Three Navy aircraft carriers -- along with their crews and families -- will be heading to new homeports, service leaders announced.
The trio of Nimitz-class aircraft carriers will swap ports to hit maintenance and refueling schedules, Naval Air Forces announced last week. Navy officials have declined to say when the moves are likely to take place.
The Norfolk, Virginia-based carrier Abraham Lincoln will move to San Diego. The 29-year-old carrier previously served with the U.S. Pacific Fleet after it was commissioned in 1989, before moving to Norfolk for midlife refueling in 2011.
The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is also based in San Diego.
The 23-year-old carrier John C. Stennis will move to Norfolk from its current homeport of Bremerton, Washington, for its midlife refueling. Nimitz-class aircraft carriers are designed to last about 50 years. The Stennis' midlife refueling, or reactor complex overhaul, will take place at Newport News Shipbuilding, the release states.
The supercarrier Nimitz, which was built in the mid-1970s, is also based at Bremerton. The Navy announced in 2015 it would remain there through September 2019 so its sailors and families wouldn't have to make three homeport changes over a four-year period, Navy Times reported.
The San Diego-based carrier Carl Vinson will move up the coast to Bremerton in advance of its docking planned incremental availability at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. That ship is nearly four decades old.
-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @ginaaharkins.
