Why is the aircraft carrier named Gerald Ford?

The U.S. Navy has named nearly all of its recent nuclear-powered aircraft carriers after presidents: Nimitz is the original exception, but Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington, Truman, Reagan, and Bush followed. When it came time to name the first ship of a new class, the choice fell on Gerald R. Ford, who had died on December 26, 2006. The then-Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, announced it at the funeral held in Grand Rapids, and the Navy made it official on January 16, 2007.

Ford wasn't a purely symbolic choice. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1942 and served aboard the light carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26) as an anti-aircraft gunnery and navigation officer. He took part in Pacific campaigns and lived through Typhoon Cobra in December 1944, which severely damaged the ship and nearly swept him overboard. That seagoing career made his name a direct link between the tradition of naval aviation and the ship that opens the new generation.

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) was christened in 2013 and entered service in July 2017, with the president's daughter, Susan Ford Bales, as sponsor. It is the first of the Ford class, which is progressively replacing the Nimitz class and features electromagnetic catapults (EMALS), an advanced braking system, a smaller island set further aft, and reactors with much greater electrical capacity. It is followed by the John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), the Enterprise (CVN-80), and the Doris Miller (CVN-81), the latter the first carrier named after an African American sailor rather than a president, showing that the presidential naming custom is tradition, not written rule.