Carrier Enterprise Back After Nearly Two Years

After two years in overhaul, the USS Enterprise - the U.S. Navy's oldest active aircraft carrier - returned to sea this weekend and, having successfully completed more than two days of sea trials, was redelivered to the Navy on Monday.
Tugs spray a salute as the Enterprise returns from successful sea trials on Monday. (Northrop Grumman)

"The trials went extremely well, the ship performed incredibly well," said Jim Hughes, Northrop Grumman's vice president for aircraft carrier overhauls. No new problems emerged during the trials, he noted. "We didn't walk away with any new work items, which is amazing."

The extent of the work needed to refurbish the ship grew almost from the moment it entered Northrop's Newport News, Va., shipyard in April 2008 for what was planned to be a 16-month overhaul, originally scheduled to end in August 2009. "Emergent and supplemental work" - the phrase used by Naval Sea Systems Command - meant the work package continued to grow, along with the money being spent to recondition the ship, which first entered service in 1961. The original $453 million budget was increased in leaps and bounds, topping out at nearly $662 million. At least a dozen supplemental contracts were issued to pay for the additional work - the last issued on April 15.

All that, the Navy says, to get one more full deployment out of the ship, which is now planned to be decommissioned in 2012.

"Enterprise is an extremely complex ship that required an extraordinary effort on the part of the shipbuilding team and the ship's crew to get her through the availability and back in the fight," Capt. Ron Horton, the ship's commanding officer, said in a news release.

The delays in returning Enterprise to service caused the fleet to rejigger other carrier deployments, with some ships forced to remain at sea a few weeks longer and others needing to shift deployment and overhaul schedules.

Overhaul work on the Big E included dry docking the ship, tank blasting and coating, hull preservation, propulsion and ship system repairs and limited enhancements to various hull, mechanical and electrical systems.

One continuing problem that contributed to the delays and cost growth was the need to rebuild far more motors on the ship than originally planned.

"We had to make new casings for pumps, make new motors," Hughes said, speaking by telephone Monday from the carrier as it returned to Newport News. "Turbine generators had been performing well coming in to the availability," he said, "but we had to pull motors and get them rewound. There were a lot of motor rewinds."

Another focus of the overhaul was the ship's steam power plant.

"Almost all of the major components on the steam propulsion plant got touched," Hughes said. "Those were the biggest things we didn't have a choice about."

The ship's six air conditioning plants also needed special attention, he said, as well as infrastructure like piping and electrical cabling. "Things that have been in there for 50 years, we really started to have some issues with that," he said.

The sea trials revealed no significant problems, Hughes said, and the ship was redelivered without any operational restrictions.

The carrier now will begin a series of equipment and crew certifications and begin training in preparation for its deployment, expected to take place next year.

From: DN

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