Aircraft Carrier

CHASE J. NIELSEN, 90 `Doolittle Raider' Lt. Col. Chase J. Nielsen, a member of the famed "Doolittle Raiders" who bombed Japan in 1942, died Friday at his home in Brigham City, Utah, his family said. He was a navigator in one of the most daring air raids in American history, when 16 B-25 bombers took off from an aircraft carrier and bombed Tokyo on April 18, 1942. Colonel Nielsen and his crew ditched their plane, which was running out of fuel, off the coast of China, and he spent more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war. He was one of four POWs from the raid to survive.

After six years of organizing, a Baltimore group is set to take on Tampa, Fla., in an effort to land the retired aircraft carrier USS Forrestal as a museum in the city's Inner Harbor.Chaired by former crewman Frank J. Eurice of Abingdon, the USS Forrestal Museum Inc. will submit its bid to the Navy Sea Systems Command in Washington on Wednesday, the final day of the submission period."Our clock would start at that point, for anyone else to get in," Eurice said. Under the Navy's Ship Donation Program, once a party submits an application, others have six months to file competing bids.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Armed Services Committee will review the Pentagon's decision to keep intact the promotion of a Navy officer who commanded an aircraft carrier that was blamed for a 1996 collision that caused $10 million damage.Committee staff members asked the Navy Department late last week for its reports on the incident involving the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the cruiser USS Leyte Gulf.The staff members also asked the Navy Department to explain why it chose to retain Rear Adm. Ronald L. Christenson at his current rank, said a spokesman.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Last week, as the tug pulling the retired Navy aircraft carrier Saratoga plodded up the Atlantic coast toward Newport, R.I., James R. Dahl slowly made his way through 35 years of memory, to the dotted line where he signed his name and the heaving deck where he did his job."I was 17 years old when I went on that ship, and it amazed me. It amazed me," said Dahl, now 51, a former machinist's mate on the Saratoga."I signed up on my birthday, and I lived there for three years.

THIS CHRISTMAS, a group of North Carroll Middle School students is sending a touch of home to all 6,000 crew members of the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier that left Nov. 6 for six months in the Persian Gulf.For 130 of the service men and women, that homestyle touch included gift packages and goody bags of candy and snacks.It's part of a year-long project of corresponding with 130 of the Navy personnel to share ideas and learn about geography, current events and commitment.Of Team 7, or about one-third of the eighth grade at North Carroll and their teachers, 124 are voluntarily participating in the project, donating their study period to compose letters and design fund-raisers.

Decommissioned five years ago, the Forrestal -- the nation's first aircraft "supercarrier" -- is set to become the spoils of a minor civil war.In the north, Bel Air resident Frank J. Eurice, a Forrestal veteran, is mustering the support of high-ranking, wealthy friends to berth the 1,039-foot aircraft carrier outside the Inner Harbor -- promising $1 million annually in tourist revenue.In the south, a Tampa, Fla., engineer -- and Baltimore native -- is lobbying residents to move the ship there, where officials want it to anchor their harbor tourist-center development and compete for visitors drawn to nearby Orlando.

The eighth-graders in Team 7 at North Carroll Middle School aren't getting graded on most of the work they do tracking the course of the USS Nimitz and corresponding through e-mail and regular mail with their "crew pals" on the aircraft carrier as it monitors the Persian Gulf.And that might be why they love it so much."It's fun learning this way," said Tracey Redmond, 13, of Hampstead. "This [project] has people you can talk to and understand it better."And it has improved their grades, said she and classmate Jessica Robertson.

If you believe the doomsayers, the industrialized world will go kaput in just 817 days.Jan. 1, 2,000, will not only usher in the third millennium, but it's supposed to mark the end of the industrialized world as we know it. Governments and businesses will be paralyzed, computerized lighting systems will flicker out, trains and planes will sit idle, financial accounts will be wiped out and television screens will go blank.The problem is a glitch that threatens to foul up virtually every computer in the world.

A Baltimore Circuit Court jury yesterday ordered the Owens-Corning Corp. to pay more than $16 million to a Savannah, Ga., man who suffers from mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.James Hammond, 41, a father of five, was exposed to asbestos in 1975 when he was in the Navy and served aboard the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier, said his attorney, Shepard A. Hoffman of Baltimore.Hammond installed a 600-foot communications cable in the crawl space along a corridor in the aircraft carrier over a two-month period.

WASHINGTON -- On a July morning in 1967, Petty Officer 3rd Class Thomas Ott, a 23-year-old parachute rigger, was preparing a bomber pilot for takeoff on the USS Forrestal as it bobbed in the South China Sea. Suddenly an errant missile skittered across the flight deck and ripped into the jet's fuel tank.Ott scrambled to help the pilot escape from the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk. The young sailor then turned to fight a great sheet of flame and dense smoke. But it would soon consume him and 133 crew members.

WASHINGTON - President Bush, delivering a televised farewell to the nation last night, attempted to summon a collective sense of "gratitude" for years of safety following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that shaped his presidency. In a measure of the impact the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon had on his administration, Bush touted one signal success during his time in office: No further attacks occurred. The president acknowledged that his anti-terror policies had prompted "legitimate debate."

Somali pirates drown after getting ransom 3 MOGADISHU, Somalia : Five of the pirates who hijacked a Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of a $3 million ransom, a relative said yesterday, a day after the bundle of cash was apparently dropped by parachute onto the deck of the ship. The Sirius Star and its 25 crew sailed safely away Friday at the end of a two-month standoff in the Gulf of Aden, where pirates attacked over 100 ships last year. The drowned pirates' boat overturned in rough seas, and family members were still looking for four missing bodies, said Daud Nure, a pirate who knew the men involved.

Kilmer S. Bortz, a decorated World War II naval aviator whose flying skills helped sink a Japanese aircraft carrier and battleship, died of heart failure Wednesday at his Lutherville home. He was 87. Mr. Bortz was born in Akron, Ohio, and moved with his family to Washington, where he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. His college studies at Duke University were interrupted when he enlisted in the Navy in 1941. After completing flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, Mr. Bortz was assigned to Bombing Squadron 11 or VB-11, where he flew Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers during the Guadalcanal campaign.

CHASE J. NIELSEN, 90 `Doolittle Raider' Lt. Col. Chase J. Nielsen, a member of the famed "Doolittle Raiders" who bombed Japan in 1942, died Friday at his home in Brigham City, Utah, his family said. He was a navigator in one of the most daring air raids in American history, when 16 B-25 bombers took off from an aircraft carrier and bombed Tokyo on April 18, 1942. Colonel Nielsen and his crew ditched their plane, which was running out of fuel, off the coast of China, and he spent more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war. He was one of four POWs from the raid to survive.

A year after a Pentagon task force recommended that the U.S. Naval Academy promote women to address historic problems with sexual harassment, the academy named its first female to serve in its No. 2 post yesterday. As commandant of midshipmen, Capt. Margaret D. Klein will oversee the academy's 4,200 midshipmen in a position equivalent to dean of students at a civilian university. The 49-year-old native of Weymouth, Mass., was a member of the second class to admit women at the 161-year-old academy.

THE QUICK DISPATCH of not one but two U.S. aircraft carriers to the Indian Ocean relief effort demonstrates the formidable reach of the American military -- still. The infantry may be tied down in Iraq, the Army Reserve may be heading toward the breaking point -- as The Sun's Tom Bowman reported last week -- but there's plenty of firepower in reserve. The Navy has been dealing out food, water and medicine this time rather than missiles, but there can be no mistaking its ability to act when called upon.

In a ceremony recalling the sacrifices of Cold War intelligence gathering, top National Security Agency officials yesterday honored the seven crew members killed when their Navy surveillance aircraft crashed while landing on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea in 1987. As sunlight broke through heavy morning clouds, several hundred people gathered for the dedication of a Navy EA-3B Skywarrior electronic spy plane placed in NSA's National Vigilance Park, which honors the more than 180 Americans who have died on duty collecting intelligence from the air. A short walk from the eavesdropping and code-breaking agency's glass towers at Fort Meade, the park was created in 1997 to honor the sacrifices of those who flew secret missions along the borders of the Soviet Union and other hostile countries.

WE LOOK OUT to sea this winter's day and wonder how to keep faith alive. Our little skipjack of a baseball team is off the radar. It might be in danger. Up north, a wildly inequitable and imperfect storm is in full brew. It's a menace to any vessel that's not an aircraft carrier (Yankees) or supertanker (Red Sox). Hurricane George is whipping up whitecaps that threaten to capsize our little skipjack as it trudges cautiously out to free-agent sea. "Is that an iceberg, Mike?" Admiral Beattie calls.

When most schools need extra classroom space, they wheel in a couple of trailers. At the Naval Academy, they brought in a barge. In its search for temporary replacements for classrooms flooded by Tropical Storm Isabel, the academy called in a gargantuan vessel that had just wrapped up a tour housing more than 1,000 sailors from a dry-docked aircraft carrier in Florida. A tugboat hauled the ship - more of a floating five-story hotel and office complex - up to the school's Severn River seawall last week.

SAN DIEGO - After 41 years, 21 overseas deployments and eight combat tours, the aircraft carrier Constellation left San Diego Bay yesterday for the final time for a long, slow journey into retirement. For sailors who had served aboard the giant ship known as "Connie," it was a sorrowful occasion. "Connie is my girl," said Chief Petty Officer Efren Ponce, one of a group of sailors who sang "Anchors Aweigh" as the ship departed. "She's where I learned how to be a sailor. I'll miss her." Tugboats pushed the 1,069-foot-long, 80,000-ton ship away from the dock at North Island Naval Air Station.