American carriers

Commissioned at 11:11am on 11 Oct 1975 at Shipway 11 by Mamie Eisenhower, The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) had the ceremonial bottle of champagne smashed over the bow.
"Ike", as is called the Eisenhower, is a Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier that was always on the move (second of Nimitz class). S
Ike carried 5,500 men when underway on a major deployment. The actual ship's company comprised only about 3,000 men. The other 2,500 men came from the Air Wing personnel. The ship was a virtual city complete with restaurants (mess halls, actually ...4 of them), a large library, a hospital complete with doctors, eye doctors ...and NO nurses....several stores, soda fountains, movies, closed circuit TV studio, radio station, 2 complete ham radio setups (for phone patches back home for the crew) plus many more conviences of a community....except!!!... there were NO women!!
On one of the deployments, IKE enjoyed being the second ship in U.S.Naval history to serve alcoholic beverages for a special occasion. It was deployed an especially long time without a portcall during the Iranian hostage crises during 1980 and men gained SECNAV approval to serve 2 beers to every man aboard. USS Nimitz was the first to do this only a couple of months ahead of us.

Jirka Wagner