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CVN-78: USS Gerald R Ford

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  • CVN-78: USS Gerald R Ford

    WASHINGTON: The U.S. Navy will name its next aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford in honor of the president who was buried Wednesday in his home town, officials said.

    The Navy had not planned to announce the decision yet, but Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary who also served in the Ford administration, divulged the news during his eulogy at Ford's funeral.

    "How fitting it would be that the name Gerald R. Ford will patrol the high seas for decades to come in defense of the nation he loved so much," he said.

    Later at the Pentagon the Navy confirmed that it would make an official announcement "in a few weeks." It said it was still working on details of the ceremony with members of the Ford family.

    Ford served as a Naval officer in the Pacific Theater during World War II.
    Source
    Wikipedia's Entry:
    Congress: USS Gerald R. Ford
    Senator John Warner of Virginia originally proposed an amendment to a defense spending bill declaring that CVN-78 "shall be named the U.S.S. Gerald Ford," after former President Gerald Ford, who was alive at the time but later died on December 26, 2006. When signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006, the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 declared only that "[it] is the sense of Congress that ... CVN-78 should be named the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford." Since such "sense of" language is typically non-binding and does not carry the force of law, the ultimate decision for the name rests with the Department of the Navy.

    In 2000, Senator Warner attached a similar amendment to the same defense spending bill, using the same "sense of" language to request that CVN-77 be named the USS Lexington, after two aircraft carriers that fought in World War II (CV-2 and CV-16).[7] As a non-binding resolution, the Navy chose instead to name the carrier after former President George H. W. Bush, officially naming it the USS George H. W. Bush on December 9, 2002.[6]


    Navy Veterans: USS America
    The USS America Carrier Veterans Association, an association of sailors who served aboard the recently scuttled USS America (CV-66), has advocated that CVN-78 also be named America. Walter Waite, vice president of the CVA, has declared that it is "appalling that the name of our country has been pushed aside in favor of living politicians." Congress' recommendation of USS Gerald R. Ford and Waite's statement both came before the former president's death in late 2006. The group has organized a letter-writing campaign to Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter through a companion website, CVN78.com, encouraging him to adopt the name USS America despite Congress' recommendation.


    Announcement
    On January 3, 2007, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld prematurely announced that the aircraft carrier would be named after President Ford during a eulogy for the President at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Later in the day, the Navy confirmed that the aircraft carrier would be, indeed, named for the former President. [9]

    Also, during the eulogy, Rumsfeld stated that Ford was made aware of the honor a few months before his death, when Rumsfeld himself told Ford. Source
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

  • #2
    A friend (and retired Navy Captain) sent this to me:

    A neat story as we say farewell to a former President...............

    NEW YORK TIMES 28 DEC 06
    How Lieutenant Ford Saved His Ship
    By Robert Drury and Tom Clavin

    East Hampton, N.Y.--For Americans under a certain age, Gerald Ford is
    best remembered for his contribution to Bartlett's - "Our long national
    nightmare is over" - or, more likely, for the comedian Chevy Chase's
    stumbling, bumbling impersonations of him on "Saturday Night Live." But
    there's a different label we can attach to this former president, one
    that has been overlooked for 62 years: war hero.

    In 1944, Lt. j.g. Jerry Ford - a lawyer from Grand Rapids, Mich., blond
    and broad-shouldered, with the lantern jaw of a young Johnny Weissmuller
    was a 31-year-old gunnery officer on the aircraft carrier Monterey.
    The Monterey was a member of Adm. William Halsey's Third Fleet, and in
    mid-December, Lieutenant Ford was sailing off the Philippines as Admiral
    Halsey's ships provided air cover for the second phase of Gen. Douglas
    MacArthur's "I shall return" Philippine invasions.

    The Monterey had earned more than half a dozen battle stars for actions in World War II; during the battle of Leyte Gulf, Lieutenant Ford, in charge of a 40-millimeter antiaircraft gun crew on the fantail deck, had watched as a torpedo narrowly missed the Monterey and tore out the hull of the nearby Australian cruiser Canberra.

    Two months later, in the early morning hours of Dec. 18, the Japanese were the least of the Monterey's worries, as it found itself trapped in a vicious Pacific cyclone later designated Typhoon Cobra.

    Lieutenant Ford had served as the Monterey's officer of the deck on the
    ship's midnight-to-4-a.m. watch, and had witnessed the lashing rains and
    60 knot winds whip the ocean into waves that resembled liquid mountain
    ranges. The waves reeled in from starboard, gigantic sets of dark water
    that appeared to defy gravity, cresting at 40 to 70 feet. In his 18
    months at sea, Lieutenant Ford had never seen waves so big. As breakers
    crashed over the carrier's wheelhouse, he could just barely make out the
    distress whistles sounding about him - the deep beeps of the battleships, the shrill whoops of the destroyers.

    After his watch Lieutenant Ford had strapped himself into his bunk below
    decks, and it seemed that his head had barely hit the pillow when the
    Monterey's skipper, Capt. Stuart H. Ingersoll, sounded general quarters,
    calling all hands to their stations. Lieutenant Ford bolted upright in his dark sea cabin. He thought he smelled smoke amidships. Racing through a rolling companionway dimly skipper's ladder leading to the pilothouse and began to climb. At that precise moment a 70-foot wave broke over the Monterey. The carrier pitched 25 degrees to port, and Lieutenant Ford was knocked flat on his back. He began skimming the flight deck as if he were on a toboggan.

    Just as he was about to be hurled overboard, Lieutenant Ford managed to
    slow his slide, twist like an acrobat, and fling himself onto the catwalk. He got to his knees, made his way below deck, and started back up again. By the time he reached the Monterey's pilothouse, the fighter planes in its hangar deck had begun slamming into one another as well as the bulkheads - "like pinballs," Mr. Ford recalled 60 years later - and the collisions had ignited their gas tanks. The hangar deck of the Monterey had become a cauldron of aircraft fuel, and because of a quirk in its construction, the flames from the burning aircraft were sucked into the air intakes of the lower decks. As fires broke out below, Lieutenant Ford remembered the smoke he smelled when he'd bolted from his bunk.

    Admiral Halsey had ordered Captain Ingersoll to abandon ship, and the
    Monterey was ablaze from stem to stern as Lieutenant Ford stood near the
    helm, awaiting his orders. "We can fix this," Captain Ingersoll said, and with a nod from his skipper, Lieutenant Ford donned a gas mask and led a fire brigade below. Aircraft-gas tanks exploded as hose handlers slid across the burning decks. Into this furnace Lieutenant Ford led his men, his first order of business to carry out the dead and injured. Hours later he and his team emerged burned and exhausted, but they had put out the fire.

    Three destroyers were eventually capsized by Typhoon Cobra, a dozen more ships were seriously damaged, more than 150 planes were destroyed, and 793 men lost their lives. It was the Navy's worst "defeat" of World War
    II. But the Monterey and nearly all of its me n survived to take part in the battle of Okinawa, and the future president ended his Navy stint in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant commander.

    Like his fellow World War II veterans, Mr. Ford returned home and
    resumed his life, rarely speaking publicly of his heroism. But in contrast to the public's image of him as a clumsy nonentity, Mr. Ford was a man whose grace under pressure saved his ship and hundreds of men on it.
    Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

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    • #3
      Excellent, I couldnt think of a better possible name for the new carrier.
      Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

      Comment


      • #4
        A random fact I learned recently- in addition to pardoning President Nixon, President Ford pardoned another famous person- Tokyo Rose.
        I enjoy being wrong too much to change my mind.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by ArmchairGeneral View Post
          A random fact I learned recently- in addition to pardoning President Nixon, President Ford pardoned another famous person- Tokyo Rose.
          Interesting bit about "Tokyo Rose", I've started a new thread about Iva D'Aquino here
          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by ArmchairGeneral View Post
            A random fact I learned recently- in addition to pardoning President Nixon, President Ford pardoned another famous person- Tokyo Rose.
            Of course she was pardoned. Should have been a long time ago. She was actually an American that got stuck in Japan after Pearl Harbor. She was only one of several women who took the job of broadcasting propoganda (and she did it in such a way all Americans knew she was a hoax) rather than become "comfort women".
            Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

            Comment

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