Happy Birthday USS Enterprise!

[USS KG5]

In her day she wasn't that great a ship? so in 1960 their was another ship that could engage the enterprise and beat her?

Sure, submarines for a start, land based air wings.

What are the odds - do you think - of the Enterprise going up against another aircraft carrier one-on-one?

Airwing size is more or less all that matters on a carrier, with battleships it's armor and guns but with carriers it comes down to airwing size, armor will do little good against a modern torpedo or bomb,

Well an air wing is useless against a torpedo or bomb once it has been fired or dropped isn't it?

Battleships would be useless in the modern world as they cannot survive without their own air cover, but of course neither can a carrier. Their role is to carry that air wing to strike targets where there is no friendly air base.

as for speed you can't outrun a missile or torpedo, for 48 years against surface ships cvn65 has been able to sink any ship put to sea by a rival nation.

...And for the same period of time rival nations have posessed the ability and the training to do the same to CVN-65. I dearly hope that you can continue to believe that an aircraft carrier like Enterprise is unsinkable (as it will mean several thousand sailors have not died) but in a full scale war with a capable power, the USA would probably lose a carrier, or two.

Carriers drop bombs, cvn 65 has dropped more bombs I dare say on more countries than any other carrier and whilst lets not beat around the bush the US doesn't fight proper enemy's she's survived them all and would take far younger carriers to the last fighter in a fight.

Aircraft drop bombs - carriers carry aircraft. It is the various air wings of those carriers who have dropped those bombs and a well co-ordinated attack from a LOT of sources can sink an aircraft carrier.

You are contradicting yourself in the last sentence BTW - the US does not fight proper enemies? You mean the old fashioned kind who fight straight up? I bet the Iranians sit up every night wondering if one of their Kilos could sneak up on a carrier in case of war, you can bet they'd try it. What is a proper enemy? The Soviet Navy? You think carriers would have been indestructable in a conflict with the Soviets??!!

CV6 was not even the best carrier in her own time, she certainly could not have mixed it with the best carriers built 12 years later, much less 48 years later, the fact the cvn 65 can Is for my why I'd deem her as great a ship as any built in the past 100 years.

Oh for gods sake - I thought you WEREN'T talking about design??? The CV6 was the most successful aircraft carrier of WW2, the conflict that saw the greatest carrier battles hopefully ever! She was a mechanically excellent ship that served on the front line throughout the campaign but her greatness is based on what she did and how she served in the greatest war the world has ever seen!

If the Nimitz class gets to 49 and is able to mix it with the best ships on the high seas in a fight I will revise my view but it's still got a way to go.

Spurious rot! You know as well as I do that the Nimitz class will serve just as long as Enterprise.

The Nimitz was commissioned 33 years ago - the class will stay in service for just as long as Enterprise, is technically superior in every way, and as others have pointed out in this thread Enterprise has become over the years a bit of a makeweight junker.

No-one is arguing that she has not served the US Navy well, but your assertion that it has been on top of its breed for nigh on 50 years and its achievements in peacetime where by your own admission the US Navy has not fought "proper" enemies (whatever that means) eclipse those of its WW2 predecessor are just plain wrong.

 

[John Picard]

Carriers drop bombs, cvn 65 has dropped more bombs I dare say on more countries than any other carrier and whilst lets not beat around the bush the US doesn't fight proper enemy's she's survived them all and would take far younger carriers to the last fighter in a fight.

FYI - At the end of our 1990 WestPac, the Carl Vinson squadrons were launching all of their birds almost every day flying sorties to spend all of the remaining operating funds for FY 1990. Their aim was to deplete their accounts of all monies allocated for the year as well as setting records for the number of sorties flown. Those records were broken mere weeks later after the onset of the first Gulf War.

It would be interesting to review the stats from the current War on Terror.

Keep making up statistics and we'll keep coming right back at you.

 

[J.T.B.]

CV6 was not even the best carrier in her own time, she certainly could not have mixed it with the best carriers built 12 years later, much less 48 years later,

That’s just silly. The Yorktowns were designed and built under 1930s treaty limitations. What is your idea of a better treaty carrier?

Aside from that, carrier aviation was still maturing when CV-6 commissioned, and was much more stable by the 1960s. By way of example, CV-6’s initial air groups had 7000 lb. SBC biplanes and 10,000 lb. TBDs, and she ended up operating 13,000 lb. SB2Cs 17,000 lb. TBMs. Much greater leaps in aircraft size and capability were handled by the Essexes and Midways in the '50s and '60s. CVN-65 started out flying 70,000 lb EA-3s, quite a bit bigger than any aircraft she operates today.

If the Nimitz class gets to 49 and is able to mix it with the best ships on the high seas in a fight I will revise my view but it's still got a way to go.

There hasn’t been a carrier vs. carrier battle since 1944, and there doesn’t look like there will be one in the foreseeable future.

--Justin