American Spirit
This thing was there, I thought as I climbed out of the car.
From 215 miles out at sea, the ship’s planes swooped in over Pearl Harbor too late to stop the attack, although they did have a brief, confused tangle with the Japanese and came under fire from panicked Americans on the ground below. This thing was on board as the ship sailed into a smoking, devastated Pearl on December 8, refueled, and headed out to draw blood two days later, sinking its first Japanese ship, the submarine I-70. It was at the Doolittle Raid, Midway, Guadalcanal, and campaigns across the Pacific and throughout the war, eventually reaching Iwo Jima and Okinawa as the Americans closed in on Japan. This is the 25,000 pound anchor, the hardest, heaviest hunk of iron on board, hanging beneath the bow of the USS ENTERPRISE, the hardest hunk of warfighting steel in American history. In January 1945, ENTERPRISE’s planes struck targets on land and sea to support the US Army landing on the Philippine island of Luzon. My father was part of that force they were safeguarding, and here I was, nearly 76 years later, resting my hand on that anchor at Washington DC’s Navy Yard.
Massive as it is at 12 feet tall and nine wide, it’s apparently pretty small as far as aircraft carrier anchors go. That’s the funny thing about things heroic - or even heroes: they’re a little less prepossessing than you might imagine. At the White House, I’ve seen George Washington’s sword from the Revolutionary War, which would have seemed perfectly ordinary if I didn’t know what it was. I’ve met a few pro football players, who despite their stardom were not larger than life. Still, this anchor boggles the mind: no other object in existence has been party to the sheer amount of violence it has: years and thousands of miles of tracer bullets flying, dogfights, explosions, torpedoes and planes screaming past, her own planes launching and returning, kamikaze attacks, anti-aircraft fire lighting up the night sky, the bombs that struck ENTERPRISE, and the 911 enemy planes and 71 ships she sent to the bottom of the ocean.
On three separate occasions, the Japanese declared that ENTERPRISE had been sunk in battle. They would soon be horrified to see ‘The Grey Ghost’ on the horizon once more. The American public had grown used to her name in the headlines as through the years their fear slowly dared to become hope and then finally blossomed into joy. In October 1945, after the war, when the fleet sailed into New York Harbor for Navy Day, everybody, including President Harry Truman, came out to stare at her battle hardened steel.
A number of Navy ships named ENTERPRISE existed before this one, the first being a 70 foot schooner that saw action on Lake Champlain in the Revolutionary War. The carrier was 761 feet at the waterline, 827 from one end of her flight deck to the other, which was merely a long rectangle mounted on top of a plainly conventional hull. She was launched in 1936 as CV-6, the sixth carrier ever built. In fact, she was even less impressive than two of her predecessors, SARATOGA and RANGER, a third smaller, the result of engineering and efficiency improvements.
The day before ten fighting ships paraded into New York Harbor in October 1945, 101 planes were launched at sea from the decks of ENTERPRISE, MONTEREY, AND BATAAN. They flew in a giant V-formation over the city as below windows flew open and people stood in the streets and cheered. The planes then landed at the Naval Air Station in Brooklyn, ‘with the salt of Tokyo Bay still on their wings.’ The following morning at 4 AM, the flotilla was off Ambrose Light. At 6 AM, they sailed into the harbor. The AUGUSTA was there, the ship that bore President Truman to the Potsdam Conference to negotiate terms with Churchill and Stalin, as was the MISSOURI, which hosted the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. MONTEREY led the parade, flying an enormous flag and a string of balloons as sailors standing on the Battery shouted and waved.
Next out of the mists came ENTERPRISE.
‘Well, there she is, boys,’ a sailor said. ‘There’s the old Big E.’ The crowd watched in utter silence as she passed.
The reaction was probably similar in Pearl Harbor in the days following the Japanese attack. As ENTERPRISE sailed in and towered silently over the pier, Admiral ‘Bull’ Halsey ordered every available hand away from the surrounding smoldering wreckage to assist with refueling and resupplying the Big E. A rush job at 24 hours, the task was done in seven, and ENTERPRISE turned to the business at hand.
Thus begins one of history’s most compelling narratives of American greatness. Simply put, World War Two’s decisive battles on land could not have been won without decisive victories at sea. The Battle of the Atlantic fed England and delivered food and industrial supplies to the Soviet Union, making possible the victories over Germany at Stalingrad and Kursk. In the Pacific, the assaults on key Japanese holdings were made possible by clearing the sea lanes for American use.
In the first months of the war, the Japanese with their six carriers cruised the Pacific with impunity. The United States had three, so strategy called for a calculated blend of all-out aggression and defensive caution. The shock of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, where carriers ENTERPRISE and HORNET ventured dangerously close to Japan in secret, launching B-17 bombers that stunned Japan and electrified America, compelled Japan to stretch and thereby weaken its defensive perimeter. The plan to cut Australia and New Zealand off from the world was thwarted in the Battle of the Coral Sea. A month later, the Battle of Midway was an intelligence coup for the Americans, who were ready and waiting in superior numbers to pounce upon a Japanese invasion force that was pretty sure the Americans were nowhere near. In the sustained and bloody fighting, Japan lost four carriers. Rather than pursue the defeated stragglers, the US cautiously retired behind Midway to protect both the island and their fleet.
It’s important to remember that the battle hardened hunk of steel we’re admiring is a metaphor for American will, particularly the brave fliers who risked and gave their lives in ferocious combat, as well as the admirals who allocated their limited resources so brilliantly. It was they who prevailed at Guadalcanal, Truk Lagoon, the Philippine Sea, and beyond. Battle scarred, ENTERPRISE had to undergo repairs on numerous occasions. In the Summer of 1943, she headed to Bremerton, Washington, to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, for a major overhaul. The muscle she put on there, the torpedo blisters along her hull and the batteries of the newest and deadliest anti-aircraft weaponry, reflected lessons hard learned. Those sailors who stood in awe on the Battery in October 1945 were not thinking of the ship but the blood spilled and bravery shown on her decks and in the sky.
This brand of greatness appeals to those of us on the long, slow march of a strength training routine. Whether you’re saving the world from the forces of tyranny or a deadly pandemic, slow and steady is the way. ENTERPRISE’s lesson is that brains must determine how brawn is used - and sometimes bravery has to make up for gaps in the plan. That’s just as true in the weight room as it was in the Pacific.
It’s important to know that this American spirit still exists somewhere. I slapped my palm against that anchor last week. It’s there: hard, cold, quiet . . . waiting.
