San Diego to be home for CVN John C. Stennis

Sea Power, Aug 1997

San Diego, Calif., is slated to be the new home port for the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, the Navy announced on 9 June. San Diego's Naval Air Station North Island, long a home for conventionally powered aircraft carriers, was chosen to be the third Pacific Coast home port for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs).

The John C. Stennis is scheduled to make its first six-month deployment in February 1998, leaving its current home port of Norfolk, Va., for operations in the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf before proceeding to San Diego. The carrier will bring to San Diego a crew of over 3,000 sailors and Marines with an annual payroll of over $126 million.

Since the closure of Naval Air Station Alameda in the San Francisco Bay area earlier this year, the Pacific Fleet's three current CVNs (Nimitz, Carl Vinson, and Abraham Lincoln) have been based in Washington's Puget Sound area, homeported in Bremerton and Everett. The San Diego basing of CVNs became inevitable as the number of Nimitz-class carriers increased and older conventionally powered carriers were retired.