Title says it all.
I get what a flagship used to be back in Napoleonic times. Then it morphed into more of a place of honor when flags were no longer used. Is it still a thing? If so, what is the current flagship of the US Navy?
The US Navy has flagships for each fleet generally.
In a carrier fleet, it is pretty much going to be the carrier.
There are also the 2 LCC for some other fleets:
Unofficially, the USS Constitution is the Flagship of the US Navy, but again, that is unofficial.
Isn’t a flagship any ship an admiral happens to be using.
I wondered the same thing. Kinda like Air Force One is not a particular plane. It is any plane the US president is on. If for some reason the US president is flying with you in your single engine Cessna you are Air Force One.
At this point, the Navy needs acronyms for their acronyms.
Sure, but there is still a designated special airplane that, 99% of the time, the president would be using. I’m guessing the OP is asking the same; like, a carrier commander isn’t going to go aboard a submarine.
I’m not sure. Whack-a-Mole talks about flags but my understanding is that a flagship is where the an admiral is at because it literally flies his flag showing where he is as a flag officer. I’ll read stories of World War II where the admiral’s carrier will be sunk and he move to another ship and all of the sudden a cruiser is now the flagship. Am I missing something here?
My understanding is the flagship was what the admiral was on but the “flags” were used as communication. The admiral was coordinating the armada/fleet and back then the only way to do it was via signal flags. So, the admiral’s ship was the flagship…the one running up flags giving orders to all the other ships. This was the Age of Sail of course.
This sort of thing:
Only if “you” are the US Air Force. When the president flies in the Marine helicopter in and out of the White House, it’s Marine One.
I presume that the sitting US president is not permitted to fly in private aircraft, but if he/she did fly in your private Cessna, it wouldn’t be called Air Force One. They’d probably have to come up with some other call sign to indicate that the president was on board. Whack One?
Any of our local pilots know if my two assumptions are accurate?
Executive One.
IIRC when Nixon left office he took off as president and it was Air Force One. During the flight the resignation took effect and the plane changed its call sign to something else. It was no longer Air Force One.
Not sure about the JFK assassination. Since he was dead did the plane take-off as Air Force One? Or did it become Air Force One when Johnson was sworn in as the next president on board the plane? (I really do not now how that worked…I am curious)
@Velocity answered the broader question of a president on a private plane. Ignorance fought!
Former submariner here. A carrier commander? We wouldn’t have had him.
I’m not sure you do. In my memory, there’s a famous photograph of Nixon giving his famous double-v salute as he boards a helicopter on the White House lawn for the last time.
ETA: subsequent posts appear to indicate that either my memory or my assumptions about the connotations of that memory are faulty.
Famously, when Nixon left office, he boarded a plane while still President. It was designated Air Force One. Ford was sworn in mid-flight. Nixon’s plane stopped being Air Force One, and became SAM 27000.
Edit - Ninja’d
Could be “Special Air Mission” followed by the tail code number. I recall reading that when George W. Bush flew from Washington DC to Texas right after Obama was sworn in as president, Bush flew on the usual presidential-colors 747 jet, but the callsign was “Special Air Mission 28000.”
Edit: Ninja’d, Peter Morris beat me to it.
Edit: double ninja!
In fiction a flagship often seems to just be the ship itself. In Star Trek the USS Enterprise is often referred to as the flagship of Starfleet even though there is (usually) no admiral aboard.
Make no mistake, I get that is fiction and our navy is real. Seems to be along the lines of the USS Constitution being the flagship in spirit though.
A fleet commander isn’t just one guy - it’s the command and control for the entire fleet. That means hundreds of people, dozens of rooms they can work out of and tons of communication equipment. It makes sense for there to be a designated ship for that.
Some WW2 admirals chose to command from a cruiser. They were large enough to absorb the admiral’s staff but small enough to not be targeted when surrounded by more important targets.
Does the USS Constitution have a crew and a captain even if it never goes anywhere? Just curious.
There are active duty sailors involved in the maintenance and sailing of the USS Constitution. That would indicate some officer must be designated the Captain, but that I would have to look into.
ETA: The current captain is Commander Crystal L. Schaefer, the ship’s 78th commanding officer, who assumed command in June 2024.
During Midway, Admiral Fletcher was forced to transfer his flag (ie his control party) from Yorktown to a cruiser, Astoria, after Yorktown was first hit by the Japanese. He eventually ceded operational control to Admiral Spruance on Enterprise, because he didn’t think he could be effective commanding from the cruiser.