J.P.

I think your "beest story" about the USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65)
is just that, ,"a story."

On 621/79, she was in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Washington,
and sustained a 2-hour Class "A" fire in a catapult room, machine shop and passageway, It's obvious they knew where the machine shop was located in 1979.

You wrote: "It had been cmpletely undiscovered for 25 years."

She was commissioned on 11/25/61, so we'll add 25 years to that
date and we find that in 1986 she was in Alameda, CA.

If we use the date she was launched, 9/24/1960, and add 25 years to that date, we find that she was deployed in the Western Pacific
and Indian Ocean.

While she was undergoing her second nuclear plant *eight A2W
Westinghouse reactors) refueling at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. (now the Northrop-Grumman
Shipbuilding Co.) in Virginia, I was employed there in charge of
providing the special lifting and handling gear that was required to
remove the spent fuel and install eight new "power packages" in
those reactor vessels. I passed the machine shop many times and
noticed the overhead chain-fall trolley & track system used for handling large parts to be machined in the machine shop. There
was more than one "door."

Another problem with this "best story" is the bi-weekly "zone
inspections" carried out by a Commander, and a yeoman, guided by a first-class petty officer from the Master-at-Arms force. These
inspections went from frame to frame and deck to deck and very
little escaped their eyes. The inspection routes were planned by the Damage Control Officer's assistant.

I served in the USS WASP (CVS-18) for a couple years, and cannot understand how a machine shop can be "misplaced"..........

Do you have any documentary proof of this "best story?"

Cheers,

ROBERT M.