USS Enterprise (CVN-65)

The eighth USS Enterprise (CVN-65) was the world's first nuclear aircraft carrier and the seventh U.S. Navy ship of the name. As of 2005, the ship is homeported at Norfolk, Virginia, and scheduled for retirement in 2013.

Miscellaneous

• Partially due to her association with her famous World War II forebear and partially due to the association of her name with the television series Star Trek, Enterprise is quite possibly the most famous vessel in the entire United States Navy.
• A common misconception that began during the 1970s and persisted into the 80s and 90s was that the Enterprise's nuclear reactors gave her an abnormally high top speed, as high as 50 knots (93 km/h) was rumored. The truth was somewhat more prosaic: Since the ship carried eight nuclear reactors, she could get up full steam almost immediately, allowing her to accelerate far more quickly than any other ship until the introduction of the naval gas turbine in the early 70s. By the 1990s, gas turbine ships which could keep up with or even exceed the nuclear ships' acceleration were common in the fleet, but the rumors persisted and continue to persist.
• Another incorrect rumor is that Enterprise's reactors leak enough to be a danger on-shore from a typical harbor anchorage; this is needless to say false, as such a high level of leakage would make the ship immediately hazardous to the lives of those who serve aboard.
• The Enterprise was supposed to appear in the film , but it was out to sea at the time of filming. Instead, the carrier USS Ranger CV-61 played the part of the Enterprise.
• Parts of the movie Top Gun were set aboard the Enterprise; like in Star Trek IV, these were in fact filmed aboard Ranger (which between the two movies had a busy film career in 1984-1985)
• However, the "Enterprise" was used in the filming of the movie version of Tom Clancy's novel Hunt for Red October.