[John Rogers]

Saw in the news that the USS Ford has finally gotten all its new systems working so they can launch and recover their planes and have their radars working well enough so it won't run into any other ships or land masses! Sort of reminds me of what happened on the USS Enterprise CVA(N)65.

When the second set of reactor cores was installed, the Navy along with Westinghouse decided to upgrade all the reactor control electronics from switches and mag-amps to full transistorized controls. Well, the bits and pieces were not tested well enough such went things got put into their places they did not work as intended! Lights would blink on/off, meters would lag or jump, control rods would jump making it very hard to control things. Even though Rickover came to visit several times we all got to work 12/12 daily and 7 days a week. A bunch of the wives got really mad and held a strike and blocked the main shipyard gate at Newport News! The reactor officer, who had been kicked off subs held a meeting and ordered all the married men to "order" their wives to knock it off! Word of that made it onto the local TV station so there was a bunch of embarrassment for the Navy. Finally figured the troubles were caused by electrical "leakage" from 440v power lines.
John