PBS Carrier starts 04/27/08

[J. Dillon]

Any other ex carrier sailors out there besides Paul and myself ?

PBS airs this series tomorrow night. Check for local times.

JD

http://www.pbs.org/weta/carrier/?campaign=pbshomefeatures_3_carrier_2008-04-26

[Paul Pless]

Have you been following this series?

http://www.history.com/minisite.do?mini_id=57954

Its been really good I think.

[J. Dillon]

Yes Paul I've been following it. The sad thing about that USS Enterprise CV 6 is her end. I remember Admiral Halsey personally leading an attempt to save the ship from the scrap yard. Read the details here:

http://www.cv6.org/1946/1946.htm

JD

[Paul Girouard]

Not a bad show , the basics are right. A little to much Hornet action :rolleyes: but everyone loves a fighter jet I guess. I did see one Prowler trap aboard in the pre views before the show , so of it was taped durning CQ Carrier Quals as they where very few birds on the deck in most of the footage. The deck gets pretty small when you have all the aircraft onboard , they never really captured that aspect of the flight deck , maybe later in the series.

They , the crew , sure have it nice , flat screen TV's in the Ready rooms , phones on the mess decks , the bunks even look improved since my TR days (late 80's) pre Gulf war I, many other crew comfort issues / things added.

I think the phones are nuts and I know that the high school environment they talked about is a real PITA for management ( Captain / Skippers / CPO's)

I guess I'm old fashion but women at sea, on a combat ship is STUPID!

But ya'all wanted this integrated military , you civilians that is :rolleyes:


But overall I rate the show say a 6 on a 10 scale. Edited by civilians , for civilians IMO. If it's all you'll ever know about carrier life it's better than Top Gun , which by the way they mentioned in one of the Ready rooms , VF-41 I cruised with those guys in CAG-8 , when they drove Tomcats IIRC.

Yup I googled them , from Wiki's site :

In October that year, CVW-8 was deployed with USS Theodore Roosevelt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Theodore_Roosevelt_%28CVN-71%29) and the first cruise was in the North Atlantic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic) for Exercise Teamwork (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exercise_Teamwork&action=edit&redlink=1) ’88 which involved operations with the Royal Norwegian Air Force (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Norwegian_Air_Force) and the first Mediterranean deployment was in December.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/F-14_Tomcat_VF-41.jpg/300px-F-14_Tomcat_VF-41.jpg

[Gary E]

I watched last night, and have a few questions, since I've never been on a carrier...
,,,how do you sleep since I heard them say it's sooooo noisey?
...Saw the guy trying to get in the top bunk...
I'm 6'6 and even in my skinny days weighed 230... would I fit?

I hear there are aprox 5,000 on a ship...
That sounds like so many as to be unmanagable...
Any one with and rundown on how many in each job?

or is there a website that might explain all the jobs ?

[crawdaddyjim50]

Waaaaay too many prima donnas on a carrier for me. Cruiser is the biggest I would care to ship out on.

[J. Dillon]

Gary To answer your question about sleep on an aircraft carrier.

Essentially personal aboard are divided into two distinct groups: Ships company and the Air group. The later come aboard for a deployment and mostly sleep right beneath the flight deck. Usually called the 02 level.( two deck above the main deck the hanger bay) During noisy air operations they are on the job. So sleeping spaces are empty. Part of the ships company are aviation personnel like V1 to V5. Mostly these crewmen are involved in air operations but not always. Some try to get rest if possible as they also sleep beneath the noisy flight deck Down in the bowels of the ship noisy flight deck operations are not heard just the normal ship machinery etc.


About last night episode: It focused on the air operations too much and I hope viewers can see in future episodes just what else it takes to run a ship of this size.

JD

[Paul Girouard]

#1: ,,,how do you sleep since I heard them say it's sooooo noisey?


#2: ...Saw the guy trying to get in the top bunk...

#3: I'm 6'6 and even in my skinny days weighed 230... would I fit?

#4: I hear there are aprox 5,000 on a ship...
That sounds like so many as to be unmanagable...
Any one with and rundown on how many in each job?

or is there a website that might explain all the jobs ?



JD hit the highlights , he was ship's company IIRC , right JD , AD in the jet shop, or was it recip's??

So mainly what JD said was right , my experiences differed some what on Ranger CV-61 my squadron had multi small berthing a few where on the 3 rd deck IIRC one level below the mess decks which is one level below the hanger deck which again IIRC was deck 1 main deck level , anything above is a ")" level all the way up into the island where the bridge , and airboss.

But like JD said the level right under the flight deck has berthing and most of the officer's state rooms. Zero's ( officers) ;) from about mid ship forward , aft of mid ships there are large squadron berthing on newer ships as well as older ones .

The type A/C I worked on sort of decided on Ranger anyway where we'd be berthed at only 4 (at most 5 in some Prowler squadron) aircraft so less enlisted troops , that's I guess why on Ranger we had the smaller "coups"/ berthing.

On TR CVN-71 we VAQ-141 had the most aft 03 level berthing , about 125 man right under the round down.

So thats some background , here's my answers to your questions,


#1 : As far as noise , you really just get used to it. Cyclic Op's which is what is mainly flown has a real rhythm to it. Sure you feel the thump when the cat shoots a bird , the ship sort shutters and then you hear / feel the thump when the shuttle hits the end of the cat track

I worked mostly nights so I slept when we where flying the most , there are night ops as well , sometimes all night , but generally flight Op's secures about 2300. Of course right now in the gulf you'd have some alert birds sitting on the cats , fighters , for close air support maybe , or some with bombs loaded for a quick strike.

#2: That was mostly for show or the dudes a putz and or totally out of shape. You work out a way / system to get into the rack .

#3: I was 6'2" 195 , you'd fit but it wouldn't be the "Ritz Carlton" I had a buddy who was bigger than you or close to the same size he never complained about the rack other than the normal bitching

#4: A ships web site might answer some of that . Average squadrons have about 200 to 250 enlisted and Officiers , theres about 10 squadrons in the air wing, but remember you have all sorts of rates out there. It is a small city , Master at Arm = cops , cooks , hull tecs , snipes ( boiler guys ) mostly nuke's Nuclear type motors so the Nuke motor / reactor maintenance guys , etc etc ,

[J. Dillon]

Mixed genders in the US Military sure seem to present more problems then they solve. Aboard or on station relationships, making and breaking put added stress on personnel, quite apparent in last nights episode. Years ago sailors,soldiers,things were simple in regard to sex. you went ashore and took care of that need easily at local cat house or what you could pick up. The military provided you with protection as you left the ship. They even asked you when returning aboard "Were you exposed "? If you answered yes, they gave you a shot.

During one deployment of 6 mo in foreign ports and of a crew of over 5,000 men only three came down with VD. Those three didn't answer yes when coming back aboard when asked the above question.

I wonder just how many unwanted pregnancies there are now in the US Military ?

JD

[Paul Girouard]

They even asked you when returning aboard "Were you exposed "? If you answered yes, they gave you a shot.

During one deployment of 6 mo in foreign ports and of a crew of over 5,000 men only three came down with VD. Those three didn't answer yes when coming back aboard when asked the above question.

I wonder just how many unwanted pregnancies there are now in the US Military ?




They didn't ask us that in the 80's.

There where many , many cases of clap when we'd pull out of Subic Bay , PI , The "clap line " would start at the forward mess deck and go back to sick bay a mid ships , hundreds of cases.


On a Med cruise very few cases.

A lot and they do NOT give free abortions as was stated on another thread , maybe they did in the 60's but I think that is highly unlikely.

It's my opinion that the poster who wrote that is full of $hit or very badly misinformed.

[Oyvind Snibsoer]

Regarding cramped sleeping on a warship:
I was for a while assigned to one of the old wooden minesweepers that the US built in the '50s. Pretty much the same ship as Costeau's "Calypso". I learned quickly to get into my top berth by grabbing some overhead pipes with my hands and then swing my legs up and into the berth. Actually quite easy.

We did have one berth on board that wasn't in regular use, though. There was a ventilation channel or something just over the berth, and there was absolutely no way you could sleep on your side, because your shoulders wouldn't fit. Kinda claustrophobic place.

Didn't care much for minesweepers. Slow and tedious work, since you can only sail at 4 knots when the sweeps are set and it goes on for huors and hours, creeping across an empty fjord. The eating was good, though :-)

[Gary E]

That tv series is a very good look into how they operate.

For another look into the boat...
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cvn-68.htm