Answering the Call:
Carriers in Crises Response
Since World War II
Where are the carri-ers?”
is a question
that U.S. presidents
have asked with increasing fre-quency
in the years since the
end of WW II. Indeed, the U.S.
government has employed mil-itary
force in responding to
foreign crises more than 200
times since 1945, and in two-thirds
of these instances the
U.S. Navy task forces sent into
harm’s way have had aircraft
carriers (CVs) as their major
offensive component. It is easy
to see why this has been the
case. With their multipurpose
air wings, forward-deployed
aircraft carriers possess a
potent offensive strike capabil-ity
which enables them to con-trol
the sea and air space with-in
the radius of their aircraft
and to project air power
ashore. Unconstrained by the
need to operate from foreign
bases, carriers can provide an
extended, low-profile presence
by remaining over the horizon
from possible trouble spots or
can serve as active deterrent
forces by operating close to the
coasts of potential antagonists.
An examination of how U.S.
aircraft carriers have been
used in a number of interna-
tional crises during the past 50
years reveals just how the ver-satile
carriers can influence
the outcome in the United
States’ favor. On-scene carrier
task forces can serve to deter
aggressors from taking actions
detrimental to U.S. or allied
interests or to compel them to
accept otherwise unpalatable
consequences. If, however, the
crises escalate into open war-fare,
forward-deployed carri-ers
can transition almost
immediately from peacetime
operating tempos to active
combat status.
Korea—June 1950
On Sunday, 25 June 1950 at
approximately 0400, North Korean
Army troops began attacking across
the 38th parallel in Korea, catching
many South Korean units totally
unprepared. Beginning with a series
of blows in the western part of the
peninsula, the fighting spread rapidly
eastward during the next hour. By the
end of the first day, South Korean
troops were in headlong retreat
almost everywhere along the front.
President Harry Truman decided
to give air and naval assistance to
the Republic of Korea (ROK) on the
evening of 26 June (Washington
time). Within a few hours, Vice
Admiral C. Turner Joy, Commander
Naval Forces, Far East, had issued
an operation order directing the
naval forces under his command to
assist ROK forces south of the 38th
parallel and instructing the Seventh
Fleet to take station both to prevent
Chinese Communist troops from
invading Formosa and to preclude
Nationalist Chinese forces from
attacking the mainland.
The Seventh Fleet’s Striking
Force, Task Force (TF) 77—consist-ing
of the Essex-class carrier Valley
Forge (CV 45), a heavy cruiser and
eight destroyers—sortied from Subic
Bay, Philippines, on the morning of
27 June and headed north toward
Sasebo, Japan. While en route, it was
redirected to Okinawa, Japan. On 29
June, pursuant to its instructions to
keep the Formosan situation neutral-ized,
29 Valley Forge F4U Corsairs
and AD Skyraiders flew up the
Formosa Strait in a show of force.
The following morning TF 77
reached Okinawa and dropped anchor
On 30 June, President Truman
committed U.S. ground troops to the
fighting in Korea and authorized
General Douglas MacArthur, Far
East Commander, to extend military
operations into North Korea against
military targets. The augmented TF
77 sortied on the evening of 1 July
for the west coast of Korea. On 3
July, 21 aircraft from Triumph and
36 planes from Valley Forge struck
the military airfield at Pyongyang,
the North Korean capital, destroying
planes on the ground and in the air,
cratering runways and demolishing
the field’s hangars and fuel storage
facilities. Further air attacks that
afternoon and all of the next day
were directed against Pyongyang’s
railyard, along with its road and rail
bridges and locomotives. The highly
successful, two-day air strike was a
valuable demonstration of the United
States’ determination to stand firm
against aggression on the peninsula.
The U.S. military commitment rapid-ly
increased, and, only a month later,
on 5 August 1950, Valley Forge and
Philippine Sea (CV 47) began what
was to become almost three years of
continuous fast carrier operations
during the Korean War.
Suez—1956
The Suez Crisis began on 26 July
1956, when, following the United
States’ decision to withdraw its offer
of a grant to aid the construction of
Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel Nasser
nationalized the Suez Canal. The
governments of Britain and France
secretly began planning for an inva-sion
of Egypt. Not to be outdone,
Israel soon was doing its own inva-sion
planning, completing its final
plan on 5 October. After several inter-national
mediation efforts had failed,
Britain and France agreed in mid-October
1956 to undertake a joint
intervention in Egypt. Aware of the
upcoming Israeli plan to invade the
Sinai, French officials suggested that
a Franco-British force could enter
Egypt ostensibly to separate the com-batants,
while actually seizing control
of the entire Suez waterway. On 26
October, the United States learned of
Israel’s military mobilization, and
President Dwight Eisenhower sent
the first of two personal messages to
Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion
asking that Israel do nothing to
endanger the peace. In the
Mediterranean on the 28th, the U.S.
Sixth Fleet was placed on alert.
Undeterred by U.S. diplomatic
maneuvering, Israeli forces began
attacks in Egypt on 29 October.
The following day Britain and
France began to make their move. The
British government issued an Anglo-French
ultimatum calling on the
Israelis and Egyptians to withdraw
their forces to a distance of 10 miles
from the Suez Canal and demanding
that Egypt allow British and French
forces to temporarily occupy key posi-tions
guarding the canal. That same
day, Admiral Walter F. Boone, U.S.
Commander Naval Forces, Eastern
Atlantic and Mediterranean, ordered
the Sixth Fleet to assist in the evacua-tion
of U.S. nationals from Israel and
Egypt. Coral Sea (CVA 43) and
Randolph (CVA 15), the fleet’s two
attack carriers that were already oper-ating
in the eastern Mediterranean,
were directed to keep clear of British
naval units operating there. In Norfolk,
Va., the Navy ordered one attack carri-er,
a heavy cruiser and a destroyer
squadron to get ready to sail to the
Mediterranean to augment the Sixth
Fleet and a second CVA and a division
of destroyers to be on 72-hour notice.
The Anglo-French attack on Egypt
began at dusk on 31 October with a
series of large-scale air strikes. The
following day Chief of Naval
Operations (CNO) Admiral Arleigh
Burke signaled Vice Admiral Charles
R. “Cat” Brown, Commander Sixth
Fleet: “Situation tense; prepare for
imminent hostilities.” Brown signaled
back: “Am prepared for imminent
hostilities, but whose side are we
on?” In classic Burke style, the
CNO’s return response was, “Keep
clear of foreign op areas but take no
guff from anybody.”
The Suez Crisis increased in
intensity on the afternoon of 5
November when the Soviet Union
sent diplomatic notes to Britain,
France and Israel threatening to
crush the aggressors and restore
peace in the Middle East through the
use of force. President Eisenhower’s
reaction to these threats was that “if
those fellows start something, we
may have to hit ’em—and, if neces-sary,
with everything in the bucket.”
Coral Sea and Randolph and their
escorts shifted to an operating area
southwest of Crete in order to
improve their readiness posture for a
general emergency. Agreeing to a
cease-fire on 6 November, Britain
and France ended their military
operations that night at midnight.
Soviet military moves continued
during the next few days, however,
and on the 7th, Burke ordered attack
carriers Forrestal (CVA 59) and
Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA 42) to
sail from Norfolk toward the Azores,
together with a heavy cruiser and
three divisions of destroyers, to act
as a standby augmentation to the
Sixth Fleet. U.S. Navy forces were
directed to maintain readiness to
execute emergency war plans.
Tensions remained high until 15
November, when United Nations
forces were brought into Egypt to
provide a buffer between the
Egyptians and the invasion forces.
From that point on, the Soviet inter-vention
threat gradually dissipated.
Cuban Missile Crisis—
1962
The crisis over Cuba began on 15
October 1962, when Central
Intelligence Agency photo inter-preters
reviewing the reconnaissance
film taken the previous day by a U-2
aircraft flying over Cuba discovered
the construction of a site for a Soviet
SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile.
Further analysis of the film later that
night revealed other possible missile
sites. President John F. Kennedy was
briefed on the unexpected threat just
before noon on 16 October. The
president quickly made it clear to his
advisers that the Soviet missiles in
Cuba would have to be eliminated,
by force, if necessary.
Military preparations for getting
the missiles out of Cuba began at
once. By 19 October, the president
and his crisis advisers decided
upon enforcing a limited blockade
of Cuba to prevent the further
introduction of offensive arms onto
that island. On 20 October,
Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara directed Chief of Naval
Operations Admiral George
Anderson to prepare the position
papers, scenario and implementa-
tion instructions for this limited
blockade. The unified commander
for the Atlantic theater, Admiral
Robert Dennison, was responsible
for carrying out military operations
related to the crisis.
In addition to the dozens of ships
involved in the Cuban Quarantine
(as the blockade was renamed), two
Second Fleet attack carriers served
as the carrier striking force.
Independence (CVA 62), with
Commander Carrier Division 6
embarked, had deployed from
Norfolk with four escorts on 11
October to operate in or south of the
Mayport, Fla., area in order to
reduce reaction time in the event of
operations in the Caribbean. On 19
October, the nuclear-powered carrier
Enterprise (CVA 65), with
Commander Carrier Division 2
embarked, got under way and pro-ceeded
south as well.
As Task Force 135, the two carriers
were directed to prepare for naval
actions supporting Commander in
Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet’s air strike
plan. Specifically, if ordered to do so,
the carriers were to strike assigned
targets in Cuba and to provide air
defense and close air support for
Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
By 21 October, TF 135 was operating
in the waters north of Cuba—the opti-mum
position for launching air strikes
against the island. A few days later, it
shifted its operating area to the waters
south of Jamaica in response to possi-ble
submarine contacts. Although the
task force was not called upon to con-duct
the anticipated air strikes on
Cuba, it remained poised to respond
rapidly to changes in the crisis situa-tion
throughout November and into
December 1962.
Achille Lauro—1985
On 7 October 1985, Achille
Lauro, an Italian luxury liner with
some 100 mostly elderly passengers
on board, was hijacked in Egyptian
waters by terrorists representing the
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF).
The ship’s captain was ordered to
sail for Tartus, Syria. That night, the
hijackers informed Egyptian authori-ties
of their action by radio and stat-ed
their demand for release of 50
Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The next day, after being denied
docking rights at Tartus by Syrian
authorities, the terrorists decided to
kill one of their hostages to prove
their determination. Pushing the
elderly, wheelchair-bound, Jewish-American
passenger Leon
Klinghoffer to the side of the ship,
the leader of the terrorists shot him
in the head and chest and then threw
his body overboard. The Syrians still
continued to deny the ship docking
rights, but before a second passenger
could be killed, the terrorists
received a radio message from PLF
leaders directing them to leave the
passengers unmolested and to head
to Port Said, Egypt. Once there, the
Egyptian government, unaware that
Klinghoffer had been murdered, pro-vided
the hijackers with safe passage
in exchange for freeing the ship and
its passengers.
Once the murder had been dis-covered,
the U.S. Ambassador to
Egypt demanded that the Egyptian
government prosecute the terrorists.
The Egyptians, however, reported
that it was too late, since the hijack-ers
had already left the country.
Through clever intelligence work,
the National Security Council staff
determined that the terrorists were
still in Egypt and were about to be
flown to Tunisia on an Egypt Air
737 airliner. They reasoned that,
with a lot of luck, the United States
might be able to intercept the plane
before it reached its destination.
Saratoga (CV 60), with
Commander Task Force (CTF) 60 on
board, was steaming northward
through the Adriatic Sea toward a port
call at Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, on the
afternoon of 10 October, following
completion of a major North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) exercise
in the central Mediterranean.
Suddenly, the carrier received orders
from Sixth Fleet headquarters to
reverse course and to launch the alert
combat air patrol. Despite the ship’s
“Alert 60” status, two F-14A Tomcats
and an E-2C Hawkeye were airborne
within 22 minutes. Apprised of the
emerging situation by Sixth Fleet,
Rear Admiral David Jeremiah, CTF
60, immediately alerted his staff that
Saratoga was going after the hijack-ers,
even though the plane’s exact
takeoff time from Egypt, the route it
was flying to Tunisia and its altitude
were unknown.
The plan called for Saratoga’s
planes to make night intercepts and
identifications of air contacts on the
airways crisscrossing the central
Mediterranean as they flew eastward
toward a common airway intersec-tion
point south of Crete. On the
fourth interception of the night, following
two hair-raising, lights-out
intercepts of darkened transport
planes, the F-14s hit pay dirt. At
about 2230, 30 miles southeast of
Crete, they closed on an Egyptian
737 airliner showing the tail number
2843—the aircraft they were looking
for. After identifying themselves to
the airliner’s pilot, the American
planes eventually were able to convince
the 737 to land at the NATO
base in Sigonella, Sicily. Upon landing,
the airliner was quickly surrounded
by American soldiers. The
terrorists ultimately were taken into
Italian custody. The operation provided
a first-class demonstration of
the versatility of carriers in a fast-moving
crisis situation.
Desert Shield—1990
In July 1990, Saddam Hussein of
Iraq was desperate. His country’s
eight-year war with Iran had ended
in 1988 in a virtual stalemate that
had left it economically crippled. To
keep his brutal regime in power,
Saddam needed to spend billions of
dollars for revitalization to placate an
increasingly restive population. Yet,
the national finances were in ruins,
and Iraq’s oil revenues were hostage
to falling oil prices caused by excess
production. Kuwait, Iraq’s small
neighbor to the south, was one of the
major offenders flouting the OPEC
(Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries) oil production
quota designed to keep prices higher.
Saddam decided to take action. In
mid-July 1990, Iraq issued an ultimatum
to Kuwait: comply with a
number of harsh economic demands
or face the consequences. Iraqi military
forces began massing near the
Kuwaiti border. Although American
intelligence assets quickly picked up
on Iraq’s military preparations, the
U.S. government largely believed
that Saddam’s actions were designed
as a bluff to force Kuwait into con-cessions.
Thus, the sudden thrust
into Kuwait on 2 August by the first
of some 140,000 Iraqi troops and
1,800 tanks came as a shock to the
Bush administration. Recovering
quickly, the administration began
assembling national and international
military forces to oppose
Saddam’s expansionist actions.
It was vital for the United States to
get significant military forces into the
Persian Gulf region as rapidly as possible.
There was no way for the
United States to tell if the move into
Kuwait was merely the precursor for
large-scale attacks into Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates. When
President George Bush met with the
Saudi ambassador on 3 August,
though, it was evident that despite the
Iraqi threat, Saudi Arabia was reluc-tant
to allow U.S. forces early access
to its bases. U.S. aircraft carriers
operating in international waters,
however, were not constrained by
issues of national sovereignty, and
they were already moving into position
to deter further Iraqi moves.
The Seventh Fleet carrier,
Independence (CV 62), and Battle
Group Delta had been passing
through the Malacca Straits toward
Diego Garcia when first alerted to
trouble in the Persian Gulf. Ordered
to make best speed for the North
Arabian Sea, they arrived at their
operating area in the Gulf of Oman,
designated Gonzo Station, on 7
August. If required, the planes of
Independence’s Carrier Air Wing
(CVW) 14 could have launched
long-range strikes as early as the
5th. The carrier’s immediate mission
was implicit: help deter Saddam
Hussein from moving into Saudi
Arabia while American follow-on
forces were being assembled state-side.
Independence immediately
began flight operations.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait,
Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69)
was operating in the central
Mediterranean in the last month of
her planned six-month deployment.
Alerted to the situation, she quickly
headed east toward Suez. The carrier
transited the Suez Canal on 7 August
and entered the Red Sea
the next day. The Navy
now had carrier battle
groups poised on both
flanks of the area of conflict.
The aircrews of
Eisenhower’s CVW-7 at
once began familiarizing
themselves with the local
terrain and monitoring
the entire Red Sea operating
area, designated
Camel Station.
Even while these carriers
“held the line” against
further Iraqi moves in the
gulf, other carriers were
being readied to augment
them. Saratoga and her
battle group cleared
Mayport on 7 August 1990, headed
for the Mediterranean Sea for a
scheduled deployment as
Eisenhower’s relief. John F. Kennedy
(CV 67) and her battle group, which
had been alerted on 10 August and
ordered to get under way for a “no-notice”
deployment, left Norfolk and
other East Coast ports for the
Mediterranean on 15 August. By the
beginning of the air campaign against
Iraq on 17 January 1991, the U.S.
Navy had six carriers operating
in the area of conflict—four in
the Red Sea and two in the
Persian Gulf.
Conclusion
Because of their mobility,
their wide-ranging offensive
power and their ability to conduct
sustained operations off
the coasts of potential aggressors,
forward-deployed aircraft
carriers have constituted a
major portion of the United
States’ crisis-response capability
during the past 50 years.
Indeed, their availability in
times of international crises has often
spelled the difference between a successful
resolution of these crises and
a foreign policy failure.
The carrier’s highly successful
mixture of capabilities cannot be
duplicated by other U.S. military
forces. Over the years it has demonstrated
an enduring value that is
essential to our war-fighting prowess
in the next century.
Dr. Barlow is a historian in the Contemporary
History Branch of the Naval Historical Center.