ANYBODY WATCHING "CARRIER"?

guess the answer is no, Well , if you get a chance, watch this mini series.

Must be on cable. I don't get that.

What channel? I'd like to catch the reruns.

I've caught the last pieces of the last two hours.

Curious little nation of humanity, isn't it?

All these souls, some entwined, some repulsed by the sight of some others.

The men heave together to get the missile loaded on the wing.

(tight shot)
The man is saying that this particular missile only destroys a small area.

That's a good thing when you are in the business of destroying but


Joe(really don't wanna kill too many innocents)nation

Its on PBS, (the left side of your dial). Its an amazing piece of work that concentrates on the view from inside, the discipline, the cliques, the mission, the boredom,. I guess when you get a group of 5 to 6000 people in the same town, you have all kinds.

One vignette was about a pilot who, while just learning, was unable to redfuel from the tanker in mid-air. He was grounded for the duration of the cruise.

Also, several personnel were under stress from their relationships back home. How they handled their problems was another soap opera snippet of life.

Cooking potatoes in "heated bathtubs" was something to see.



Farmer( someone has signed up to do these jobs and Im sorta proud of em all , even the flunkies) man

I've seen a few episodes and was part of a Navy dialogue that preceded the filming and focused on whether we should give the film producer as much free access as we eventually did. There was a lot of concern about public reaction to all the human stories attendant to a carrier crew, but finally a willingness to let the chips fall where they may prevailed.

I have spent at least seven years at sea on carriers and know the life quite well. A Nimitz class carrier at sea has about 5,700 people onboard - median age about 20 yrs. 1/3rd of the crew is replaced every year (very large and endless training burden). All the complexities of a small town are crammed into a small space and all the dramas of life and work are there for all to see. All of this is also heavily influenced by the 'growing pains' and life struggles of people aged 18 - 23 (about 70% of the population).

Several profoundly different and distinct operating cultures coexist in a relatively small space. The flight deck crew and the engineers in the nuclear powerplant operate in very different ways, and the pilots in the Airwing in yet another. The tempo of operations is very fast and the activity never stops. Workdays for everyone are at least 12 hours - however very little time is lost commuting from bunkroom to galley to workstation.

On every deployment it is common for at least one of the aviators assigned to lose his wings (and another his life), based on his proficiency in landing aboard the ship or on the combat mission. Plugging the tanker on a dark night or just landing on the ship at night is hard - and not everyone can do it. There is also some attrition among those who can - they fold under the repeated stress. Those who make it over the long run develop a certain objectivity and utterly frank candor about the challenges they face. Everything is measured, observed and graded - for all to see - just to keep everyone on their toes. Once you steel yourself to that, it isn't so bad. Indeed the closest buddies I have ever had were my fellow pilots in the squadron. Everyone had seen everyone else as we would say, "scared shitless, out of gas, and out of ideas" several times - there were no illusions. Exciting times, and overall very fond memories.

The carrier bridge also had its challenges and rewards. No such thing as a small mistake in manuvering the ship to get the aircraft aboard, transit through narrow straits or go alongside the tanker at night for replenishment.

BTW - I have about 250 landings (or "traps" as we called them) on Nimitz, mostly in F-14s.

One of the important things I learned in the Navy was that everything about the lives of all the people onboard was relevant to how well we did our job. Exactly the same thing is true in business, though most of the people running companies don't fully understand it or what to do about it. I found that gave me a decided advantage over those around me.

I knew we could count on your perspective georgeob.(I hadda clean up my typos cause youre so STRAC) A friend of mine was a MARINE pilot (a squadron ExO) stationed on a carrier. He had a rivalry instilled that was born of the phrase "Not everybody can be a MArine"

I was especially taken by the episode where they were caught in a storm in The Indian Ocean, and where the deck roll reminded me of my boat in 10 ft seas. They were practicing "rolling deck" takeoffs and landings. I found it spellbinding.

Tell your guys at (whatever PAc was responsible) .This is one of the best shows that PBS has done. It rivals "The Civil War', even though its more reality than any other reality series.

Good STuff.

George, are you still a reservist?

No reserves - just a retired old fart, lifelong aviator who still stays in touch and occasionally consults for them.

What the hell is STRAC?? an acronym?

Of Marines we had several sayings;
"You can always tell a Marine, but you can't tell him much."
"What do you get when you cross a Marine with a gorilla. ans - a dumb gorilla."
Actually, the Marine Corps is the most sophisticated and politically astute of all the armed services. They are more creative and innovative than the other services, and they don't stray far from their core valuues. We commonly had marine squadrons onboard and I liked working with them. Drinking too.

The flight deck of a carrier is over 1,100 feet long - even a slight pitch of a few degrees will move the deck edge (bow & stern) up and down over 70 feet from peak to trough. On a perfect pass an F-14 tailhook clears the ramp (back edge of the flight deck) by only 14 feet, and anything over about 10 feet high gets you a bolter (miss the wires). All food for thought when you're making a night carrier landing and the only things you can see are the glideslope and drop lights. Rolling has a lower amplitude in that the flight deck is only about 250 feet wide amidships, but it looks more dramatic (and is more dangerous to aircraft as they taxi to the catapults.).

The monsoon in the Indian Ocean June thru September is awful. Moisture and dust laden air blows from the southwest at an unremittent 35 kts for the whole four months. Very rough sea, lousy visibility , and an ever-present coating of fine dust and moisture that makes the deck very slippery -.

I once had to take CARL VINSON across the North Pacific and Bearing Sea in February, operating aircraft all the way, and with severe restrictions on radar and radio emissions - to fool the Soviet electronic intercept satellites). We had ice covered flight decks and 25 degree rolls were common. Something I wouldn't want to do again. Lots of sea stories there....

Do you know the difference between a Fairy Tale and a Sea Story?

Fairy Tales all start with "Once upon a time..."
Sea Stories all start with "This is no shitt ..."

Fascinating, George, truly remarkable.

Joe(we have no idea what goes on out there.)Nation

When they were doing the rolling deck landings, the word bolter was used constantly. They sent up 11 planes originally and, by the time it was over, they had to send up 2 refurel planes , so they had 13 planes in the air. Some guys took 5 or 6 times to land. Each time they boltered, the deck was either dropping or coming up to meet them and they would overshoot the cable or hit so hard that theyd shoot sparks and bounce over the cable.
They followed one of the pilots who, when he finally landed, was shaking like a leaf and couldnt shut up he was so jazzed.

That was one episode where the producer did a subtle bit of focusing on the main mission of the carrier, which was to shoot and retrieve the planes. ALl the internecine rivalry and soap opera **** ceased and everybody focused on the tense drama of catching the jets safely.

Tonight is the last episode and its about the ship prepping to come into port .

I found O'George's response interesting because of the reference to attitudes toward the Marines. The history of the relationship of the Marines to the Navy is a strange one, and not only one with which people are unfamiliar, but one which i find most aren't prepared to believe.

The Navy tried for more than a century to get rid of the Marines. To understand, one has to understand the history and attitudes of naval officers.

At the very dawn of our nation, the only permanent military forces we had were a body of army officers (most veterans of the Revolution, and many barely competent or even incompetent--the War of 1812 would demonstrate this glaringly--because those with good prospects in civilian life pursued them); a tiny, tiny Marine Corps; and the officers and petty officers of the United States Navy.

It was uncommon for able seaman to want to remain in the Navy, and uncommon for the Navy to want them. There was plenty of employment available in merchantmen, and in fact, the Navy often had problem securing English-speaking crews for just that reason. During the War of 1812, it was most common for ships to pick up Portuguese crewmen in New York or Boston, both because these men were competent and eager to serve (better pay and treatment than they could get in European navies, of which the Royal Navy was by then virtually the last man standing, and very unpleasant to serve with), and because American able seamen wanted to ship aboard privateers because of the prospect of their share of prizes.

So, the third small, professional military service in the early United States was a small, highly competent group of officers, petty officers and what today would be called ratings. It is crucial to have competent carpenters, riggers, sailmakers, coopers, blacksmiths, armorers and gunners--a series of skilled craftsmen. Therefore, in a move unknown in other Congressional endeavors, the government had authorized the Navy to pay competitive rates for these skilled crewmen. Officers and petty officers were not necessarily paid at competitive rates, but they were certainly competent--life at sea in the days of wooden ships and sail was lethally unforgiving--and they were usually extremely dedicated to their service and the concept of a republic, and all that that concept entailed.

Therefore, flogging, although allowed under the Articles of War, was largely unknown in the United States Navy, and men known as flogging offices were notorious and often social pariahs. The point the naval officers made was that they were the representatives of a democratic republic, their crews were volunteers to a man (the United States Navy has never press-ganged crews), and you don't flog free men who serve voluntarily. It happened, but it certainly was not common. Additionally, because of an excess of republican virtue and zeal, most ship's masters prohibited "ardent spirits" even before it became law in the Navy, the theory being that you don't need drunken sailors to have a willing crew when all the crew are volunteers. This was another reason it was difficult to sign on natives of the United States, because in the early years, rum was an incentive offered by merchantmen--although the undeniable efficiency of naval vessels, even though they often signed on their crew the day they sailed, coupled with the religious conservatives of many of the ship owners and masters in the merchant marine lead to abandoning the practice in merchantmen. Rum and wine continued to be available, but were doled out, and not considered any part of a daily ration.

All of which leads us to the Marines. In England, the primary purpose of the Royal Marines was to act as ship's guards (pace to our English friends, it was a different time, and the Royal Marines were a different organization). They not only were there to prevent mutinies (the common form of collective labor action in those times--few mutinies actually resuled in fatalities or executions), but to prevent men from jumping ship--the Royal Navy relied heavily on press gangs. American naval officers held that they did not need ship's guards because this was (again, the ideology) a democratic republic, the men were volunteers, and any man who would jump ship in the middle of a cruise was welcome to do so and be damned. Furthermore, the professional officers of the United States Navy were particularly insulted by the thought that they needed to be protected from their own crews.

So the Marines had to have a reason to justify themselves. Continually in the early history of the nation, naval officers not only suggested, but actively worked and lobbied Congress to disband the Marines or to incorporate them into the United States Army. The army didn't want them, though, which oddly helped to preserve them--this was not an insulting attitude, it was simply realism. The army in the early years got even less money than the navy, and they used as much a possible to retain competent officers and non-commissioned officers, much as the navy retained officers and petty officers.

The second commandant of the Marine Corps in particular took active and successful steps to assure the survival of the Marines. Despite what the Marines are fond of telling you about the Marines being the oldest military organization in the nation, they ceased to exist between 1783 and 1798 (that distinction actually goes to the "Jersey Blues," a New Jersey militia regiment who first marched in 1758 and were later incorporated as a regular infantry regiment). William Burrows was the first commandant of the Marine Corps when Congress authorized the permanent formation of a Marine Corps in 1798. (Samuel Nicholas had been the commandant of the Continental Marines.)

Burrows knew that he would have to come up with good reasons to keep the Corps in existence, especially with a cheapskate Congress, who wanted to pare naval expenditure to the bone, and naval officers who didn't consider the Marine Corps to be a naval expenditure. The Marines had been authorized in the emergency of the "phony war" with the French in the Caribbean, and that was soon over. So Burrows took five significant measures to assure the survival of his tiny service (the original authorization was for a mere 880 men).

First he insisted that all Marines be American citizens. He couldn't accomplish this, and he knew it, but Marine officers in naval yards were only allowed to enlist foreign nationals when they pleaded with Burrows that they couldn't enlist any more Americans to fill their quotas. Throughout the early history of the United States, the Marines had the highest proportion of native American citizens in their ranks of any of the three services.

The second measure was that Marines must never appear to be simply ship's guards. On Royal Navy vessels, an armed Marine was always stationed on the quarterdeck, and was responsible for keeping the "hour glass" (which actually measured a half hour) and ringing the bells which kept track of time. Burrows actually gladly cooperated with the Navy's insistence that this function be performed by the Quartermaster or gunner's mates. He knew that this was the biggest "black eye" of Marines in the eyes of naval officers, and he was careful to avoid it.

The third and fourth measures were concerned with efficiency, something upon which Burrows insisted so emphatically that it became an obsession of the Corps. All enlisted men and officers were required to practice with small arms and "the long guns," and to meet high standards of marksmanship and gunnery. All officers were expected to be proficient at any skill required of an enlisted man. One of the crucial functions of both Marines and sailors in the age of wooden ships was to act as snipers in the "fighting tops," the platforms at the breaks in the masts, firing on the officers and gun crews of the enemy ships.

Additionally, Burrows demanded and was grudgingly granted permission to assure that at least one gun crew on every ship would be made up entirely of Marines. This is the origin of the non-commissioned rank of gunnery sergeant, and Marine NCOs to this day are called "Gunner" or "Gunny" as a result. Once Marines provided one or more gun crew on ship board, and trained up to the high standards that Burrows insisted upon, they became an integral part of the warship's crew, whether or not the officer commanding the ship resented their presence. These two measures were to stand the Marines in good stead throughout the early history of the Corps.

His last measure may seem silly, but it was actually brilliant. He created a Marine Corps Band and stationed it in Washington, D.C. The standard dress uniform of the Marines was a dark blue serge coat, white shirt with white leather stock (the "stock" was a band of leather around the neck, which was coated in white pipe clay--it was easier to keep it clean because it could be scraped and fresh pipe clay put on; thus the origin of the term "leatherneck" for Marines--as with all attempts to insult Marines, they took the name as a badge of honor), and scarlet trousers. For the Marine Band, the colors were reversed, with scarlet coats and dark blue trousers. This was brilliant because early Washington was little more than a bucolic town set down in the middle of a swamp on land that no one in Maryland wanted anyway. For pomp and ceremony in the government, a Marine honor guard and the Marine Band were about all that was available. The Congress surely wasn't going to pay for such frippery, so Burrows put the arm on his officers and the special costs of the Marine Band were paid for out of their "voluntary" contributions. They soon became a fixture in Washington, where they not only made the young Republic look almost normal to visiting foreign officials, but provided most of the polite evening entertainment available in town.

Thomas Jefferson was a military disaster. He neglected the excellent navy which Washington and Adams had built up, and didn't use it when he could have and should have. He had this goofy notion that the nation's shores could be protected with a gun boat navy. When the Royal Navy came hunting the United States Navy on our coast line, Jefferson's gun boat navy was soon resting on the bottom of coastal sounds or river beds. The sailors and Marines of the gun boat navy gave their best service as infantry and gunners on land. In particular, at Bladensburg in Maryland in 1814, the sailors and Marines distinguished themselves in holding off the redcoats while the capital was evacuated. One English officer wrote home that the sailors "continued to serve the guns even after we had shot down their officers and were among them with the bayonet." The Marines, fewer than 200 men, fought the redcoats to a standstill from the high ground, an marched away at nightfall carrying all of their dead and wounded.

Marines and sailors served the guns at New Orleans, as well, and Marine sharpshooters and gunnery crews were mentioned favorably in the famous action in which U. S. S. Constitution ("Old Ironsides") captured H. M. S. Cyane fighting that frigate and her two sloop-of-war consorts. Naval officers who didn't particularly like the Marines praised their efficiency and courage in he battles with H. M. S. Guerriere, Java, Levant, Rheindeer, Macedonian and H. M. S. Avon.

That didn't mean that the Navy fell in love with the Marines. As late as the 1890s, young naval officers were saying that the Marines were a useless anachronism, and pointing out that there were no more fighting tops, and Marine gunnery crews were not needed and would be in the way with the new naval rifle batteries of modern battleships and cruisers. But by then, the Marines had enough friends in Congress and enough of the inertia of tradition to survive. When naval aviation was born, it was just one more opportunity for Marines to make themselves useful.

Under Burrows, even the officers and men of the Marine Band were required to complete the same training regime as all other Marines, and to become proficient in the use of small arms and the long guns. To this day, that ethos governs the Corps--Marine aviators are required to complete the same training as infantry officers before they are assigned to a Marine squadron.

These are things the Marines are never likely to tell you. Of all of the organizations in the United States government, the United States Marine Corps is probably more myth-bound than any other, and probably preserves more fairy tales as tradition than any other. Personally, i am always amused by the relationship of the Marines and the Navy. They remind me of an old married couple who quarrel all the time, and yet who cannot live without each other.

So who asked you swabby?

I deeply resent the implications of your last comment. I ain't not never been no swabby, and was never in the Navy.

My mother, however, did wear combat boots, and a steel pot helmet--she was an officer and a gentleman in the New Nited States Army, and we got the papers to prove it.

Oops, I thought you was a Navy . (Youre usually polite to georgeob who doesnt share many of your same core beliefs with the exception of the LAw of Gravity) So I jus naturally assiumed it was some congenital saltwater thing.


Carry on.
Have you seen "Carrier" yet set?

"Yet set" is the Norvegian AirForce.

S'OK . . . i don't necessarily treat O'George with respect, but i do kind of like him, even if he is a former swabbie and a Jesuit stooge. I'll have to bear down more so that no one else makes the appalling error of thinking i respect him.

i was watching it for a while last night, after you started this thread, and i saw it listed on PBS on the channel guide. It was the episode with the "talent" show and the "crossing the line" party. It was rather amusing when they told the women that they would not be physically harrased, and that no one would touch them inappropriately, and the women cheered--and then they told the men the same thing, and they booed.

Crossin the equator parties , is merely some silly archaic excuse for getting **** faced on a boat. We used to have similar ceremonies when crossing the 60Th parallel heading North. (Hint: it usually involved lots of ice)

You missed the episode with the planes landing on a rolling deck. Ive been on fast research ships that had a destroyers configuration and they would roll, pitch and breach like they were part of the wave contours. When I saw this 100000 T carrier being buffeted, I renewed my sense of respect for the big waters.

You put ice in yer whiskey ? ! ? ! ?

Give's you a new sense of respect for those jokers in the days of sail who rounded the Horn and made off through the Southern Ocean for China, don't it?