NAVY SHIPS SAIL UNDER GOLDEN GATE

SAN FRANCISCO -- SAN FRANCISCO -- The aircraft carrier USS Ranger led a six-ship battle group under the Golden Gate Bridge to kick off the city's Fleet Week salute to the Navy despite a controversy over whether to allow the battleship USS Missouri to have its home port here.

Dozens of antinuclear protesters launched a parade of their own with a flotilla of 22 boats and a dozen inflatable kayaks, and a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, which opposes basing the Missouri in San Francisco Bay because it might carry nuclear weapons, said four of the group's dinghies were held by the Coast Guard until the battle group passed.

San Francisco voters will decide Nov. 8 whether to allow the homeporting of the Missouri. Mayor Art Agnos is opposed to the Missouri, recommissioned in 1986, on economic grounds. The Navy wants the city to put up $2 million for dredging and to provide continuing services.

The labor and business communities back the Navy plan and say the battleship, on whose decks the Japanese surrendered in 1945 to end World War II, would bring prosperity to the city's depressed waterfront.

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