On the morning of September 11, 2001, USS Enterprise (CVN-65) was off the coast of southern Yemen, steaming south. Her work in the Middle East was done. She had already come out of the Arabian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and was on her way to Cape Town, South Africa, for an exercise with the South African Navy before the long run home to Norfolk. Then the news came in from New York.
Her commanding officer, Captain James A. "Sandy" Winnefeld Jr., didn't wait for orders. He put the rudder over and brought the Big E about, heading north. Orders from Fifth Fleet followed, directing her to close the North Arabian Sea at full speed and join USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70). Before long the Navy's first nuclear-powered carrier was holding station roughly 100 miles south of Pakistan. Less than a month later, her air wing flew some of the opening strikes of Operation Enduring Freedom.
This is the story of that cruise, the one that was supposed to end in the fall of 2001 and instead ran straight into a war.
The Deployment
Enterprise left Naval Station Norfolk on April 25, 2001, with Carrier Air Wing 8 (CVW-8) embarked. She was 40 years into her career by then. She was commissioned on November 25, 1961, as the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and she remained the only ship of her class.
After picking up the air wing off the Virginia Capes, the ship worked up with carrier qualifications and exercises off Puerto Rico before crossing the Atlantic. She sailed as the centerpiece of the Enterprise Battle Group, whose escorts included the guided-missile cruisers USS Philippine Sea (CG-58) and USS Gettysburg (CG-64), and a group of destroyers, a frigate, the fast combat support ship USS Arctic (AOE-8), and two attack submarines.
The first half of the cruise was a Mediterranean and European deployment in the classic mold. Detachments from the air wing flew out of Sidi Ahmed Air Base at Bizerte, Tunisia, in mid-May, and out of Solenzara, Corsica, during the exercise Trident d'Or in late May. In June, Enterprise sailed north for Joint Maritime Course 01-2 off northern Scotland, a large multinational exercise with 46 ships and more than 100 aircraft. In July she exercised with Israeli forces in Juniper Hawk, with an air wing detachment operating from Nevatim, Israel.
Operations: Southern Watch
From the Mediterranean, Enterprise went through the Suez Canal and on to the Middle East. On the evening of August 2, 2001, she transited the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Gulf and relieved USS Constellation (CV-64) for Operation Southern Watch, the long-running mission enforcing the no-fly zone over southern Iraq.
For more than a month, CVW-8 flew over southern Iraq while the battle group supported maritime interdiction operations, intercepting smugglers trying to get around the UN sanctions on Iraq. The air wing also flew strikes against Iraqi targets. The last Southern Watch strike of her cruise came on September 9. Two days later, with the Arabian Gulf behind her and Africa ahead, everything changed.
Operations: Enduring Freedom
Once she was back on station in the North Arabian Sea, Enterprise spent the next few weeks getting ready while the plan for Afghanistan came together. On the night of October 7, 2001, the ship called "green deck" and her first aircraft launched two minutes later. About 25 strike aircraft from Enterprise and Carl Vinson, working with U.S. Air Force bombers, hit Taliban and al-Qaeda targets across Afghanistan. Targets included the airports at Kabul and Kandahar, the Taliban headquarters near Kandahar, and airfields at Bagram, Herat and Jalalabad.
According to the Navy's official ship history, VF-14's F-14B Tomcats led the first Navy strike into Kabul, and VF-41's Tomcats lased targets for the Hornets' laser-guided bombs. Distance was the hardest part. Afghanistan is landlocked, so every sortie meant a long flight in from the sea and a long flight back. On October 9, VF-14 flew a strike of more than 1,700 miles round trip. On October 11, Enterprise launched 20 aircraft in a single cycle, her largest launch of the campaign.
Over roughly three weeks of Enduring Freedom combat, aircraft from Enterprise flew nearly 700 missions and dropped more than 800,000 pounds of ordnance, most of it precision-guided.
Ports of Call
Before the war found her, the 2001 cruise had a strong run of liberty ports. The Navy's official history records these stops:
- Palma de Mallorca, Spain
- Cannes, France
- Naples, Italy
- Portsmouth, England
- Lisbon, Portugal, over the Fourth of July weekend
- Rhodes, Greece
- Jebel Ali and Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- Souda Bay, Crete, October 29 to 31, on the way home
For a lot of Sailors, that list tells the whole story of 2001. It starts with Mediterranean liberty, then takes in the Arabian Gulf heat, a brief stop in the UAE, and finally a few days on Crete with the war behind them.
Embarked Units: Carrier Air Wing 8
CVW-8, commanded by Captain David J. Mercer, brought a full air wing aboard the Big E:
- VF-14 and VF-41, F-14B Tomcat
- VFA-15 and VFA-87, F/A-18C Hornet
- VAQ-141, EA-6B Prowler
- VAW-124, E-2C Hawkeye
- VS-24, S-3B Viking
- HS-3, SH-60F and HH-60H Seahawk
- VRC-40 Det 5, C-2A Greyhound
Two Tomcat squadrons, two Hornet squadrons, Prowlers, Hawkeyes, Vikings and helicopters. It was the classic big-deck air wing of its day, and in the fall of 2001 every one of those squadrons had a job to do.
Life Aboard
Life on a carrier of that era was loud, crowded and relentless. With the air wing embarked, Enterprise carried thousands of Sailors, and on a ship that size the work never stopped. Flight deck crews in their colored jerseys worked 12-hour-plus days in the Arabian Sea heat. Ordnancemen built and moved bombs around the clock. Below decks, the reactor departments, supply, the galleys and the hangar bay kept the whole city running.
The first half of the cruise had a normal rhythm: underway periods, exercises, and the reward of a Mediterranean port. The second half had none of that. A crew that had already mentally started the trip home found itself at the start of a war instead, and stayed on the line for weeks of combat flight operations. Nobody aboard needed to be told why they were there.
Coming Home
On October 25, 2001, Enterprise handed off most of her remaining ordnance to her relief, USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), and turned west. She transited the Suez Canal on October 28, stopped at Souda Bay, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar in early November, and returned to Norfolk on November 10, 2001, 16 days later than originally planned. On December 7, 2001, the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, President George W. Bush spoke aboard the ship in Norfolk.
Legacy
The 2001 cruise is the one many Enterprise Sailors remember first. A carrier on her way home turned around on her own initiative, and within weeks her air wing was flying some of the first strikes of a new war. It also showed what a forward-deployed carrier is for: being in the right place when nobody saw the need coming.
Enterprise kept going for more than a decade after that, with deployments in support of Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. She was inactivated on December 1, 2012, after 51 years of service, and was formally decommissioned on February 3, 2017. For the crew of 2001, no other cruise will ever be quite like that one.
If you served aboard USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in 2001 or want to honor someone who did, browse the USS Enterprise 2001 cruise collection. It has cruise shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, long sleeves and a Med/Arabian Sea varsity jacket, all made to order. You can also see everything we carry for the Big E across all her years.