In
1969, Enterprise was the most powerful warship in the world.
Built with eight nuclear reactors, distinctive square white
island, and beehive top she was the only ship in her class.
All subsequent nuclear carriers of the Nimitz class were powered
by two large reactors.
The
USS Enterprise came within a step of dying on 14 January,
1969. Exploding weapons on the flight deck blew the ship apart
all the way down to the waterline. Flaming jet fuel from the
thirty two aircraft involved cascaded down through those many
great wounds firing the interior of the ship. Firemains
were repeatedly blown through in one place after another and
it was only through the most desperate, imaginative and heroic
measures taken by engineering and damage control personnel
that the means for the BIG E
to fight back, salt water, was time and time again, restored.
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