The Navy is reportedly working to rename an aircraft carrier under construction that was set to honor a Black sailor celebrated for his heroism at Pearl Harbor, with President Donald Trump’s name among those discussed as a replacement, according to CNN.
Three people familiar with the internal discussions told the network that the Navy is moving to rename the future USS Doris Miller in honor a Pearl Harbor hero and the first African-American recipient of the Navy Cross. Two sources indicated internal conversations about renaming the ship to honor Trump, though CNN reported that it remains unclear what the Navy intends to call it.
Amid those discussions, the Navy has effectively stopped referring to the ship as the Doris Miller internally and has been calling it only by its hull number, CVN-81, one source told CNN.
Military.com could not independently confirm the CNN report and a Pentagon official said they had nothing official to announce at this time. A separate request for comment to the Navy was not immediately answered.
An executive order on shipbuilding that Trump signed last week also referred to the carrier by that hull number rather than its intended name. Naming a carrier after a sitting president would be unprecedented.
Doris Miller, the War Hero
Doris Miller was a mess attendant, one of the few roles open to Black sailors in the era’s segregated Navy.
He was also the son of a sharecropper from Waco, Texas. After enlisting in 1939, he served aboard the battleship USS West Virginia when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
During the attack, Miller carried wounded sailors to safety and manned a .50-caliber antiaircraft gun he had never been trained to use, firing until the ammunition ran out. Adm. Chester Nimitz awarded him the Navy Cross in 1942, making him the first African American to receive the decoration.
Miller was killed in November 1943 when the escort carrier he was serving aboard, the USS Liscome Bay, was sunk in the Pacific. Cuba Gooding Jr. later portrayed him in the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor.
Then-Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly named the carrier in his honor on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2020. It was the first aircraft carrier named for an African American and the first named for an enlisted sailor.
Questions Abound
The effort to rename the ship has been underway since earlier this year, the sources told CNN.
Instead, the Navy is looking to name a different vessel after Miller and is recommending him for the Medal of Honor—the nation’s highest military award—according to one source.
The move follows a broader review of how Navy ships are named. A commission convened in 2025 under then-Navy Secretary John Phelan examined how ships and other military assets are named.
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao’s office has been looking at updating that guidance, including specifying that ships may be named after presidents, two of the sources told CNN.
The carrier is not expected to be delivered until 2034, according to USNI News. No timeline has been reported for a name change, and it remains unclear what the ship will ultimately be called.
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