United States Sixth Fleet
The Sixth Fleet is the United States Navy's operational fleet and staff of United States Naval Forces Europe. The Sixth Fleet is headquartered at Naval Support Activity Naples, Italy. The officially stated mission of the Sixth Fleet in 2011 is that it 'conducts the full range of Maritime Operations and Theater Security Cooperation missions in concert with coalition, joint, interagency and other parties in order to advance security and stability in Europe and Africa.' The commander of the Sixth Fleet is Vice Admiral Frank Craig Pandolfe.
The Sixth Fleet was established in February 1950 by redesignation of the former Sixth Task Fleet. Since that time, it has been continually engaged in world affairs around the Mediterranean, and, on occasion, further afield. It was involved in numerous NATO maritime exercises, the U.S. Lebanese intervention of 1958, confrontation with the Soviets during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, clearance of the Suez Canal post 1973, several confrontations with Libya during the 1980s (including Operation El Dorado Canyon), and maintenance of task forces in the Adriatic during the wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Most recently it launched airstrikes on Libya again during the Libyan civil war of 2011.
Since the establishment of NATO it has constituted the most powerful Allied maritime striking force in the NATO Southern Region, and has retained the title of Naval Striking and Support Force Southern Europe (STRIKFORSOUTH) in its NATO identity. However with the reorganization of NATO in the early twenty-first century the title became Striking Force NATO. Thomas A. Bryson's 'Tars, Turks, and Tankers: The Role of the United States Navy in the Middle East' covers the fleet's activities from 1950 to 1980.
Read more about United States Sixth Fleet: History, Structure, Past Command Ships, Sixth Fleet Commanders
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, sixth and/or fleet:
“It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)
“The real dividing line between early childhood and middle childhood is not between the fifth year and the sixth year—it is more nearly when children are about seven or eight, moving on toward nine. Building the barrier at six has no psychological basis. It has come about only from the historic-economic-political fact that the age of six is when we provide schools for all.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“A city on th’ inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)