USS Nimitz (CVN-68) had already earned her place in naval history before she arrived in the western Pacific in 2003. The first of her class, the most produced nuclear carrier design in history, she had been at sea for nearly thirty years when she deployed into a Navy that was now fighting two wars simultaneously in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the sailors aboard Nimitz during her 2003 deployment, the Global War on Terror was not an abstraction — it was the operational context that shaped every mission their ship flew, every port they visited, and every day they spent underway in waters that had been, since September 2001, anything but routine.
The Ship
USS Nimitz (CVN-68) is the lead ship of the Nimitz class — the most successful nuclear carrier design ever built, with ten ships commissioned between 1975 and 2009. She was commissioned on May 3, 1975, at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, and named for Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet during World War II, whose strategy and leadership in the Pacific war established the carrier as the decisive weapon of naval warfare. The ship that bears his name has been at sea for half a century, the oldest carrier in the active fleet for much of that time, continuously upgraded and maintained to remain effective alongside ships commissioned decades after her.
By 2003, Nimitz was homeported at Naval Station Everett in Washington State. She deployed to the western Pacific with an air wing prepared for the combat environment that had defined American naval aviation since October 2001.
The 2003 Deployment
Nimitz's 2003 WestPac deployment took her to the western Pacific and then to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf region as the United States continued combat operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom had concluded by the time she arrived in theater, but the operational requirements of the post-combat phase — stability operations, close air support, reconnaissance, and the sustained presence that communicates intent to allies and adversaries alike — remained constant. An aircraft carrier is not a weapon that is only useful in the opening days of a conflict. It is useful every day it is at sea.
In the Arabian Sea, Nimitz operated in support of Operation Enduring Freedom — the Afghanistan campaign that had been running since October 2001. Navy carrier aviation's contribution to OEF included strike missions, close air support for ground forces, and the persistent intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance flights that became central to the counterterrorism campaign. The mountains of Afghanistan are a long way from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the North Arabian Sea, but the aircraft that flew those missions crossed that distance every day.
The Air Wing
Carrier Air Wing Eleven (CVW-11) was embarked on Nimitz for the 2003 deployment, bringing the mix of strike, fighter, and support aircraft that characterized post-Cold War carrier air wings. F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet squadrons provided the strike and fighter capability. EA-6B Prowlers handled electronic warfare and jamming support. E-2C Hawkeyes managed airborne early warning and battle management. S-3B Vikings provided tanking and surveillance. The air wing was built for the full range of missions the current threat environment demanded, from precision strike to persistent surveillance.
Flying combat missions in support of two simultaneous wars is not the same experience as a peacetime deployment, even when the ship is not in the initial wave of a major offensive. The pilots and aircrew who flew from Nimitz in 2003 flew into operational environments where the weapons were real and the stakes were real. The maintenance crews who kept those aircraft airworthy understood what the flight schedule meant.
Life Aboard
Life aboard Nimitz during a deployed period in 2003 carried the weight of the post-9/11 world. The sailors who had joined the Navy after September 2001 had never known a peacetime Navy; the veterans who had served before that date understood the difference. Every deployment since October 2001 had a context that earlier deployments didn't carry: the knowledge that the United States was at war, that the work was consequential, that the missions mattered in ways that extended beyond the metrics of any individual sortie.
Nimitz made port visits throughout her deployment — Bahrain, Dubai, Singapore, and ports in the western Pacific that provided the rest and maintenance opportunities that a ship operating at high tempo requires. The sailors who went ashore carried the awareness that they were serving in a Navy conducting the most sustained combat air campaign since Vietnam, and that their ship was part of it.
If you served aboard USS Nimitz or want to honor someone who did, browse the Nimitz 2003 cruise collection. The full Nimitz collection covers all deployment years in the store.
Legacy
USS Nimitz continues to serve. She is the oldest carrier in the United States Navy — commissioned in 1975, still operational, still deploying, still carrying the name of the admiral who understood better than anyone that carriers win wars. The sailors who served aboard her in 2003 were part of a ship's company that spanned fifty years of naval history, from the Cold War to Vietnam to the Gulf War to the Global War on Terror. That is a long arc of service, and Nimitz has been at the center of it since the beginning.