissioned, and finally reduced to scrap. The Enterprise has a long and storied history, as have other ships of that name, highlighted in this article from CNN:

In October of 1962, the ship had just finished its maiden deployment when the White House and the Kremlin sparred over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.

"We'd only been back a couple of weeks and they said, 'get out to the ship.' Nobody knew what we were doing, so we flew our airplanes out to the carrier as we were headed south," McCain said.

The Enterprise was one of the first U.S. ships to establish a blockade around Cuba, according to Navy documents on the Enterprise's history.

"I was launched a couple of times just to fly around, but not towards Cuba," said McCain, now the senior senator from Arizona. "They made sure we headed away from Cuba so as not to spark anything."

After 13 days, the crisis eased and the Enterprise returned to its home port of Norfolk, Va.

The carrier played a large role during Vietnam, and its story includes a major accident that took the lives of 27 sailors and 15 planes. But despite this disaster, the Enterprise sped back to the combat zone following emergency repairs.

After dozens of deployments around the world over the next three decades, the Enterprise was leaving the Persian Gulf for home when the hijack attacks struck New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

Without orders, the Enterprise turned around and steamed at maximum speed toward Pakistan. By October 7, warplanes on the Enterprise were among the first to launch retaliatory strikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

According to the article, the USS Enterprise will be deactivated on December 1st. Over the next three years, its nuclear reactors will be safely removed. Soon thereafter, it will be salvaged and sold for scrap.

So is the 8th USS Enterprise the last of the line? Anyone who knows their future history knows the answer to this. Plans are in the works that a future carrier, already on the books, will be christened Enterprise. (Assuming it isn't cut out of the Navy's budget, that is.)

It brings to mind the end of this classic: