Enterprise, Two Escorts Ordered to Bypass Suez Canal

Egypt’s demand for a surcharge to allow the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise and two escorts to go through the Suez Canal forced the Navy to order the ships to detour around Africa on the way home, U.S. officials said Monday.

The Enterprise and the nuclear-powered cruisers Arkansas and Truxtun were headed southward in the Atlantic for a voyage around the tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean on a course for their California home port, officials said. It will take the ships about 15 days to sail around the Cape of Good Hope instead of the less than two days required to pass through the Suez Canal, the sources said.

The remainder of the Enterprise battle group--two destroyers, two frigates and an oiler, all conventionally powered--went through the Suez Canal on Monday and will link up with the carrier and its escorts in the Indian Ocean, the sources said.

Egypt had made an exception to its policy of banning nuclear-powered vessels when it allowed the Enterprise and its battle group to steam through the canal after the U.S. bombing raid on Libya on April 15.