Roosevelt to Fly Wtc Flag Home from War
United Press International
November 20, 2001
USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT, ARABIAN SEA, Nov 19, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The Stars and Stripes New York City firemen raised at the site of the demolished World Trade Center will fly aboard the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt when it returns to the United States from the war in Afghanistan, a Navy admiral said Monday.
The flag, given to the ship by New York Gov. George Pataki and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, first flew above the Roosevelt's flight deck Oct. 17, the day "The Big Stick's" complement of F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcats first pounded Taliban and al Qaida targets in Afghanistan.
Those initial sorties have been followed by more than 1,000 more, with the huge ship's aircraft ordnance stocks replenished at sea five or six times.
"Wherever our homecoming will be, it will be flying high from the halyard," Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald said. "We couldn't be prouder to fly that flag from the halyard to feel that we've been able to avenge in some small way the events of Sept. 11."
Fitzgerald, in command of the Roosevelt Battle Group -- which includes cruisers, destroyers and other warships -- said the WTC flag had been presented to the head of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet specifically for the Roosevelt, whose namesake was a New Yorker. A plane delivered it to the Roosevelt when the ship was one day out of Gibraltar.
The carrier was on its way to the North Arabian Sea to participate in Operation Enduring Freedom, the military campaign to crush Afghanistan's extremist Taliban regime and the al Qaida terrorist network of Osama bin Laden, held responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the WTC and Pentagon that killed nearly 5,000 people.
A small ceremony had been planned for its arrival. The ship's firemen and damage control crews turned out in full dress uniform to pass the flag hand-to-hand to the halyard, where photos were to be taken. But word had spread among the ship's crew and more than 2,000 sailors, aviators and Marines turned out on deck and spontaneously broke out into "God Bless America."
"It has become a very valuable and very coveted commodity on the ship," Fitzgerald said. "Everybody wants to have their picture taken with it."
The flag has since been passed to other vessels in the Roosevelt Battle Group and once again is in safekeeping aboard the carrier that has been cruising back and forth in a designated 60-mile-by-60-mile box south of Pakistan since joining the battle against terrorism and those who aid and abet it.
Operating on a night-launch schedule, the Roosevelt has put more than 60 aircraft in the air every 24-hour period for the eight- to nine-hour round-trip missions over Pakistan to Afghanistan, where they bomb pre-set targets and so-called targets of opportunity -- fleeing Taliban and al Qaida forces, command bunkers, vehicles and gun emplacements -- picked out by airborne and ground-based target spotters to support the opposition Northern Alliance.
Pilots returning from missions, in which 500 pound bombs are often used to help limit collateral damage, say the target zones still range across the country and not just the south, where the Taliban and al Qaida have fled following their loss of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and the capital of Kabul.
The Roosevelt is based in Norfolk, Va., and will return there after completion of its mission. According to scuttlebutt, efforts are underway to gain Pentagon permission to first fly the flag into New York harbor and personally return it to those who honored the ship and its crew before the carrier travels to homeport.
Adm. Fitzgerald would neither confirm nor deny the rumor. When asked, he simply smiled. |
