On May 14, 2005, the former Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carrier USS America did not go down fighting but instead succumbed to a precisely orchestrated exercise in live-fire testing. It was carefully orchestrated by the Navy and others in gathering boatloads of valuable information, which would influence the design of future naval ships, thus becoming a major contribution to the field of naval engineering.
The USS America was named by President John F. Kennedy and once considered to be “America’s flagship”; it had a very glorious service record. Build and commissioned in 1965, the aircraft carrier contributed to significant agitations during most of the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm. Having served over more than three decades, the USS America was finally put to rest in 1996, which initiated lots of discussions and arguments regarding her ultimate disposal.
The Navy didn’t send the America to become a museum. It was sent for a special demise: a test case for live-fire, designed to provide useful data to improve the follow-on carrier’s battle-worthiness. The official Navy press released the statement that: “The data collected during the 25 days at sea from test events were of great value to Navy engineers and designers to improve the design and survivability of the nation’s future aircraft carrier fleet.”
The Naval Sea Systems Command said the USS America was scuttled about 266 miles southeast of the Outer Banks. The sinking was conducted by a controlled flood and explosives placed inside the ship, ending a 25-day exercise of explosive tests. The tests were important for the design for the CVN-78, a carrier being designed at Northrop Grumman Newport News. Experts had found that a big ship like ours, having a double hull, was invincible. For a missile to deeply penetrate the hull through a sequence of compartments, it would have done critical damage to the ship.
Thomas Trujillo, whose group, the America Carrier Veterans Association, summed this up by saying, “It went down in one piece, by the bow.” Throughout the entire testing process, The USS America proved to be extremely sturdy. So much so that one expert remarked, “It took four weeks and they ended up scuttling her from onboard due to her not sinking.”
Most significantly, the legacy of the USS America lives on, not only in the deep to which she has gone but in lessons learned that have been incorporated in the design of new supercarriers like the class, and continue in aspects of carrier survivability and design in a communal commitment that respectfully binds the story of the USS America with continued rising standards of United States Navy excellence in the world’s waters.
By all accounts, the USS America is the largest warship ever sunk on purpose. The scope of the whole project went far beyond such recognition. An Adm. John Natham, the former Vice Chief of the Naval Operations, thus said of the magnitude of the mission: “America will make one final and vital contribution to our national defense, this time as a live-fire test and evaluation platform.”
In a related development, commissioned July 22, 2017, was the USS Gerald R. Ford, the new design aircraft carrier and its class since USS Nimitz. Its characteristics included two new reactors, substantially higher electrical capacity, electromagnetic aircraft launch system, electromagnetic advanced arresting gear, and electromagnetic weapons elevators. These enhancements enable faster and more continuous loading of weapons and launching of aircraft. The carrier’s new “island” superstructure uses flat panel array radar systems and other more state of the art dual band radar, located 140 feet forward in a previously improbable part of the flight deck. Also redesigned, the superstructure and the flight deck combine forces to increase the launch and recovery area for aircraft by 25 percent and reduced the number of elevators destined for the aircraft from four to three.
The final mission of the USS America and the commissioning of the USS Gerald R. Ford demonstrates that naval capability is always in and growing as the U.S. Navy’s first consideration upon the seas.