ANYBODY WATCHING "CARRIER"?

yessiree.

BBB
I've tried to catch every episode of "Carrier." It's a great series everyone should watch. You can probably buy DVDs of the series. It's worth it.

Part of my interest in "Carrier" was my older brother's history. He tried when he was 18 to enlist in the Navy Air Force during WWII, but he he couldn't pass the Navy physical and was rejected because he lost part of a rib from pneumonia during his teens.

My brother then tried to enlist in the Army Air Force and was accepted. By the time he completed his Army Air Force college as a 1st Lt., the war had ended. He was a top flyer and became a test pilot.

During a hurricane in Louisiana, he was one of three pilots sent up to test fly into the hurricane. Lightening struck his plane and he had to bail out at a high altitude. He suffocated before he reached oxygen. In those days, pilot's parachutes didn't have altitude sensor timers on their shutes so that they wouldn't open until they reached a safe altitude. When they found his body on the edge of a river, they discovered he had stayed with his plane as long as possible---his legs were burned---trying to save it.

The Air Force changed the type of parachutes they used after my brother's death. Pilots no longer suffocate before reaching oxygen from high bale outs.

I always thought my brother, if he had lived, would have made into the astronaut program because he was such a good pilot, even with one less rib.

BBB

Not long after responding to Farmerman's post on this last night I turned on the TV to see if I might catch this program, and... there it was. I believe there were two episodes shown - one centered on the day/night flight operations in clear weather but with a heavy rolling sea (typical of what you encounter in the mid Indian Ocean northeast of Western Australia - Nimitz was enroute to Perth for a port visit.), the second centered on the modern version of the "crossing the line" (equator) ceremony (now much changed from what I recall).

Very interesting for me on several levels. I was skipper of a fighter squadron (VF-14) on Nimitz and made two deployments on her. The squadron now operates F-18s and is VFA-14, but uses the same 'Top Hat' logo. Much of the action on the first episode was in their ready room and the interviews with the squadron skipper, -- who was going to retire from the Navy after that cruise and who took the last night tanker mission from a "nugget" (=new) pilot because of the rough seas, -- all brought home some familiar, but mostly forgotten interactions.

No women aboard carriers when I was there - seeing them on the show in old and familiar roles and settings was a jolt (nothing has changed, but everything is different).

Always good, instructive and refreshing to get a few jolts and a good story, well told from Setanta. Farmerman is right that we don't always agree, but the truth is that, despite the very different ways we react to it, we have quite a few elements of past experience, education and upbringing in common (you should understand much of this too Farmerman). I actually like ole Set and agree with him more than I'm usually willing to admit (though my opinions are always, ahem, more modestly stated).

With respect to the 'rough seas' -- how a ship reacts to them is primarily determined by the lengths of the ship and of the prevailing ocean waves. The prevailing rough seas of the North Atlantic, with violent, but short wave-length waves are hell on Destroyers, but don't do much to the carriers. It is the long open ocean swells that get the carrier deck moving, while the Destroyers gently heave up and down, but with little change in pitch.

The episode shown involved truly dangerous conditions, even though the weather was good and the sky clear -- 700+ nautical miles to the nearest land (or divert airfield) and the thin time margins provided by the maximum landing weight (and hence fuel load) of the aircraft when the landing operations start. These involve tough calls for the carrier skipper - you don't want to lose an aircraft, but at the same time it is necessary to toughen the airwing so that when the chips are down they will perform well. Once they have made it through something like the episode shown, their limits are extended and they can do it again and better. You could get a few hints in the show about the psychological interplay between the ships captain and the pilots in the Airwing, another interesting feature of the life.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "polite". Merely less cantankerous.

My brother (who is now no longer with us) was a fire-control rating on a missle cruiser. He was a dab hand at pen and ink drawings, too, and he once did one of two German destroyers in a NATO exercise in the North Sea in winter. One is climbing the wave, with it's decks at about 45 degrees to the horizon, and the prow pointing at the sky, and the other has already passed the crest of the wave, with the decks at about 45 degrees, and the stern pointing to the sky. In a few well drawn lines, he captured a very dramatic moment.

I believe "Winter North Atlantic" is the highest rating on one of the storm scales, no?

Yes - that is the descriptor, and the region, excepting only the Northern Norwegian sea (north of Iceland) is hell on ships - at least during a storm. Oddly from (say) Trondheim north, between Norway and Iceland it is usually much calmer (though the weather can be lousy).

My buddy, who was theExO for the Diamonback Squadron had similar things to say about the CO's last rolling deck flight(relief but nostalgia). I noted that he was the last pilot out (with refuel mision) and the last guy onto the deck after landing all the other jets. His seemed to be (maybe this was PBS drama) the only one who landed without a wave off.

I suspect he was concentrating really hard - there was no tanker available to save him.

The years of experience help too. Having been through it before enables you to cope with fewer distractions, putting everything else out of your mind and concentrating on the glideslope, lineup & angle of attack, - even sometimes getting a feel for the ship's motion from the throttle adjustments required to maintain the glideslope (you can't see the horison so, at night, you can't distinguish the deck's motion from your own excursions relative to a fixed glideslope.)

New guys tend to try to "see" everything and are a bit more prone to wasting mental energy & clutching in overload.

Actually the back end of the deck moves in a sideways figure eight pattern, as the ship yaws left & right and pitches up and down. Lineup is also critical - you must touchdown within ten feet of the centerline to get acceptable action from the arresting gear. Sounds almost impossible, and aviators delight in amplifying the difficulty of it all, but it can be done and is done on a regular basis.

One afternoon on the Bearing Sea crossing I had about 30 aircraft airborne when suddenly and without forecast or warning we were enveloped in a strange ice fog that reduced visibility to zero (I couldn't even see the flight deck below the bridge). (We didn't then have satellite weather coverage at those high latitudes.). The only good thing we had going for us was a flat calm sea in the relatively still air. I spent a very long five hours struggling to get them back aboard, launching tankers all the while and very slowly improving the situation by getting an aircraft or two onboard. Finally, in some desperation, noting that the prevailing winds were from the southwest, I decided to bet on some turbulence in the wake of one of the high (7000') volcanic islands in the Aleutian chain (Progromny as I recall) that might disperse the fog. I put the aircraft in high holding and headed off at 35 Kts through the impenatrable fog towards the lee of the island - sure enough after about 70 minutes we began to get some patchy spots, and I resumed the recovery. It was slow going, but we finally made it.

This is no shitt.

Sounds like a fantastic program, and this is a fantastic thread.

Id **** me pants george-yyaaaaarrrggghhhh.


Ive been in cold seasmoke conditions off BAffin Island. I was on the fantail after deploying "floating" hydrophones and getting ready to blow bubbles as a seismic energy source. We hadda use all the piloting skills to find our spots and claim some success in gathering data.
You cant tell up from down in seasmoke (I assume thats what you were in cause seasmoke can extend over 300 ft el. in dead calm cold).

Probably would have if I had the time.

In fact I had been coping with similar, but less severe conditions for several days up there. I realized my basic problem was a lack of information - I just couldn't reliably forecast conditions more than 30 or so minutes into the future - and had insisted that before every launch, we send out an S-3 aircraft (2 pilots, lots of fuel & good low-level performance) as a low-altitude whether scout, and hold off any further launches until I got his report.

The S-3 guys didn't like the mission, and for some reason, only the guy in charge in situations like this really seems to focus on dreadful possibilities like this one - many saw it as a useless precaution while we were flying 'round the clock. Finally I needed some sleep and put the XO on the bridge with explicit instructions to keep the scout under all conditions, no matter what, and not to launch without one.

A few hours later, during morning twilight, the assigned scout aircraft sprung an hydraulic leak and couldn't be launched. With 30 ready aircraft fired up on the flight deck, the XO succombed to the psychological pressure and went on with the launch. Minutes later we were enveloped in fog (that I think was simply forming all around us) and a launched aircraft confirmed that it went as far as he could see. I was called to the bridge from a sound sleep in my nearby cabin to discover our situation. The bridge team (and the XO) were scared shitless and paralyzed with the new reality that had suddenly hit them, and I realized I had to contain my anger (actually seething rage) for fear of unhinging them all. Doing that, and attempting to get everyone back in gear to focus on working our way out was .... hard.

Though the term didn't come to mind, I have heard of "seasmoke" and believe that is what we had: light winds, calm seas, clear skies, cold air and a sudden condensation from the surface up to a little over 300 feet.

A day I won't soon forget.

The last episode "Get home itis" was atotal piece of crap that focused on the emotions of the crewmembers . It was in contrast to the matter-of-fact display of the mundane events that keep the ship going. The producers chose to focus on a number of people whose lives were mostly negatively affected by the cruise. What was , up till then, a great series, devolved into a f*ckin soap opera. I wish they could have just cut the series off and spent more time on the events such as buttoning up and offloading the planes back to land. How the weapons were disarmed and stored and how ships stores were taken down.
Oh well, overall, it was still a great series that makes me positively reconsider the overall "employability" of guys like georgeob

Another thing, perhaps they could have followed one of the pilots or one of the deck techs for a few weeks and see how they transferred their skills to land.

Dial? What's a Dial? How old a TV are you watching anyway?

(I'll look for Carrier. Haven't seen it yet.)

Youre starting to sound like spendi there ros. Next youll be asking for definitions of adjectives.

Farmerman
Farmerman, I didn't like the last Carrier segment as much as I liked the series---thought it too slurpy. I did enjoy the father with a young son, learning the hand signals of the deck controllers.

BBB

Yeh. They ran out of material and so decided to take the soapopera route on the last night.
Its on DVD for 39.95

I watched a few minutes of it, quickly reached the same conclusion as you, and switched it off.

Long deployments do tend to put a wide range of human and family problems in 'hold' or suspense until the return when an accumulation of six to twelve months (depending on the length of the cruise) of such issues simultaneously comes to the fore. The Navy and its people are well familiar with all this, and fairly adept at dealing with it. If anyone took the trouble to as closely examine the lives of a similar collection of people of the same demographic and over the same period of time, they would find about the same number of equivalent issues, different only in that they manifested themselves slowly over a longer period of time.

The advancing formalisms of social engineering have spread through the military over the last few decades, just as they have in other parts of our society. In the military, the Navy particularly, the large scale introduction of women into the organization has significantly magnified all this -- as was very evident in the sections of the series dealing with polliwogs, shellbacks and the "crossing the line" ceremony. A lot of it seems silly and absurd, but it is probably a practical necessity.

One interesting note - As depicted in the program, Nimitz carried 74 combat aircraft. The number previously was about 90. To find the physical space required to safely berth women they had to remove a squadron from the Airwing.

Some responses to farmerman's questions --
If a returning carrier was scheduled to remain in 'ready carrier' status after the deployment all the conventional and nuclear weapons, as well as the huge inventory of aircraft spare parts and subassemblys, and the onboard repair and maintenance facilities would remain in operation. Otherwise they would be offloaded - a huge task.

Generally the returning carrier would meet up with an ammunition ship a few days before reaching port to offload the 8,000 tons of conventional (and, until about ten years ago, nuclear) weapons in the carrier's magazines. This was done over a two day period with the carrier alongside the ammo ship for about 15 hours total. With four transfer stations, each trollying 2,000 to 4,000 pound loads every 45 seconds or so (peak rate) and 2 or 3 H-46 helos (from the ammo ship) each cycling similar loads from the flight deck of the carrier to that on the ammo ship - at about the same rate - the stuff moves fast. On both ships there is a continuous, steady flow of the ammo by fork lift to/from the staging areas to the elevators and the magazines the whole time. It is quite a show and hard work for all. Steering an 1,100' carrier alongside (150 feet beam to beam) a 600' ammo ship with four transfer stations, each with 12,000 lbs tension in the cables for eight hours at a stretch was a chore too (collisions are fairly common, particularly in bad seas).

Some types of nuclear weapons stayed in the carrier to be offloaded later, generally by truck. (Berkeley California, on the road between the Navy base at Alameda and the weapons depot at Concord, loudly declared itself a "nuclear free zone" - good thing they didn't try to inspect the unmarked trucks passing through)

Generally on the last day before the carrier reached port we would do a fly-off of the airwing aircraft to their various home bases (a big moment for a young Lieutenant, horny to the gills, and eager to show off in his new fighter). Often there were one or two broken aircraft that we would crane ashore to the pier after they were repaired: simply towed them to the base runway for a flight home.

Finally coming alongside the pier filled with wives, kids and girlfriends was a big moment: bands playing; sailors manning the rail; lots of color & excitement in the air.

It was fun.

Your guess on the matter was good -- the young techs generally do very well after the Navy. Compared to most others their age they generally have had more responsibility and experience than their peers. I run into or get e-mails from guys I served with almost every week. In many cases I have long since forgotten their names, but they seem to remember it all very well - and usually very fondly.

great play-by-play george. Im sitting here writing a really dull report on tree ring analyses and your insight was like a good cuppa coffee.

I was (an aside) amazed at the gatling gun emplacements in the escort ships. I never realized that these things expend all their rounds in less than 15 seconds and take a bout 10 min to reload. Do they have duplicates of guns to account for reload down time?


My buddy who was the MArine pilot on the "independence" (out of Oceasna Va) was arguing with another friend who became a nook sub engineer. They often spent time arguing the survivability of a carrier with a fast attack sub in the woods nearby.

The carrier depends on its escorts , no?. I think we should reconsider the entire manned flight thing andhaving to put so many people in harms way so that planes can be launched to do a mission located hundreds of miles away from the carrier.

This topic ever come up in strategy and design discussions?

Thanks.

Gatling guns -- I assume you are referring to the "Close in Weapons system" - an R2D2 looking thing that contains a derated F-14 gatling gun that fired depleted uranium bullets. It is a standard, almost portable, self contained system, designed to shoot down rockets and cruise missiles in the last stages of their flight. The radar has doppler gates to detect the incoming missile on the horizon and, at a specified range, opens fire: the guidance simply adjusts to overlay the stream of bullets on the target. The DU imparts lots of momentum, and because it rapidly oxidizes adds a dense explosive force. The center of gravity of the debris still hits the ship, but the warhead doesn't function. Nimitz class carriers have 4 to 6 of them. Reload is done simply by replacing ready magazines - as with an automatic rifle.

Survivability against Soviet submarines was achieved (theoretically, since we never tried it) by moving fast. Some Soviet subs could outrun a carrier, but at any moderately high speed we could readily track them thousands of miles away. Their choices were either to remain unseen or catch us - they couldn't do both. Carriers then carried a squadron of anti sub aircraft and were usually accompanied by a U.S. attack sub.

The Soviet air threat was their Badger and Backfire bombers which they planned to use in large numbers to saturate our defenses. By their own calculations, a multi regiment strike (100+ aircraft) could take on a force of two carriers, but not three or four, working together. Our propaganda was, of course more optimistic. Our Aegis class cruisers have incredible anti air capability and the mission of the F-14s I flew was to take on the Soviet air at long range. However, the Soviet development of supersonic cruise missiles in the early 1980s seemed (to me) to give them a real advantage.

This stuff was much discussed and a central part of some very complex war games - on both sides. The post Cold War evidence suggests the Soviets were truly spooked by the threat of attack from carrier forces, and they certainly invested a lot in countering it.

Both sides exercised these things a great deal. It wasn't uncommon for us to detect the launch of 50-100 Soviet aircraft from bases in the Maritime province and Shakalan against our carriers in the Western Pacific. The 'stealthy' winter crossing I did north of the Aleutians was done expressly to test, deceive and spook the Soviets there. (We even had a decoy force including a ship with a "music box" van onboard, crossing south of the Aleutians, parallel to us. The "music box" broadcasts a broad spectrum of radio/radar emissions, designed to mimic a carrier. Meanwhile we were a few hundred miles North and silent, carefully monitoring the tracks of the Soviet reconnaissance satellites above us - a complex game.

cool. However, as my friend said
"There are two kinds of ships in warfare, submarines, and targets"


I suppose that the new UAV stuff will eventually render pilots obsolete.

The phalanx guns they were talking about on the show I was watching did not mention that the ammo was preloaded into cans. They were showing the crew reloading these big rectangular boxes with DU (looked like 50 cal) rounds. Cintered DU is very pyrophoric and I remember when I was doing rare earth chem wed developed some sintered tantalum/Tungsten CArbide shells. It wasnt as dense as DU but it flamed up real good.

Thanks for your insight again. I hope some others on A2K watch the series (with exception of the last installment--).