As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...
The Navy will announce in "a matter of days" the creation of the 4th Fleet at Mayport Naval Station, a Jacksonville military expert told the Times-Union on Wednesday.
While it won't mean an influx of ships or a lot of new personnel, the command will raise the city's naval prominence.
"It portends good things for the future of Mayport," said John Meserve, a former Mayport commanding officer and the current military issues chairman for the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Meserve said he learned of the decision from congressional and Navy sources.
A Navy spokesman said he could neither confirm nor deny that a decision to re-establish the Navy command would come by the end of this week or early next.
"But I can say that we think it's a good idea," said Lt. Sean Robertson, Navy public affairs officer in Washington.
The idea is to create a fleet command responsible for conducting naval operations in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
In this case a "fleet" denotes not a group of ships but a hierarchy responsible for a certain region of the world. The new organization would join five other existing Navy fleets: 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th. The former 4th Fleet was shut down shortly after World War II.
The modern incarnation would be part of U.S. Southern Command, an inter-service headquarters based in Miami.
Naval operations in that part of the world currently fall under U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, which is based at Mayport and led by a one-star admiral. A new 4th Fleet, if established, would be led by a two- or three-star admiral, the Navy has said.
Meserve, who also is the mayor of Atlantic Beach, said 4th Fleet will boost Mayport's clout because that higher-ranking admiral would attend naval strategy meetings in Norfolk, Va., and Washington.
"Those people are part of the decision-making process of where to base and disperse forces, where they see threats coming up and the immediate response to those threats," Meserve said. "For us to have a Mayport flag officer seated at the table, putting in his two cents worth, is important."
Basing 4th Fleet at Mayport doesn't guarantee a nuclear aircraft carrier will be homeported at the base, but it certainly doesn't hurt the city's chances of landing a flattop, either, Meserve said.
Mayport hasn't had a tenant aircraft carrier since March 2007, when the oil-fired John F. Kennedy was decommissioned. A mix of cruisers, destroyers and frigates remain at the base, located at the mouth of the St. Johns River.
The Navy is expected to make a decision by year's end on whether to replace the Kennedy at Mayport with a nuclear-powered carrier, other kinds of warships, or both.
Dan McCarthy, the city's military liaison, declined to comment Wednesday but previously has said a 4th Fleet presence at Mayport would create "a greater opportunity to station a carrier here."
Not all of the Navy's fleets have carriers. The 5th Fleet in Bahrain and 6th Fleet in Italy have no bases where carriers are homeported
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