Dreamboat

On autumn nights off the Philippines in 1944, the late Admiral Marc A. Mitscher used to talk about a postwar supercarrier that could be a mobile base for long-range bombers. From those talks grew a dream that would have top priority in Navy plans for a decade.

The first supercarrier was approved by Congress in 1948, named the United States. Funds for it were appropriated by the House on April 13, 1949. But ten days later, economy-minded Defense Secretary Louis Johnson canceled the order for the supercarrier, touching off the famed "revolt of the admirals" and the public brawl between the Navy and the Air Force. In 1951, when the Korean war stepped up military expenditures, the Navy again got funds for a supercarrier.

Last week at Newport News, Va., Mrs. James Forrestal, widow of the first Secretary of Defense, christened the supercarrier, named in her husband's honor. The dreamboat, wide enough to have the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth placed side by side on her flight deck, moved 35 feet in a flooded drydock. In a year she would be ready for action. The Forrestal's cost, with planes: more than a third of a billion dollars (about $372 million). The Navy has three more supercarriers on order, plans another in the upcoming budget, hopes eventually for ten.