USS Enterprise (wallpaper 2) Ship Gallery | OceanShooter

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USS Enterprise (wallpaper 2). USS Enterprise ship images wallpaper gallery 2. USS Enterprise ship pictures and images collection 2. At the launch of ENTERPRISE on September 24, 1960, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was the mightiest warship to ever sail the seas. Enterprise is the longest carrier in the Navy at 1,123 feet. It is also the tallest (250 feet) and fastest (30+ nautical miles per hour) carrier in the fleet. She was built with a distinctive square island supporting phased-array radars and a complex EW system. Aviation facilities include four deck edge lifts, two forward and one each side abaft the island. There are four 295 foot C-13 Mod 1 catapults. Hangars cover 216,000 sq. ft with 25-ft deck head. The Enterprise carries 8,500 tons of aviation fuel (12 days flight operations). Built to a modified Forrestal class design, Enterprise was the world’s second nuclear-powered warship (the cruiser Long Beach (CGN-9) was completed a few months earlier). This new dispensation in propulsive machinery would give her a maximum speed of 35 knots and an estimated endurance of five years; by eliminating the need for oil storage and stacks it would provide twice the aviation fuel capacity of her largest predecessors and permit the installation, on the sides of the island structure, of fixed radar antennae of advanced design. USS Enterprise (wallpaper 2). USS Enterprise ship images wallpaper gallery 2. USS Enterprise ship pictures and images collection 2. This astounding vessel marked the culmination of the Navy’s development of shipboard aviation, a development begun within the service lives of many still on active duty with the conversion, in 1922, of the old 15-knot collier Jupiter into the Langley as an experimental aircraft carrier. A nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was in the design stage by 1952. The AEC and the Navy decided that Westinghouse would build the reactor and that the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company would develop the shipboard features. Westinghouse already had a good technical base for the project from its work on the reactor prototype in Idaho. However, Rickover had to win over President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Congress, who were cutting budgets. The carrier was initially approved under President Truman in 1950, but was cut from the budget in 1953. The skyrocketing costs of nuclear ships (in all, the Nautilus program cost $65 million) caused both the Department of Defense and Congress to question their cost-effectiveness. But the Korean conflict gave Rickover, by this time an admiral, the opportunity to defend his request for a nuclear carrier. He was victorious in 1954, when funds for the nuclear carrier were reinstated and the USS Enterprise resulted, the first nuclear-powered surface ship. USS Enterprise (wallpaper 2). USS Enterprise ship images wallpaper gallery 2. USS Enterprise ship pictures and images collection 2.