Alas, the Steaming series is coming to an end. This will be the second to last volume. This edition contains letters from 6/27/06 to 6/1/08. As you can see, the frequency of correspondence is now starting to greatly diminish. I didn’t know it then but the KP Site was starting to take on water. Technology was rapidly advancing and it was leaving me behind. Hell, I was still editing my webpages the old-fashioned way, using a 1999 version of Microsoft Frontpage. This dog was too old to learn new tricks and it was starting to show. I love the letters in Volume 6. They’re about people I knew and loved, places I knew and loved, and the special times I had with these people in those places. Almost everyone from my era is now present and accounted for and most agree they remember only the good times. Even veterans of the Newport News overhaul seem less jaded. Time had finally softened the Norfolk nightmare. Could it be that even the Y2K gang was becoming sentimental too? It sure seemed that way.

The Big E’s last generation of nukes and engineers were reporting aboard during this era of correspondence. These yarns (and the ones that had been coming in for six years) were now required reading. The KP Site was a poorly kept secret. Even the scrambled-egg-on-the-hat types were secretly lurking. A tale uploaded one day was discussed the next down in the plants, up in the wardrooms, and even in some remote NAVSEA office. We 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s old salts might not have contributed much to overall plant safety, but we certainly inspired many a 3rd Class Petty Officer to accept his or her lot in life and strive to be noteworthy on a ship that had a history like no other.

Grandfathers, fathers, and now sons and daughters could brag that they steamed on the mighty Enterprise. No other ship of the line had sailors that loved their home more. How could that be? The Big E was a genuine shitshow. Everything was FUBAR. HP-tape and J-B Weld held most of it together. There wasn’t even a supply chain that could help anymore. But yet, everyone did their job and did it better than any other snipe or twidget in the fleet. They understood they were part of a legend. They knew it would actually mean something to have served on the Carrier with Class.

Sadly, her time is up. Sure, another ship will call herself Enterprise, but that one-immaculate, sleek, pristine, state of the art-could never be as special. What made the CVN 65 unique was her crew, not her labyrinth of machines. No other ship in the world had men and women serving with such pride.