Saying farewell to the USS Nimitz

The USS Nimitz spent nearly half a century as a pillar of American sea power, ushering in the era of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and setting the standard for warships that followed.

As the lead ship of its class, the Nimitz has sailed the world’s oceans through the final years of the Cold War, the conflicts of the Middle East and the opening decades of the 21st century.

Named for Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in World War II, the Nimitz has launched aircraft in combat operations and routine missions alike for nearly five decades.

Now, the Nimitz, America’s oldest operational aircraft carrier, is set to retire.

With a service record spanning multiple generations of sailors, the carrier made its final return to its home port at Naval Base Kitsap near Seattle in mid-December, marking not just the end of a deployment cycle but also the closing of a historic chapter in U.S. naval history.

“We have traveled more than two-thirds of this planet during this nine-month deployment, and I cannot overstate the positive impact the Nimitz Strike Group has made as part of our mission to maintain peace through strength by sustaining credible deterrence alongside our allies and partners,” Rear Adm. Fred Goldhammer, commander of Carrier Strike Group 11, said after the ship returned home.

The USS Nimitz underwent a baptism of fire about five years after it was commissioned in 1975. The carrier was part of Operation Eagle Claw, the failed U.S. mission to free American hostages held by Iranian revolutionaries.

On April 24, 1980, six Sikorsky RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters lifted off from the flight deck and headed toward Desert One, a preselected refueling site 600 miles away.

During the mission, three Navy helicopters experienced critical malfunctions, including hydraulic issues, instrument failures and dust storm damage, while en route to the staging area. It resulted in the cancellation of the mission. One helicopter collided fatally with an Air Force C-130 during the withdrawal. Eight U.S. service members were killed during Eagle Claw.

In the 1990s, Nimitz aircrews provided fighter cover and launched airstrikes during Operation Desert Storm and Southern Watch.

The more recent Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan also involved the Nimitz.

“These men and women, these world-class warfighters, truly exemplified our Navy’s warrior ethos through their honor, integrity, resilience and relentless commitment to the mission and to each other,” Capt. Joseph Furco, the ship’s commanding officer, said after the Nimitz returned to its final home port.

“I am deeply proud of this crew for proving over nine months of sustained operations at sea that they are well-trained, fit to fight and ready to win,” he said.

For 50 years, the nuclear-powered Nimitz was a mobile air base for sustained global operations and a symbol of national resolve, naval analysts said.

“We used to kid around that it was 100,000 tons of sovereign American soil that can be anywhere at any time,” Dave Wood, vice president of the USS Nimitz Association, told The Washington Times. “It gave the Navy the ability to conduct flight operations. It could be anywhere they wanted it to deploy.”

Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, served aboard the Nimitz as the ship’s reactor operator from 2004 to 2007.

“Nimitz was the first in a class of supercarriers. Its construction was started just after the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and it has excelled for 50 years,” he told The Times. “The ship is a physical manifestation of America’s global reach and power.”

Mr. Montgomery, who also serves as senior director of FDD’s Center and Technology Innovation, said supercarriers like the Nimitz will continue to play an important role in deterring adversaries such as China in the short term and for decades to come.

“This would be less risky if the Navy would commit to longer-range attack aircraft and preferably some unmanned versions,” he said.

Hollywood came calling in 1980 when the Nimitz played itself in the Kirk Douglas sci-fi movie “The Final Countdown.” The plot has the carrier being transported back to Dec. 7, 1941, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Reviews of the movie were mixed.

“As a documentary on the USS Nimitz, ‘The Final Countdown’ is wonderful. As entertainment, however, it has the feeling of a telepic that strayed onto the big screen,” Variety said after the release. “The magnificent production values provided by setting the film on the world’s largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier can’t transcend the predictable cleverness of a plot that will seem overly familiar to viewers raised on ‘Twilight Zone’ reruns.”

Meanwhile, in real life, “Being on a combat deployment where you are the only carrier available for persistent air operations means you can’t go offline for maintenance issues [and] you can’t have persistent hiccups,” Mr. Montgomery said. “It’s a demanding, high-stress environment.”

Nimitz-class aircraft carriers are powered by two A4W nuclear reactors that generate steam to drive four turbines, providing virtually unlimited range and endurance for more than 20 years without refueling.

The construction of the Nimitz-class carriers marked the Navy’s transition from conventionally powered carriers, which need friendly countries’ ports for refueling, to nuclear-powered carriers that essentially don’t.

Mr. Montgomery was the senior reactor operator aboard the Nimitz during the ship’s 2005 deployment to Iraq, which was featured in the PBS documentary series “Carrier.”

“The personnel in the Reactor Department were all professionals. But in particular, the department heads, the limited duty officers and the senior enlisted were all workhorses who were very committed to the mission,” he said. “I was very fortunate to have such superb shipmates.”

Hundreds of sailors manned the rails on a wet, blustery day in mid-December as the USS Nimitz steamed into Puget Sound and returned to its home port.

The Nimitz had just wrapped up a nine-month deployment, operating in the Indo-Pacific region and in the Persian Gulf, where it launched airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Somalia. It also supported freedom of navigation efforts in the Arabian Sea, completing four transits through the tense Strait of Hormuz.

The ship’s final mission wasn’t without mishaps.

On Oct. 26, an F/A-18F Super Hornet and an MH-60R Seahawk helicopter went into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other. Both crews were safely recovered. President Trump later suggested that contaminated fuel may have been responsible for the crashes, although the Navy’s investigation is reportedly continuing.

The Nimitz is set to be decommissioned this year, and its nuclear fuel will be removed in Norfolk, Virginia. The vessel is unlikely to become a floating museum, as have scores of other retired Navy ships, including World War II-era carriers USS Yorktown and USS Midway.

Those carriers were conventionally powered, but removing the complex nuclear reactors to avoid radiation risks while keeping the rest of the Nimitz reasonably intact would be a logistical headache and tremendously costly.

“It’s sad, but it’s one of those things. We knew it was going to happen, but we just didn’t know when,” Mr. Wood said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of deaths of U.S. service members in Operation Eagle Claw.