`Big John’ Boston bound> USS Kennedy joins OpSail fleet

Editor’s Note: Bangor Daily News reporter Roxanne Moore Saucier and photographer Anthony Robert La Penna were invited to ride with the USS John F. Kennedy as it makes its way from New York City to Boston.

ABOARD THE USS JOHN F. KENNEDY — At 0700 hours Sunday, the taped voice of Frank Sinatra came booming over the loudspeaker: “A-number one, king of the hill, top of the heap.”

He might have had in mind the USS John F. Kennedy CV-67, which at that moment was passing beneath the Verrazano Narrows Bridge over the Hudson River.

A glorious sun shone on the white-uniformed sailors rimming the flight deck of the massive aircraft carrier known as Big John, each of the men and women holding a salute to New York, New York.

The 80-ton carrier, with its complement of more than 5,000 personnel, had just finished a week docked at Pier 88 in Manhattan and was now cruising up the East Coast to Boston for seven days in the hometown of its namesake, the late President Kennedy. It has been 10 years since the ship visited Boston.

In March the Kennedy ended a six-month tour of duty in the Persian Gulf, and now the crew is in the midst of a different challenge that is also exhausting — visiting ports where personnel juggle thousands upon thousands of visitors on public tours with receptions for dignitaries all the way up to President Clinton.

On Saturday afternoon, “oohs” from one side of the docked ship indicated that another group of visitors — toddlers to senior citizens — had crowded onto an aircraft elevator for a few seconds’ ride.

At one end of the hangar bay, youngsters climbed into a tank on display while grown-ups peered into a U.S. Marine helicopter or stood on tiptoe in an effort to go nose to nose with a U.S. Navy fighter jet.

By evening, the crowd had left, except for about 200 civilians making the overnight trip to Boston — World War II veterans, youths in the U.S. Naval Sea Cadets, members of the media and other organizations.

About two dozen of those folks climbed the ladder for their first view of the flight deck, scattering to all corners of the steel deck topped by a nonskid, nubbly surface. No jets were streaking across this night, but several tent canopies used for receptions seemed to scuttle across the flight deck as naval personnel worked to remove them under the glow of lights from the city’s skyscrapers nearby.

A few helicopters and just two jets — an F-15, and an F-18 — rested on the deck. The rest of the squadron’s aircraft were scattered to places such as Washington state, Virginia and Florida while the Kennedy makes its port visits.

Sunday morning, Rear Adm. Lewis Crenshaw summed up the identity of the Kennedy, which is his flagship and headquarters as commander of Carrier Group: “It’s 5 acres of sovereign American territory. We can go anywhere we want.”

The admiral asked visitors not to be distracted by the “gold shoulder boards” of the Navy’s higher-ups, but to take time to meet “the men and women who keep this great ship going. We are very proud of the responsibility they are able to accept,” he said, noting that many of the crew were in their early 20s.

Built starting in October 1964, 11 months to the day after President Kennedy died, the Kennedy was the 67th fleet aircraft carrier constructed. It is one of only two conventionally powered carriers left among the 12 in the Navy. The others have nuclear reactors, whereas the Kennedy runs on steam-powered turbine engines. The USS Ronald Reagan, now under construction, will be CV-76.

Although aircraft carriers didn’t really come into their own until World War II, when they picked up the slack from battleship forces heavily damaged during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the concept goes back to 1910 and a biplane that took off from a 60-foot platform on the cruiser Birmingham.

The next year, a plane landed on the cruiser Pennsylvania, with hooks underneath the aircraft catching onto rope cables anchored by sandbags. The British Royal Navy built a carrier at the end of World War I, and the Navy followed up in 1922 with CV-1 — the USS Langley. Biplanes took off from, and landed on, the Langley’s wooden deck.

In World War II, the carrier USS Enterprise saw action in all major Pacific battles against the Japanese, sinking 19 ships. Its guns and aircrafts shot down more than 185 Japanese planes. After the surrender in September 1945, carriers such as the first USS Saratoga performed another important duty — transporting back to U.S. soil some 3,000 troops who found their berths down in the ship’s hangar bay.

In more recent times, the USS Joh, F. Kennedy has had more than 16 major deployments to the Mediterranean, and saw service during Desert Storm. In September 1999, on its way to the Persian Gulf for six months, the ship detoured so helicopters could rescue the crew of a tug during Hurricane Floyd.

Its duties in the gulf included hosting the King of Jordan and enforcing the no-fly rule over Iraq. The Kennedy was the only carrier underway as the year 2000 arrived.

The crew is hoping for sunny skies during the ship’s visit to Boston. Accompanied by the USS Hue City and the USS Vicksburg, both guided missile cruisers; and the USS McFaul, a guided missile destroyer, the Kennedy is expected to arrive this morning.

Although not technically a part of this summer’s Sail Boston 2000 “Tall Ships” maritime celebration, the USS John F. Kennedy’s visit has been timed to coincide with that event. The U.S. Navy ships will be open to the public at no cost.