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Originally Posted by stilleto69
Excellent work as always Chico, but I have a couple of questions: 1.) Isn't CVW-20 assigned to the USS Stennis & CVW-11 assigned to the USS Enterprise? 2.) What happened to the USS Enterprise? and 3.) Wasn't the Stennis assigned to LANTFLT as per your US Naval Aviation Orbat?
Just curious? But again GREAT WORK!
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Thanks!
I worked with Matt Wiser on the USN Aviation a bit after I put the orbat up on my site. I'll have to get around to updating the web site...
Here is the quick breakdown we're using these days:
CVW 1 - America
2 - Kitty Hawk
3 - JFK
5 - Connie
6 - Forrestal
7 - Ike
8 - TR
9 - Nimitz
10 - Independence
11 - Lincoln
13 - Washington
14 - Ranger
15 - Vinson
16 - Midway
17 - Saratoga
19 - Coral Sea
20 - Enterprise
30 - Stennis
21 - Lexington
56 - Oriskany
When Enterprise moved to the Atlantic Fleet, CVW-11 stayed in the Pacific. Enterprise went to war with a reserve air wing, CVW-20, and was damaged during the Kola operation. It retired to Belfast and remained there until TF 34 sailed back to the U.S., when it accompanied the fleet to Norfolk. The remnants of CVW-20 were integrated into Eisenhower's as the Atlantic Fleet's primary active carrier.
Stennis was newly delivered from the shipyard at the outbreak of war (commissioned in January 96). She was still on post-commissioning workups, so she was not in the initial operations in the Pacific. The air wing that was scheduled to deploy on Stennis upon her entry into full service instead stayed on Ranger (which was to decommission) and it was decided to have the reserve air wing CVW-30 do its workups on Stennis as she was doing her workups. When she was declared ready to deploy the powers that be decided to leave CVW-30 aboard.
I'd hope that not much of the CAF was at Harlingen. Too close to the border. On a practical level, the CAF would not be of too much use - maintenance intensive, need to find real machineguns for it, modern ordnance generally won't fit on WWII-era bomb racks, and they run off of real AvGas (100% octane, not kerosene JP-8 Jet fuel).