USS Enterprise CVN-65: Eight Reactors, George Takei and a $1B Scrap Bill

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

So, you handed us this huge stack of research on, well, one of the most legendary machines in human history.

SPEAKER_2 (0:06)

Yeah, the USS Enterprise.

SPEAKER_1 (0:07)

Right, the Enterprise. And looking through your notes, the mission for today's Deep Dive is basically to figure out this glaring contradiction.

SPEAKER_2 (0:15)

Exactly, because it's a massive one.

SPEAKER_1 (0:17)

Yeah. I mean, we are tracing the 50-plus year lifespan of a vessel that cost so much money, it practically broke the Navy's budget.

SPEAKER_2 (0:24)

It was an absolute apex predator, yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (0:27)

The world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Yet, it was sent out into the incredibly tense, paranoid environment of the Cold War, completely missing its standard defensive weapons.

SPEAKER_2 (0:39)

It is a staggering oversight when you look at it on paper. I mean, you have this pinnacle of modern engineering, right? A $450 million floating fortress.

SPEAKER_1 (0:48)

Right.

SPEAKER_2 (0:49)

At launch, it just lacks the most basic surface-to-air capabilities to defend itself against, say, a Soviet bomber.

SPEAKER_1 (0:55)

Which is wild.

SPEAKER_2 (0:56)

It is. But the Enterprise, or CVN-65, as it's officially designated, it's really the perfect lens for us to view the evolution of modern military technology.

SPEAKER_1 (1:07)

Okay. Let's unpack this.

SPEAKER_2 (1:08)

Yeah. So if we follow the lifespan of this one massive ship from its really ambitious birth through its trials in Vietnam straight into the post-911 era, we are essentially tracing the whole arc of American geopolitical strategy.

SPEAKER_1 (1:22)

I want to start with the sheer scale of the engineering here. Because before it could make history, the ship had to be willed into existence.

SPEAKER_2 (1:30)

Right. And it wasn't easy.

SPEAKER_1 (1:31)

No.

The keel was laid down in 1958 at Newport News, and it was commissioned in 1961 And looking at the dimensions in these sources, the Enterprise was 1,123 feet long.

SPEAKER_2 (1:43)

Which is massive.

SPEAKER_1 (1:44)

It's over a fifth of a mile. But the size isn't even the most revolutionary part, is it?

SPEAKER_2 (1:49)

Not at all. It's what was powering it.

SPEAKER_1 (1:51)

Right. Because instead of conventional oil-burning boilers, this thing housed eight Westinghouse A2W nuclear reactors. Eight of them.

SPEAKER_2 (2:00)

Yeah. And to understand why that matters, we have to look at the mechanics of naval nuclear power.

SPEAKER_1 (2:04)

Okay.

SPEAKER_2 (2:04)

So an A2W reactor, and that's A for aircraft carrier, two for second generation, W for Westinghouse, it uses nuclear fission to generate immense heat.

SPEAKER_1 (2:13)

Right.

SPEAKER_2 (2:14)

That heat boils water to create highly pressurized steam, and then that steam turns the ship's massive turbines.

SPEAKER_1 (2:20)

Okay. So it's a giant steam engine, basically.

SPEAKER_2 (2:22)

Exactly. Just a really, really advanced one. Now, most modern carriers, they only use two reactors.

SPEAKER_1 (2:28)

Right. Only two.

SPEAKER_2 (2:29)

Yeah. Usually just two. The Enterprise needed eight because the Navy was essentially just scaling up smaller submarine reactors.

SPEAKER_1 (2:36)

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_2 (2:37)

Yeah. Nobody had ever built a power plant for a ship this large before.

SPEAKER_1 (2:40)

Pioneering that kind of technology, it comes with a terrifying bill.

SPEAKER_2 (2:46)

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_1 (2:47)

The final cost was $451.3 million. That was such an astronomical budget overrun that the Navy just had to cancel the other five ships they originally planned for this class.

SPEAKER_2 (2:59)

Right. They just couldn't afford them.

SPEAKER_1 (3:00)

So the Enterprise became an orphan, like the only ship of its kind.

SPEAKER_2 (3:05)

Exactly.

SPEAKER_1 (3:06)

Which brings us back to that missing defense system. Because of those cost overruns, they launched it without its planned terrier missile launchers.

SPEAKER_2 (3:15)

Yeah. They just left them off.

SPEAKER_1 (3:17)

I have to imagine that the terrier system wasn't just like a luxury add-on. If it's designed to shoot down incoming threats, leaving it off is like building a billion-dollar bank fault and deciding you can't afford a lock on the front door.

SPEAKER_2 (3:30)

That is the terrifying reality that early crew faced. Yeah. The terrier was a surface-to-air missile system meant to intercept enemy aircraft before they could drop their payload.

SPEAKER_1 (3:39)

So without it?

SPEAKER_2 (3:41)

Without it, the ship had to rely entirely on its escort vessels for close-range defense.

SPEAKER_1 (3:46)

Wow.

SPEAKER_2 (3:47)

And the compromises didn't stop there. The Enterprise was also fitted with this phased array radar system called Scanfar.

SPEAKER_1 (3:56)

Right. The sources mentioned this gave the ship its distinctive kind of boxy-looking control tower or the island. Right. But the underlying technology sounds like a nightmare.

SPEAKER_2 (4:06)

Oh, it was.

SPEAKER_1 (4:07)

Because instead of a spinning radar dish that sweeps an area like a lighthouse, a phased array system uses hundreds of stationary antennas that electronically steer radar beams.