While the Fourth of July is the day we salute the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” it should be noted we’re a free nation because of the brave. Like sailors on station in the Red Sea.
They’re not only keeping Americans free and safe to traverse the globe, but ensuring sea lanes are open for other nations to go about the peaceful exchange of goods and trade through freedom of navigation. It’s a job the Navy has been doing since its founding on Oct. 13, 1775, when a fledgling U.S. Congress created the Continental Navy.
After a twice-extended tour that lasted nearly nine months, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower — a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with 5,000 sailors and Marines, along with 75 combat jets aboard — is heading from Red Sea deployment back to its homeport of Norfolk, Virginia.
Its place on station will be taken by the San Diego-based USS Theodore Roosevelt to counter strikes from Yemen’s Houthi rebels on commercial shipping in the region since the start of the Hamas-Israel conflict.
The Roosevelt, also nuclear-powered, had been in South Korean waters anchored off Busan, for military drills with Japan and South Korea. It joins “Operation Prosperity Guardian” — the military likes flowery names for missions — to help protect the crucial Red Sea.
What the two Navy task forces share is sailors, chief petty officers and some officers, who have all spent time at Naval Station Great Lakes.
Great Lakes Recruit Training remains the Navy’s lone “boot camp,” and graduates thousands of sailors annually who head to fleet assignments or additional training. A graduation of training divisions was set for July 3 at the navy base close to the Lake Michigan shoreline in North Chicago.
Flying the red, white and blue in the Mideast is a perilous move, and stressful because U.S. sailors are under attack. They intercepted incoming drones and missiles to keep themselves and merchant ships safe. Yemen’s Houthi rebels repeatedly claimed they hit or even sank the Eisenhower — which led America’s response to deadly attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden — during its sea cruise.
Additionally, the U.S. military has raised security measures across bases throughout Europe. Service members are being told to be more vigilant due to a combination of threats across the region, such as elections in France and the United Kingdom, the Paris Olympics, and wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Some old Navy hands believe sailors and Marines on the Eisenhower, and those on a guided-missile cruiser and two destroyers accompanying the carrier since October 2023, faced the most intense sea combat since World War II. Sailors shot down some 150 armed drones and missiles launched from Yemen toward ships in Red Sea shipping lanes. Those on the Roosevelt may soon get a taste of that.
Others are calling the action in the Red Sea the first U.S. naval battles of the 21st century. In response to the Houthi attacks, the Eisenhower launched air strikes at the rebels’ positions in Yemen. The Associated Press estimates the Navy has spent at least $1 billion in armaments to fight in the Red Sea
Being in the Navy, one surely gets a lesson in geography and schooling in geopolitics. The Iranian-backed Houthis, for instance, have held Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since 2014. They’ve launched more than 60 attacks targeting specific vessels and fired off other missiles and drones, according to the AP. They have seized one vessel and sunk two since November 2023.
Officials with Tampa, Florida-based U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of military forces in the region, said Navy F/A-18 fighter pilots from the Eisenhower logged more than 30,000 hours of flying time as the carrier sailed more than 50,000 miles. The flattop’s sailors rescued merchant crews in distress on several occasions.
The mission in the Red Sea also has been lonely for sailors. The Eisenhower and its allied ships got a short port call, to Greece, during the rotation. The ship has been the most-deployed carrier among the entire U.S. fleet over the last five years, according to an analysis by the U.S. Naval Institute.
Marking the nation’s birth, we need to remember that with the end of the Revolutionary War, the Navy was disbanded. It resurfaced with the Naval Act of 1794, which created a permanent standing U.S. Navy.
The reason was merchant shipping was threatened in the Mediterranean Sea by Barbary pirates from North Africa. For today’s sailors in the Red Sea, their saga continues this July 4.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
Twitter: @sellenews