2 months ago
22
Like a lot of Navy lore, the details are in dispute. But Jere Cordell, of San Diego, swears the beastly carrier USS Nimitz won an impromptu drag race against slender cruisers a half-century ago off Norfolk, Va.
“Nimitz smoked us from the get-go,” said Cordell, who was on the competing USS California at the time. “Flat-out beat us. I remember thinking, ‘That’s going to be a great ship.’”
He proved to be right about the 24-story carrier, which docked at its former home in San Diego Bay on Sunday at a bittersweet moment. It’s off-loading aircraft before it pushes on to Bremerton, Wash., to complete its final deployment. It will be decommissioned next year.
Veterans are lavishing praise on the ship, saying the Cold War-era flattop helped revolutionize the Navy’s ability to roam the world’s oceans and linger in distant trouble spots like the Taiwan Straight and the Persian Gulf.
It has a pair of nuclear reactors that can go more than 20 years without refueling. Conventional carriers, at the time, had to fill up every few thousand miles. Early on, the Nimitz was also faster and more maneuverable than its foes, giving it an edge as it patrolled the Middle East and Indo-Pacific.
In an unexpected twist, the Nimitz also became a pop culture star, appearing in movies, books, documentaries and video games. It started to become famous in 1980 with the release of the sci-fi movie “The Final Countdown,” which was largely filmed on the ship. The plot had...
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