The original captions for these photos of the “Nick,” O’Bannon and Enterprise billed them as the two oldest destroyers in the navy and the oldest CVN.
I was Nicholas’s OOD on the day they were taken. All of us on the bridge were very nervous to be that close to the bow of a carrier, but the photographers kept telling us to get in closer. The captain finally told me to take her in to a distance of 200 yards.
We served as plane guard for Enterprise a lot during that deployment. We could make 30 knots on two boilers and still keep up with her without having four boilers on the line.
