It’s true! The ships company was on it way home from their own overseas cruise.
April 25, USS Enterprise departed Naval Station Norfolk for its 19th overseas deployment, with Carrier Air Wing Eight (CVW-8).
May 10, The Entreprise arrived in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, for a four-day port visit. The “Big E” visited Cannes, France, May 24-28.
June 4, The first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier arrived in Naples, Italy, for a three-day visit. CVN 65 departed Portsmouth, England, June 16 after a three-day visit.
USS Enterprise Battle Group ships participated in the Joint Maritime Course 01-2 (JMC 01-2), a British Royal Navy joint and combined warfare training exercise, June 18-28, in the North Sea near the Hebrides Islands, as well as land and airspace around Scotland.
July 2, The Enterprise pulled into Lisbon, Portugal, for a four-day port call to celebrate the Independence Day.
USS Enterprise visited Rhodes, Greece, July 20-23 and then entered the Persian Gulf to relieve USS Constellation (CV 64) in support of Operation Southern Watch.
August 25, CVN 65 pulled into Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates, for a four-day port call.
On Sept. 10, the Enterprise passed through the Strait of Hormuz en route Cape Town, South Africa. On September 11, watching a U.S. morning news show live, although locally in the early evening, the crew saw the terrorist attacks by the al Qaeda terrorist network against New York’s World Trade Center and on the Pentagon. Immediately, CVN 65 turned around and headed back to the waters off Southwest Asia. She is the first ship to arrive on station 100 miles south of Pakistan. Over the next few weeks, USS Enterprise conducted combat flight operations in support of Operation Enduring Freedom executing primarily night strike flight operations, including a period of 36 hours continuous of flight operations. During the 17 days, aircraft from CVW 8 flew around 660 missions in Afghanistan and dropped 829,150 pounds of ordnance.
http://www.uscarriers.net/cvn65history.htm
From the cape like that, 'Prise was on her way home and she and her crew were going to do a little Island hopping through the carribean … The attacks blew that and they more than likely just came straight home through the Med.