[John Rogers]

Well, I spent the years from '69 to '73 on there and we thought it was worn out then. Here are some of the possible issues. The propeller shafts/propellers/reduction gears all have a finite life. I know of twice the whole "drive train" was pulled out, shafts cleaned (all coating removed), gears pulled and all bearing done over. I seriously doubt there are any machinists in the Navy, nuclear or otherwise that have ever done that. We did it twice on ships I was on. Next are the reactor plant components and the Big E has 8 reactors which was a "nuclear copy" of the steam plant of the CV64. When I went on the CV64 Tiger cruise, the engines and all other components were in exactly the same place. The Big E has a big bulkhead to separate the reactor side from the steam side. Since there are not any ships now with that reactor design, spare parts are soft of hard to come by. Sort of like a 901 gear box! Next is probably the electronics as it has been updated several times but I doubt that even with all the turbine generators they could not make enough power, plus all the additional cooling, etc. The biggest reason are the reactor cores as they are the old 150MW single pass design and the new carriers use one very large reactor where the Big E uses 4 so again parts are not there and it is sort of hard to fine those fuel cells!