Identically named ships serving at the same time?

Has this ever happened in any navy? I could only find references from the Revolutionary war, pre-USN.

In Yesterdays Enterprise Riker ponders the Ent-C serving in the fleet at the same time as the E-D. Would the ship be renamed?

Also would the Ent-B be able to receive Lakota upgrades to serve in the Dominion War if the hull still existed?

Again I can find no references. The submarine USS Albany and cruiser USS Albany physically existed at the same time briefly although the later was out of commission and delisted.

 

There is the odd chance that USS Lakota is the USS Enterprise-B. Navies have renamed ships to give the more famous or important name to a newer ship. Several American armored cruisers were named after states before the Navy expanded to making larger number of battleships. When the dreadnoughts and super dreadnoughts of the US fleet started being built the armored cruisers were renamed to cities within the states there had originally been named.

One famous armored cruiser is USS Pennsylvania. She was the America ship in 1911 that had the first airplane landing on a ship in San Francisco Bay. She was renamed to USS Pittsburgh a few years later when a battleship was named Pennsylvania (this was the battleship that was in Pearl Harbor's drydocks on December 7th, 1941 and was the sister ship of USS Arizona.) USS Pittsburgh continued to serve until the 1930s.


Traditionally you don't have two ships serving in the same service named the same. Sometimes there might be an instance of a ship leaving service as another enters service, but it is rare, as they usually take a ship out of service while the older one is being built.

I know the Japanese had the old destroyer Shimakaze still in service while the new one was under construction, but the older one was sunk by Allied forces before the new one went on trails. I don't know if the newer one was named for the ship just lost or if they had planned on renaming the old ship. Sometimes the older ships would be called by just their hull or production number to give up their name for a new ship.

 

Of course, one nation might have ships of a certain name serving in parallel in separate organizations, and never mind private/commercial vessels. Not quite the thing being asked here - but it appears Starfleet does donate/sell/force its older vessels to other organizations, as with the "Hero Worship" vessel Vico that "still" sported Starfleet pennant stripes but supposedly was not working for Starfleet proper and didn't have a NCC registry. Perhaps there would be a USS Vico serving in parallel?

A careful dig through naval history might also reveal multiple ships of the same name in parallel service in the Royal Navy and its various French equivalents principally because they would be taking prizes from each other and the two languages would share certain inspirational words commonly used as ship names. A prize would not be immediately renamed, as nothing happened immediately back then...

Timo Saloniemi

 

The US Navy has (or had) two ships named "Ford," one a carrier and the other a oiler, but they're named after two different people and the the ships have the person's complete name as their formal name.

 

^^^ That was my initial thought. There are two "Ford"s in the USN, but different types of vessels named after different people.

Even in Star Fleet, we could have multiple ships named Phoenix. One named after the mythic creature, one named for the city, one named after Cochrane's legendary vessel, one named for another previous starship named Phoenix...

 

Hmh? The carrier USS Gerald R. Ford isn't commissioned yet, the frigate USS Ford (named after one Patrick Ford, but it doesn't say so on the hull) is decommissioned now, but what is the oiler? I can't find any USS Ford or USNS Ford references, with or without first names or middle initials.

And having a Gerald R. Ford and a Ford isn't quite the same thing as having two ships with USS Phoenix written on the hull...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Nevermind.

 

As a rule, only one commissioned vessel can have a given name at a time. There are many instances of ships being re-named to "clear" the name for a new vessel. One of the best known is USS Constitution, temporarily renamed Old Constitution when it was decided to give historic warship names to the planned class of battlecruisers. Names can be close, but not identical. For instance, there were frigates named Adams and John Adams (both named after the second president) in the US Navy at the same time in the early 1800s. To make it more confusing, both served in the Mediterranean Squadron at the same time and were involved in a friendly-fire incident with each other off Tripoli.

Yeah, the armored cruisers with state names were all renamed in favor of battleships:

Pennsylvania -> Pittsburgh
West Virginia -> Huntington
California -> San Diego
Colorado -> Pueblo
Maryland -> Frederick
South Dakota -> Huron
Tennessee -> Memphis
Washington -> Seattle
North Carolina -> Charlotte
Montana -> Missoula

 

I can think of at least one Trek instance: there were two different ships named USS Melbourne which were both destroyed at Wolf 359. One was Nebula class, the other Excelsior class.

 

In-universe, the only instances of ships with multiple names serving at the same time (other than the Melbourne mentioned above) that I can think of are:

1. USS Yeager NCC-61947 and 65647 - Used for both a CGI ship used in ST:FC and a kitbashed model used in the background scenes in DS9; both are different class ships with different registry numbers.

2. USS Atlantis NCC-72007 and 3210 - name seen on two different displays in TNG's "Conspiracy" and "Measure of a Man," both with different registry numbers.

3. USS Yamato NCC-1305-E, 71807 and 24383 - Galaxy class starship given both a spoken registry and a completely different registry on the model (but are supposed to be the same ship), and a display in TNG's "Measure of a Man" with a much lower registry than the one on the model, implying a different ship than the Galaxy class.


Honorable mention goes to both the USS Neil Armstrong NCC-31806 and the USS Armstrong NCC-57537 (Neil Armstrong from a display in TNG's "Conspiracy," and Armstrong from spoken dialogue in DS9; latter ship listed as a Challenger class starship with a different registry than the Neil Armstrong in the ST Encyclopedia.)

There are also a few oddities such as the Wellington and the Constantinople, which were given made-up registries for the Encyclopedia but were later found to have different registries on the display chart in "Measure of a Man." I don't consider these to be instances of two different ships serving at the same time but rather just mistakes/oversights in the Encyclopedia.

 

According to Trek sources online, the Enterprise D was launched from the fleet yard in 2363.

"Yesterday's Entperise" takes place in 2366.

The Enterprise C was lost 22 years before 2366. That would mean the Enterprise C disappeared in 2344. C and D did not fly in service at the same time.

 

^That wasn't what the OP was saying. He was saying that in "Yesterday's Enterprise," now that the Enterprise-C had been pushed forward into the future, if she was going to become another ship fighting the war, would she be renamed in order to differentiate herself from the Enterprise-D.

 

My mistake. Oopsy.



But it does bring to mind something that never ocured to be before: if the Enterprise is the flagship of the Federation and there was no Enterprise in service for almost 20 years (inbetween C being lost and D launching), then which ship was the flagship during that time?

 

There is no indication that any Enterprise served as the "flagship" before the D.

 

Well, Starfleet could have had "a" ship that was the flagship during that time, it just didn't have the name Enterprise. Or they didn't have a flagship at all. We'll never know.

 

On 16 January 2007, the Navy Secretary officially named CVN-78 the USS Gerald R. Ford. She launched in November of 2013. And no, it hasn't been commissioned yet.

 

If the Ent-C would ever be renamed, it would probably be only to avoid tipping off the Klingons that the ship was from the past.

 

Starfleet could of had dozens (or hundreds) of flagships spread through-out the fleet.

The title of "Flagship of the Federation" could have been a unusual and one time honorific vested solely upon the Enterprise D. Never existed before and never occurred again after the Enterprise's destruction.

 

^ Since TNG's usage was entirely opposite of what the word "flagship" actually MEANS (i.e. the personal vessel used by a fleet's admiral, on which he/she has the 'flag' of command), then I'm glad they're not using it anymore.