As the Corner’s biggest Enterprise fan, I nonetheless must join with the commenters in disagreeing with Harold Hutchison’s call to extend CVN-65′s life. The carrier is way, way past her useable life and it’s no longer practical to keep her going. If you can get yourself to Norfolk, you can still sign up for tours at the end of November before the “inactivation” ceremony on December 1. (I have a ticket for the 28th.)
Unfortunately, the next two carriers in the pipeline, CVN-79 and -80, have already been named: Gerald R. Ford and John F. Kennedy, respectively. Both men were in the Navy in WWII, so naming ships after them is appropriate (after they’re dead), but the carriers are the jewels of our navy, and naming them after recent presidents just feeds into the un-republican cult of the presidency whose logical end point we see today in the creepy Obama cult. Be that as it may, the planned CVN-80 (with a possible commission date of 2025) isn’t named yet, and it should be named Enterprise — here’s an online petition to that effect. (That, of course, assumes, we ever build another carrier, which may not happen given the irreversible enfeeblement likely to result from four more years of Obama.)
And I’ll make another plug for an appropriate memorial for the Big E — island should be removed (I’m told Newport News Shipyard has a crane capable of removing it), dismantled, and reassembled in Riverside, Iowa.