The Navy is working to strip the name USS Doris Miller from an aircraft carrier under construction, and internal conversations have included naming the ship for Donald Trump instead, according to reporting from CNN and NBC News.
Doris Miller was born in Waco, Texas, and joined the Navy in 1939, when the only jobs open to Black sailors were in the mess. He was a mess attendant, which meant cooking, serving, and cleaning up after white officers. Under segregation he was not permitted to train on weapons at all.
On December 7, 1941, Miller was aboard the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor when the attack began. He helped carry his mortally wounded captain off the bridge, then took hold of an anti aircraft gun he had never been trained to operate and fired it until he ran out of ammunition. He is credited with shooting down at least one Japanese plane. He then pulled wounded sailors out of the oil and water as the ship went down. Admiral Chester Nimitz pinned the Navy Cross on him aboard the USS Enterprise on May 27, 1942, making him the first Black service member ever to receive it. Miller was killed in November 1943 when the ship he was serving on was torpedoed in the Pacific. He was 24.
In January 2020, then acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly announced at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day ceremony at Pearl Harbor that a new Ford class carrier would be named the USS Doris Miller. It was the first time an aircraft carrier would carry the name of an enlisted sailor, and the first time one would be named for an African American. Modly later told CNN the idea came to him from a group of retired Black admirals, and that “one of our most powerful warships should bear the name of a sailor like Miller.” That decision was made during Trump’s first term.
Now the Navy wants it back. CNN reported Thursday, citing three sources familiar with internal discussions, that the effort to rename the ship has been underway since earlier this year. NBC News confirmed the discussions with two US officials. It is not clear what the new name would be. Two of CNN’s sources said there have been internal conversations about naming it for Trump, which would be unprecedented, because no sitting president has ever had an aircraft carrier named after him.
There is already a paper trail. The Navy has effectively stopped calling the ship the USS Doris Miller internally and refers to it only by its hull number, CVN-81. A recent White House executive order on shipbuilding did the same thing, calling it CVN-81 while ordering officials to come back with a plan to replace the ship’s electromagnetic launch system with steam and hydraulic ones. The Navy directed questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and a Defense Department spokesperson said there was nothing to announce.
The more consequential piece is how the door is being closed. Last year the Navy created a commission to review how ships get named. The Navy Secretary who oversaw it believed aircraft carriers should be named only for presidents, Navy admirals, or notable naval battles. Every one of those categories excludes an enlisted mess attendant by definition. The current acting Navy Secretary, Hung Cao, and his office are now working on updating the official guidance for how ships are named and spelling out exactly who they can be named after, presidents included. That is not a decision about one carrier. That is a rule that would keep the next Doris Miller off the list too.
There is a consolation prize on the table. The Navy is looking to put Miller’s name on a different warship, though it is not clear what kind, and is recommending him for the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration in the country. That award would still require approval, and it has not been granted. Miller’s great nephew, Thomas Bledsoe, told CNN that the family was never notified the Navy planned to recommend it, though he called the recommendation “very positive.”
The clock is the part that makes this urgent rather than theoretical. The carrier’s keel laying ceremony, a public milestone in a ship’s construction, is expected at the end of this year, and the Navy needs the name settled before then. The ship itself is not expected to be delivered until 2034.
So a decision is coming within months on whether the name of a 24 year old cook who picked up a weapon he was forbidden to touch stays on the ship the Navy promised him.
