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     The following is the text of CNO remarks at decommissioning
of USS SARATOGA, 20 August, 1994.

     As we flew down this morning, I spent a lot time thinking
about what I might say as we bid farewell not only to a ship but
to an important era in Naval history and in the history of Naval
aviation.  Oh yes, I had a speech all prepared.  It was a great
speech, talking about how effective carriers are, that they are
the backbone of American presence around the world, that every
president, most lately our current president, has always asked in
times of crisis...where are the carriers, and quite often I might
add, SARATOGA herself was the one who answered that call.  My
speech, the one I had prepared, mentioned Wheelus Air Force Base
in Lybia.  You might recall that base we conceived it and paid
for it in the 1950's at nearly the same time as our SARATOGA was
being born.  The airfield is still operating in Lybia all right,
we know because we visited it in 1986, with aircraft flying from
U.S. Navy aircraft carriers.  SARATOGA on the other hand, has
sent her aviators and their aircraft to the skies over Vietnam,
the waters of the Gulf of Sidra, the dangerous airspace of the
Middle East, and the deadly skies over Bosnia where war still
rages on.  Yes, my speech, the one I'm not going to give, talked
of these things and more....but as we flew on, getting closer to
Mayport and SARATOGA, I realized I needed a different kind of
speech, and so, instead, let me talk of this ship, the people who
have been a part of her, and of the end of an era.

     Our Super Sara was born in New York in 1952 when she was
laid down.  She was launched in 1955 and she was commissioned in
April 1956, three months after young Seaman Recruit Mike Boorda
came to our Navy.  Over the years she has been watched after,
commanded and loved by several men....many of whom are here with
us today.  Would the former commanding officers of our ship
please stand and be recognized.

     Just last weekend, I attended the commissioning of a new
ship.  At just the right moment, the sponsor said, in an emotion
filled voice, bring our ship to life.  At the moment hundreds of
crewmembers ran to the ship, came aboard and manned the rail.  It
was a special time and, as most traditions do, the act of doing
this made an important point.  Ships are, as the common wisdom
says, just steel and other materials, they are not alive.  It is
the people who bring a ship to life.  I believe that, at least I
did.  Heaven knows, I've heard it said and said it myself so many
times.  But today, as I stand here in a ship we all care so much
about, I'm not quite so sure.

     What about the thousands, the tens of thousands of Sailors
who have put on yellow shirts and white shirts and red shirts and
all the other rainbow colors and manned this flight deck.....did
they not impart some of that fearless spirit and "go get 'em"
"can do" attitude to the flight deck itself?  Does some of what
makes those Sailors alive now live in this ship?

     What about the engineers who breathed life in the
engineering spaces, who made a tough steam plant drive this
carrier for nearly four decades in the heat, in the hard
environment that only steam engineers can know about.  Does not
the plant buried deep in SARATOGA now contain some of the life of
those dedicated engineers who made her go?

     Throughout this ship are places and spaces where countless
Sailors (and by Sailors I mean all Sailors....officers and
enlisted), where countless Sailors worked, and ate, and slept and
wrote letters home and missed their families and worried about
their shipmates and tomorrow even as they shook of the weariness
of today......do these spaces, all throughout our Super
Sara....do they retain some of the life that these men breathed
into her?

     What of the families who waited?  Some of those families
waited only to learn their Sara crewmember was not going to
return.  Does their faith and their sacrifice and their pain
still remain somewhere deep inside the ship?

     And what of the captains and the admirals who sailed in
SARATOGA?  Like others here today, I am one of those who sat
alone in the chair, in my case on the Flag Bridge while even more
important, a captain...Dave Frost in my case....was one deck
below, on his bridge, a part of his ship in every way, a captain
who in many respects is the ship, wedded to a ship that becomes
as much a part of the captain as any other part of his body. 
What of those men, have they not left something of themselves in
this steel, this machine called SARATOGA?

     And what of those special aviators who have flown from this
deck?  They have known the joy of flying from here, they have
known the dangers of war from here, they have felt the special
feelings in the ready rooms, the gut-wrenching feelings when
another did not come back, the joy when they all did.  Are they
not still in those ready rooms in some way that is impossible to
explain?

     And finally, what about those who left the bow cats or the
waist cats, never to return.  What about the spirits of these
valiant aviators who had their last meal in SARATOGA, their last
handshake, their last look into someone's eyes, someone who
thought of them as shipmate, squadron mate.  Aviators whose last
step on this earth was a step from this very flight deck into
eternity...what of them?  Does a part of them still live in this
ship?  I think it does.

     I think, I know, that the answer to each and every question
I have asked is yes.  This ship is alive just as all who have
served in it are alive either in reality such as those of us who
are here today, or in spirit and memory such as those who have
served and serve no more.  SARATOGA is Super Sara, we....all of
us....have made her more that a ship....she is a part of us and
we are a part of her.

     The world is not a peaceful place.  Oh, we all wish it could
be, but it is not.  There are wars today and, I am sorry to say,
there will be wars in the future.  Our Navy, God willing a strong
Navy, will be a part of them.  And there will be aircraft
carriers and Sailors manning them, and there will be aviators
flying from their decks, carrying the fight forward, winning and,
yes, sometimes dying for their country and their cause.  And each
time one of those catapults fires, each time the noise and fury
of the flight deck rises again, each time a pilot feels the rush
of acceleration and the joy of flight, each time a carrier turns
into the wind, and each time the Air Boss says "recovery
complete," each and every time these things happens...and they
will...our Super Sara and all she means to us.....our very
special ship will live again.
                               -USN-