Only a week before leaving office, President Joe Biden announced on Jan.13 that the next two Gerald R. Ford carriers would be named for former Presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush.
This move, along with a number of other warships named after living people decided by outgoing Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, signifies more challenges in the U.S. Navy ship naming conventions.
The Navy has had long-established conventions for naming ships. For example, the service typically named capital ships like battleships for states, medium-sized vessels like cruisers for cities and towns and smaller warships like destroyers in honor of American Navy and Marine Corps heroes.
But in recent years, the Navy has increasingly named warships for living people, including political figures, which has become a divisive issue. The next Navy secretary needs to get control of the dysfunctional naming process and restore a sense of order. At the same time, Congress should set guardrails.
A Short History of U.S. Navy Warship Naming
Geroge Washington picked the names of five of the first six U.S. Navy frigates from a list prepared by the Secretary of War Timothy Pickering. These all had lofty names associated with the new republic including United States, President, Congress, Constellation — and of course the most famous, Constitution.
By the late 1890’s, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt established the naming convention of states for battleships, cities and towns for cruisers and other combatants, naval heroes for the new “torpedo boat destroyers” entering the fleet and mythological names for auxiliaries.
Submarines later received numbers and then fish names. Aircraft carriers in the 1920’s took on Revolutionary War names like Lexington, Saratoga, Ranger, and Bonhomme Richard. This naming convention received congressional support and persisted through the end of World War II.
Cold War Naming Conundrums
The early and mid-Cold War saw relative calm in warship naming conventions, but new types of ships in the 1960s presented a number of challenges that persist to the present day.
In 1969, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Thomas Moorer convened a board of active and retired admirals known as the Riera Panel to recommend a coherent naming convention where a ship’s name would indicate the type of ship.
While these adjustments were meant to establish some orthodoxy in the process, it also opened the door to significant changes. The dynamic “father of the nuclear navy,” Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, armed with his famous phrase “fish don’t vote,” changed the naming convention of attack submarines from fish to U.S. cities.
Ballistic missile submarines, previously named for great Americans of the past were now named for states in the Ohio class SSBN’s starting in 1981, based on a decision by Navy Secretary J. William Middendorf in 1975.
A big change with aircraft carriers
The major change and naming challenge began with the nuclear carrier fleet in the early 1970’s.
While the first two ships carried the names of former World War II leaders Chester Nimitz and Dwight Eisenhower, both deceased at the time of their naming, the third nuclear carrier was named for Rep. Carl Vinson, D-Georgia, then a living, but retired member of the U.S. Congress who lived to see the ship bearing his name launched.
While Vinson was perhaps the most pro-Navy congressional member of the 20th century and arguably deserving of the honor for his role in the passage of the “Two Ocean Navy” Act essential to victory at sea in World War II, his choice set off a growing number of living persons honored with ship names.
In addition to the naming of aircraft carriers, the Navy has rapidly increased the naming of submarines, destroyers and frigates for living persons.
In the last 40 years, the Navy has accelerated the naming of ships for living persons and with it a greater intrusion of controversial political names. While the Navy named only three warships for living persons in the 1980’s and three in the 1990’s, that number increased to six ships in the 2000’s and to nine ships in the 2010’s. The Navy already exceeded that number for the 2020’s with now 13 ships named for living people and only half the decade passed.
While many of these may fit within historical naming convention, others do not — such as members of Congress who did not serve in the Navy, controversial political figures and very recent, living leaders of the naval service.
The way ahead for ship naming
While the secretary of the Navy’s prerogative to name new ships should remain, Congress should provide guardrails in the next National Defense Authorization Act.
Congress should consider weighing in, including banning the naming of ships after living people, except in extraordinary situations. Naming a warship for a living person should meet very specific requirements. Navy Secretary John Lehman’s decision to name a Los Angeles class attack submarine for the still-living Adm. Rickover was, “exactly the right time, and exactly the right type of ship, to honor the father of the nuclear Navy.”
Some political names might also fit, but a much wider, and more diverse group beyond the office of the Navy secretary should give final approval to such a choice. This would help avoid needless “tit for tat” naming battles among successive presidential administrations, since Navy secretaries are empowered to make changes to names put forward by their predecessors if the ship is not yet authorized through the award of a contract for its construction.
Returning to classic U.S. warship names to include those from the Revolutionary War and early Republic or the Native American names from Union Civil War ironclad warships might be good neutral name choices.
In an America riven by many differences, warship names should unify and not further divide the population.
