Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

Displays (MFDs). These have the advantage of better presenting data to the air crews, and they can be reconfigured in flight. This means that during takcoff, for example, the air crew can pick the instruments most important to them at that time. So-called 'glass cockpits' have between five and a dozen such MFDs, and have become quite popular.

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In the 1960s when air-to-air kill ratios against North Vietnamese MiG fighters began to fall off, the dedicated efforts of a couple of F-8 Crusader FRS IPs (James 'Ruft' Ruliffson and J.R. 'Hot Dog' Brown) created the famous Topgun school. More recently, the F-14 FRS at NAS Oceana, Virginia, managed to hang a modified LANTIRN laser targeting pod onto a Tomcat, so that it could deliver laser-guided bombs. This little trick increased the number of aircraft that could deliver precision weapons in every CVW by about 25 %, which is not shabby for an ad hoc effort!

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The atomic combat requirement was outlined in a famous 1947 memorandum prepared by Rear Admiral Dan Gallery. He was a legendary Naval aviation figure (he commanded the escort carrier group that captured the German U-505 in 1944), and his paper would eventually start a virtual war between the Navy and the newly created Air Force. 28 The original carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) was arguably the U.S. Navy's greatest warship, with a combat record second to none. She fought in five of the six great carrier-versus-carrier clashes, surviving serious combat damage many times. The Enterprise was so hated by the Japanese that they claimed to have sunk her by name on a number of occasions.

28

USS Ranger (CV-4), was the first American carrier built from the keel up. At only about fourteen thousand tons displacement, Ranger was tiny compared to Lexington and Saratoga, and it showed when she went into service. With less than half of the aircraft capacity of the two larger ships, Ranger was simply too small to support a powerful air group, and was never considered a front-line vessel. Despite this, the Navy learned valuable lessons from building Ranger, and it showed in the next class of aircraft carriers.

29

A new reactor design under consideration for future carriers will never need refueling. This is a tremendous advantage, since refueling is a complex overhaul that takes three years in a shipyard.

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Secretary Lehman also authorized the reactivation of the four World War II-era Iowa-class (BB-61) battleships armed with antiship and long-range cruise missiles.

31

Thomas Jefferson also appears on Mount Rushmore, but he was always skeptical about sea power, and in the Navy's eyes he did not merit the naming of a carrier.

32

Originally, CVN-75 was to have been named the USS United States, after the original supercarrier (CVA-58) broken up on the building ways in 1949. In fact, there exist photos of her keel being laid under that name. However, for political reasons, the Clinton Administration decided to rename her Harry S. Truman. So for the second time, Harry Truman 'sank' the USS United States!

33

The Virginia is frequently and incorrectly referred to as the Merrimac, which was previously a steam frigate in the Federal Navy. Incompletely burned and scuttled when the Gosport Naval Yard (near the present-day Norfolk Naval Base) was abandoned in 1861 by Federal forces, it was raised and then used to build the Confederate ironclad.

34

After years of being a part of Tennaco Corporation, Newport News Shipbuilding separated in 1996 and is now a full-time shipbuilding concern.

35

The four catapults on every carrier are numbered 1 through 4, from the starboard bow (Catapult 1) to the port angle (Catapult 4).

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