ten ships in a new world

This look at ten ships in a new world is but a fast peek in the Navy history of ship building and of building boats as weapons of war. The story of these wonders of the sea and machines of war is much more intense than what this page will uncover about the Nimitz class of nuclear powered super aircraft carriers. But hopefully this page will get you curious enough to look deeper into the great engineering advances that have brought humanity to were it is today.

Were we are today is somewhere closer or further from the midnite hour on the Doomsday clock...

The name Chester William Nimitz needs to be introduced in order to give meaning to the description of the ten ships in a new world story which follows.

Again a single page can only touch the surface of who is Chester William Nimitz but here goes.

Nimitz was born in 1885 when Grover Cleveland was rising to the position of US President. It was a time when the US Navy fleet was seen as being less than adequate, having suffered greatly in past wars. Cleveland would make it a point to find support to bring the US Naval fleet up to par with modern technology and modern engineering. Chester Nimitz would grow up in a social environment that was moving quickly and he joined the Navy as a young adult. Ensign Nimitz got a taste of commanding a ship but grounded the Decutur and got sent back to the drawing board. He learnt all he could about diesel engines and war strategies and came back to help build new ships and to command more ships.

By the time WW 2 comes along he is a top brass in the Navy.

Chester William Nimitz becomes Fleet Admiral Nimitz and plays a major role in the battles against Japan. It is on his battleship, the USS Missouri, that the Japanese sign documents of surrender in 1945 after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasake. At this time the pilots of the Naval Corps are a mainstay and they need a place to land their war planes. The aircraft carrier of choice is the Kitty Hawk.

In 1966 Chester William Nimitz passes away. But his name will live on with the introduction of these ten ships in a new world of nuclear and atomic technology.

Ironically or interestingly, the doomsday clock, was an invention by the very scientists who tried to keep the power of nuclear intelligence out of the hands of politicians and military men.

In 1968 the project for a Nimitz class USS Nimitz, or CVAN-68 is initiated and the work of building this nuclear powered carrier will be carried out at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. Northrop-Grumman Shipbuilding is the oldest shipyard owned by the US government and it was founded in 1886. It continues to be in the news when the refuelling of nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines is questioned. One would think that this is not such a great issue since the Nimitz class super carriers are able to operate on a single fuel cell for up to 20 years. However, first Nimitz was launched in the early 1970's

The ten ships of the new world are as follows from first to last.

1. USS Nimitz
2. USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
3. USS Vinson
4. USS Theodore Roosevelt
5. USS Abraham Lincoln
6. USS George Washington
7. USS John C. Stennis
8. USS Harry S. Truman
9. USS Ronald Reagan
10. USS George H. W. Bush

These ten nuclear powered US Navy carriers were a replacement to the earlier Forrestal non nuclear series which had been an innovation of the Kitty Hawk series.

The full story is full of complicated details, romantic war heroics, saddening end game results that cost and saved millions of lives.

The last addition to the Nimitz class was launched in 2006 and commissioned in January 2009. It is the USS George H. W . Bush and yet another marvel of human engenuity. When one looks at these war weapons, the iron vessels as the prophetess Mother Shipton who lived during the Renaissance and during the same age as another seer named Nostradamus, one wonders of the potential of the military offices on the sea.

Today's SECNAV executive leadership is held by a civilian named Ray Mabus.

Mr Mabus was nominated by President Barack Obama for this highly powerful post that allows the mobilization and demobilization, training and recruiting of Navy personel, etc...the nomination passed through a senate vote in June 2009 when Mr. Ray Mabus officially took on the role of Secretary of the Navy.

So what ? Inquiring minds ask questions....see how the Mabus role plays out in fringe circles.

Mabus in prophecy