Iconic Photo of USS Enterprise CVAN-65,USS Long Beach CG-9 and USS Bainbridge DLGN-25 during Operation Sea Orbit 1964

Note: This is the first of four articles on the US Navy’s Nuclear Surface Force. Future articles will deal with Task Force One and Operation Sea Orbit, the Nuclear Cruisers and the Nuclear Carriers.

In the 1950s the US Navy recognized the Nuclear power could play a key role in the future Navy.  The operational flexibility of Nuclear powered ships which would not be dependent on underway replenishment provided by tankers or port calls to conduct high speed operations over vast expansions of the world’s oceans.  Orders were placed in the mid-1950s for an attack aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise CVAN-65, cruiser the USS Long Beach CLGN-160 and later CGN-9 and the USS Bainbridge DLGN, later CLG-25.  These ships would become the prototypes of a Navy which early advocates of nuclear propulsion…