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From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Naval vessel naming conventions
Summary: "United States runs Aground"
Message-ID: <11399@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Nov 89 03:57:15 GMT
References: <11272@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
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From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz)

In article <11272@cbnews.ATT.COM>, nassio%cfassp12@harvard.harvard.edu (George Nassiopoulos) writes:
> I for one am not thrilled with the use of names of people to name
> carriers...
> 
> P.S.  I hear that CVN-75 is supposed to be named ``United States''
> if it ever gets built -- can anyone confirm this?


While I have no specific knowledge of CVN-75, I suspect there is
reason to believe that history argues against "national names"
for ships.

In approximately 1947, we were building the first major post-WW II
"supercarrier."  It was to have been named United States, but was
eventually cancelled.  One reason attributed to Secretary of Defense
Louis Johnson (I believe by VADM Dan Gallery) was Johnson's concern
over headlines such as "United States Stuck in Mud," "United States
Blows Up," etc.  

Nazi Germany had a similar problem with a cruiser originally to
have been called Deutschland.  They renamed it before it went into
service, to, I believe, Lutzow.

[mod.note:  The Deutschland was renamed Luetzow on 15 November, 1939.
The WWI pre-dreadnought Deutschland bore that name throughout the war.
Contrast to the Italian Navy, which renamed the battleship Littorio
as Italia on 30 June, 1943. - Bill ]

It is left to the reader to uncover the significance, if any,
of the US responding to possible unfavorable propaganda by
cancelling a project, while the Germans simply changed the names
to avoid the problem.  Half :-).


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