Operation Sea Orbit was the 1964 around-the-world cruise of the United States Navy's Task Force One, consisting of USS Enterprise (CVAN-65), USS Long Beach (CGN-9), and USS Bainbridge (DLGN-25). This all-nuclear-powered unit steamed 30,565 miles unrefuelled around the world for sixty-five days.
The cruise began on July 31 and ended on October 3. The full itinerary comprised Rabat, Morocco; Dakar, Senegal; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Monrovia, Liberia; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Nairobi, Kenya; Karachi, West Pakistan; Fremantle, Melbourne, and Sydney in Australia; Wellington, New Zealand; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Santos, Rio De Janeiro and Recife in Brazil. Enterprise made only three port calls: Karachi, Sydney and Rio De Janeiro.
Operation Sea Orbit was the idea of Vice Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., who saw the exercise – which demonstrated how nuclear-powered ships could operate unfettered by shore logistical ties – as a statement of American technical achievement similar to that of the coal-burning Great White Fleet in 1907-1909. Enterprise was under the command of Captain Frederick H. Michaelis; the guided missile cruiser Long Beach under the command of Captain Frank H. Price, Jr.; and guided missile frigate Bainbridge under the command of Captain Hal C. Castle.
The mission was commanded by Rear Admiral Bernard M. Strean. The operation gained considerable attention overseas but less in the United States.
Veterans of Operation Sea Orbit gathered on July 30, 2004, for a 40th anniversary reunion. In 2011, Operation Sea Orbit was included in the Technology for the Nuclear Age: Nuclear Propulsion display for the Cold War exhibit at the U.S. Navy Museum in Washington, DC.
Famous quotes containing the words operation, sea and/or orbit:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
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From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb;
Her tides have equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and Coarsest web;”
—Robert Southwell (1561?–1595)
“The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)