The president thinks that the US Navy should move the islands (the superstructures) on aircraft carriers farther back, apparently so that they would look better to him. It seems to me unlikely that this will happen.
Robert Lowell's father was an officer of the US Navy, as were assorted family connections. Not all, perhaps, had the keenest judgment. One of the senior Lowell's Annapolis classmates said of a Lowell cousin that he
was really plotting to put aircraft carriers in square sails to stem the tide of our declining Yankee seamanship
("31 Revere Street", collected in Life Studies.) One doubts the cousin had any such notion. In any case he never reached a position that would have required the Navy to pay attention to his ideas.
The president is also a fan of battleships and would like to see more of them built. During the Twentieth Century, US battleships bore the names of states, but apparently the new series would bear the names of presidents, starting with the incumbent. The fondness for battleships, long after their prime tactical years, is not unusual, it is true, but the fondness used to exhaust itself in finding new armaments and tasks for the Iowa-class battleships. There was some considerable cost involved, but nothing compared to the building of new ships. I do not believe that these will ever be built.
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