Good news for the branch of the military that hasn’t had much lately:
The U.S. Navy will name a new aircraft carrier after Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller, who was the first African American to receive the Navy Cross for valor.
Miller, who received the Navy Cross for his actions on December 7, 1941, when he fired back at Japanese planes by manning a machine gun on the USS West Virginia, will be honored on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The Navy Cross is the second highest honor in the Navy, behind only the Medal of Honor.
On December 7, 1941, Miller heard the alarm and headed for his battle station, to discover it had been damaged. He went up on deck where he carried wounded soldiers to safety before aiding the mortally wounded ship captain.
Miller then manned a 50-cal. Browning anti-aircraft machine gun, which he hadn’t been trained to use, to defend the ship against attacking planes.
Miller was born on October 12, 1919, in Waco Texas, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1939. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Miller continued to serve in the Navy and was killed in action on November 24, 1943, aged 24, when his ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.
The USS Doris Miller will be the fourth aircraft carrier of the Gerald R. Ford class, with the hull scheduled to be laid down in 2023 and commissioned in 2030, scheduled to replace the USS Carl Vinson.
The question is whether technological advances will have rendered traditional supercarriers obsolete. Then again, there’s no reason you couldn’t fly drones off an aircraft carrier deck. In fact, you could probably pack two to five times as many in the same space…
Tags: aircraft carrier, Doris Miller, Military, Navy, Pearl Harbor, Texas, USS Doris Miller