Striking Fleet Atlantic
The Commander Striking Fleet Atlantic (COMSTRIKFLTLANT) was the major subordinate at-sea commander for SACLANT. The primary mission of Striking Fleet Atlantic was to deter aggression by maintaining maritime superiority in the Atlantic AOR and ensuring the integrity of NATO's sea lines of communications. Its main striking force was the Carrier Striking Force (seemingly Task Force 401), consisting of Carrier Striking Groups One and Two. The Carrier Striking Force appears to have had an American nucleus, built around Carrier Group Four, and Carrier Striking Group Two appears to have had a British nucleus, later, it seems, becoming Anti-Submarine Group Two. When HMS Ark Royal took part in Exercise Royal Knight circa 1972, she formed the centrepiece of Striking Group Two and led Task Group 401.2.
The Striking Fleet's Commander was an U.S. Navy Vice Admiral based at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia who also served as the Commander U.S. Second Fleet. STRIKFLTLANT was deactivated in a ceremony to be held on USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) on June 24, 2005, being replaced by Combined Joint Operations from the Sea Center of Excellence located at the Second Fleet headquarters.
Read more about this topic: Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, Structure
Famous quotes containing the words striking, fleet and/or atlantic:
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“A city on th’ inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“She had exactly the German way: whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)