United States Naval Academy - Lucky Bag Yearbook (Annapolis, MD)

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and place is half a victory . . Sir Francis Drake to Queen Elizabeth i, i 5 8 8 9 At a new Frontier we stood, a nation ready and eager to plunge into new and undeveloped areas of thought and action. Our President had told us at his In- auguration that our frontier life would demand sacrifice, as it had of another gener- ation, and we were prepared. For it was not a peaceful world. It was a time when, with crisis points ranging from Berlin to Saigon, from Havana to the Formosa Straits, the Navy was called upon to display its constant readiness for four-ocean defense, a mighty challenge to the intelligent deployment of ships, equipm ent and forces around the world. The Berlin Wall called the Navy to action, as did missiles discovered in Cuba. Reserve and regular ships and personnel cruised the waters off the German coast in support of divided Berlin, patrolled the tense Caribbean boundaries of the quarantine watch, and were rushed to readiness in Vietnamese waters after a successful military coup in that nation ' s tormented capital city. As crisis built on crisis, erupting now and then from restless peace to breathtaking urgency, the Navy was there. Responding with an enormous and varied arsenal of weapons, the Navy used everything at her command, from her oldest aircraft carrier to her newest . . . from ESSEX to ENTERPRISE, nuclear powered and mammoth. We saw three super- carriers commissioned along with a giant assortment of nuclear-armed guided missile cruisers, destroyers and submarines. For the Navy it was the beginning of a new era, built secruely on the foundations of time-tested methods and concepts. We saw the first Polaris subs go on station deep beneath the earth ' s waters, a major deterrent to nuclear war while demonstrations against them raged at Holy Loch. We saw the first astronauts catapulted into outer space atop flaming rockets, and recognized with pride that many of them were Navy personnel. We saw con- troversy in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill over the TFX and the need for another nuclear carrier. We marvelled at the giant new Phantoms and Vigilantes in oper- ation with the fleet. We read newspapers filled with new terminology, new and incomprehensible statistics and new confidence, and felt part of it. It was a demanding time for the Navy, but they were equal to it.

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