Gentle Readers,

I beg your forgiveness for this short departure from traditional Daily Socotra format and braggadocio. If you take a short look at the image of USS Nimitz (CVN-68) above you will get a hint of her vastness. Forgive her the running rust on her elevator bays. That is a symptom of a different fight and there is no need to address it here. She is temporarily at rest in Bremerton, Washington, the port which has been her home for nearly a decade.

I mention that since she departed the anchorage shown above yesterday for a final resting place at The World’s Largest Naval Base at Norfolk, Virginia. That is just down the coast from our last home port in Arlington, so we hope to see her again when she is a little closer. But as you have probably considered, the bulk of North America lies between the port shown above and the placid shores we enjoy here on the East Coast.

It would be possible for CVN-68’s powerful reactors to fire up and boil her down past the Panama Canal (she would plug the locks with her girth) and around South America. That would be a cruise I would like to join! But without any knowledge of Fleet Movements here at Woodbine Rehab, I suspect she will take The Long Way Home west around our spinning globe.

It will be an adventure, starting with a steady cruise at best speed across the broad Pacific, possibly with a show-of force in the waters south of Ukraine or near Korea and a visit to Japan before heading out again, this time southwest to the South China sea, possibly passing on the less provocative side of Taiwan and down to the dense merchant passageway at Singapore in the Straits of Malacca.

Careful planning could afford a chance for a couple Slings with proper helicopter flights to the of the Raffles Hotel. But those are the subject of Sea Stories long past. The names are familiar and the memories as dense as the merchant traffic. Assuming all goes to plan, she will emerge into the paler blue of the Indian Ocean without event, and that is what set the circle of Old Salts abuzzing when the picture began to circulate.

You see, for those of us who first saw her in those waters in 1979, she was brand new and the talk of the World Ocean with her size and speed and the agility of her crew.

Her presence was intended to intimidate the Ayatollah Kohmeini, then leader of rambunctious Iran who was holding our Embassy hostages. On this morning many years later there was some controversy on who had been first to respond to the crisis, since the distances are just about precisely all the way on the other side of the globe and the Sea Stories equally expansive.

It was either CV-41 Midway or CV-43 Coral Sea, and I happened to be on CV-41, so my memory may be suspect with the passing of 46 years about the details.

We were engaged in multi-carrier operations in the bustle of the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. That is what the Arabs call the narrow passage running past Great Socotra Island, Yemen and Cape Gardafui to the Red Sea. The locals call the narrow most part the Gate of Tears, or the Gate of Grief. Recent missile operations by Yemen’s Houthi radicals reinforces the relevance of the old names.

You can imagine things were abuzz when Nimitz arrived. I decided to ask my bosses Larry and Vince if I could go “on liberty” and deliver some papers from a spare seat on one of the routine helicopter circuits. Permission was granted to enjoy the alternate shades of gray from those we enjoyed routinely.

I can’t tell you the magic of those hours in a place that was new and bright and where lunch was fresh and appealing. It was like a visit to America. If there had been an Officer’s Club and a Fleet travel magazine, I would have written a brief article highly recommending the cruise.

It was simple and unadorned. I had lunch in the dirty-shirt wardroom which was quite clean compared to ours, visited the ship’s intelligence center to drop off the papers and hit the gee-dunk store to buy a souvenir ball cap. A visit to the imposing island to sample the view from a real super-carrier underway captured the few hours until the helicopter returned as I waited in the ATO shack, feeling numbed with what felt like a visit to America.

I had not thought about it until I saw that picture of Nimitz the other morning. How imposing she had looked that morning. So ready for trouble. Or the thought that she was now not the newest, but the oldest. And headed from this last excursion to retirement at Norfolk.

The Salts in the crowd will chuckle at that, since most of the ships on which we served had been retired once or twice before needs required their return to service. So this is no farewell to Nimitz, just “fair winds and following Seas” in case she is needed again.

I am pleased that no longer applies to me, but the idea of what Nimitz will still accomplish is one that makes me sit up in admiration. Steam well, officers and sailors of CVN-68! And similar good wishes to her embarked Carrier Strike Group 11 Staff commanding the ships and submarine in company and particularly to Air Wing 17, bristling with Hornets.

If on this journey home they are ordered to make the Red Sea safe for peaceful transit, we wish them “bombs on target.”

That is a story similar to what it’s like in out the Real Navy. Fair winds and following seas! Our prayers go with them!

Copyright 2025 Vic Socotra
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