Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

bay. This is a land ruled not so much by the ship's officers, as by those mythic people who hold the naval service together-the chiefs.

In the Navy, there is a saying that officers make decisions and the chiefs make things happen. It's true. Here on the hangar deck, the bulk of the maintenance and repair work is done by senior enlisted personnel and non- commissioned officers (NCOs), who spend their days (and frequently nights) putting back into working order the aircraft that officers go out and break. Any machine, no matter how robust and well built, will eventually break or fail if used long enough. It therefore falls to these unsung heroes of naval aviation to do the dirty and not very well rewarded work of keeping the airplanes flying. How do the taxpayers of the United States reward these dedicated young people? While the pay of enlisted/NCO personnel has slipped a bit in the last few years (by comparison with what the average civilian earns), it is still light-years ahead of the near-poverty level of the 1970's. In fact, the Congress has recently voted a small pay raise, and it should be in pay envelopes by the time you read this.

As for accommodations, well, as we've already seen, don't expect a four-star hotel. With 90 % of the crew made up of enlisted/NCO personnel, so-called 'personal space' for non-officers is almost absurdly lacking. Most enlisted and NCO berthing is made up of six-man bunk/stowage units, with an attacked locker unit. Each person has an individual bunk, bunk pan, and locker. Each bunk has a reading light, privacy curtain, and fresh-air duct, all packed into a space about the size of a good-sized coffin. The six-man modules are grouped into berthing spaces, which share a communal head/shower, as well as a small open area equipped with a television, table, and chairs. Normally, when you walk through these spaces, red battle lamps (to preserve night vision) illuminate the area and allow those off their work shifts to get some sleep. In the common areas there's usually a television going and someone is probably ironing their clothes.

The Navy, recognizing the necessary shortcomings of the personal accommodations, does what it can to make up for that by giving naval personnel the finest food money can buy. It's not fancy, tending toward good, basic chow, but the mess specialists work hard to throw in favorites like pizza, stir-fry, or Mexican dishes several times a week. In addition, the dietitians try to keep food relatively low in fat by offering fresh vegetables and salads whenever possible. For the enlisted sailors, meals are usually served cafeteria-style in the large serving area forward of Wardroom 3. One of the largest open spaces in the ship, this is the central focus of the enlisted personnel aboard ship. Here they can eat, talk, attend a class, play a video game, and perhaps escape the routine for a little while. There are also other diversions.

Workout facilities are located here and there throughout the ship. These have become extremely popular in recent years, as the 'hardbody' culture has become fashionable. For more serious fitness enthusiasts, there are exercise and aerobic classes held on the hangar deck several times a day, as well as a jogging group that makes the circuit of the flight deck, weather and flight operations permitting. The ship's cable television system normally broadcasts over six channels from a small studio on the O-1 level under the island. Run by a technical team under Lieutenant Joe Navritril, it shows movies, news, ship's bulletins, and other programming. There is also a small cable radio station, which broadcasts an 'eclectic' mix of rock and roll, blues, and jazz. A four-page newspaper, The Guardian, comes out every day at lunch. It is a delightful mix of news from 'the world,' as well as more topical pieces relating to daily life aboard the GW. Finally, movies (complete with bags of popcorn) and VCRs can be rented for off-duty video parties back in enlisted berthing areas.

An innovation made possible by the Challenge Athena system is personal E-mail over the Internet for everyone on board. This is handled through the ship's own onboard Intranet, which feeds into a central file server. Each person is assigned an E-mail account and address (aboard the GW, this ends with the suffix @washington.navy.mil). The messages are then routed through the server and Challenge Athena system to and from the Atlantic Fleet communications center in Norfolk, Virginia. This means that everyone on the ship with access to a computer (some are in common areas in kiosks for those who do not have personal laptops or office machines) can receive E-mail messages from home. Already, it is changing the face of shipboard life.

For example, the three thousand sailors and Marines aboard the amphibious ship Peleliu (part of the Nimitz battle group, which deployed from the West Coast a month before the GW CVBG) sent over fifty thousand E-mail messages in just their first month under way! The effect on crew morale has been astounding. The arrival of Naval E-mail has come none too soon for our sailors, since the old Navy draw-'Join the Navy and See the World'-has become all but obsolete. Over the last decade, the ships of our battle groups have made less than half of the port calls on deployment that they used to make. This means that seeing foreign countries, long a recruiting attraction, has been almost eliminated. Ever since the 1979 Iran Crisis, long (ninety-plus days) line periods have become the norm for CVBGs, and this has been tough on crew morale.

Wednesday, August 27th, 1997

JTFEX 97-3-Day 10: The military forces of Korona have today completed their occupation of Kartuna, including the capital city of Temal. The last elements of the Kartunan government evacuated to the country of Telari, which today announced its joining of the Allied coalition. Meanwhile, the coalition forces have been stepping up their attacks on Koronan military targets, reportedly inflicting heavy damage. The battle continues….

This morning found the GW battle group continuing to dish out punishment on the Koronans. The objective was to destroy enough of their armed forces to allow the Marines of the 24th MEU (SOC) to make a landing near the Kartunan capital city of Temal (in actuality, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina) sometime the following week. A battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division assaulting a nearby airfield would support this landing. This would allow follow-on forces to be landed from the sea and air.

Before this could be done, the Koronan forces would have to be reduced in size and power, and this was the job of the ships, missiles, and aircraft of the GW group. Already, significant progress had been made toward this goal. Though Koronan air and Naval forces had aggressively launched attacks on the naval units of the allied coalition, Admiral Mullen's detailed plans for protecting the ships of the force had been working to near perfection. Throughout the battle group, the various warfare commanders had been working hard to eliminate the specialized threats they were responsible for.

Captain Deppe on the Normandy (the group AW commander) had been especially busy in dozens of AAW engagements between his SAM ships and the planes of the Koronan Air Force. Deppe's disposition of his SAM ships had worked particularly well, with the Normandy absorbing most of the attacks aimed at the GW. The Carney and South Carolina also shot down their share of enemy intruders, with the result that the USACOM exercise controllers rapidly had to strengthen the Koronan Air Force, lest it be completely destroyed before the shooting phase of the exercise was only three days old. Once again, the J-7 controllers from USACOM were being forced to 'ratchet up' the threat level of the exercise, just to keep it challenging for the GW group.

'Give me a fast ship for I intend to go into harm's way!''

Captain John Paul Jones, Continental Navy

The Koronan Navy was put out of action equally fast. Because safe distances had to be maintained between the Koronan KILO-class diesel boats (being played by borrowed USN nuclear submarines) and the ships and subs of the GW group, exercise rules tended to make them sitting ducks. The Koronan surface ships died a little harder, though they did die quickly. Within hours of the outbreak of hostilities, every one of the Koronan missile destroyers and patrol boats had been hunted down and dispatched by the allied forces. Sometimes, their elimination came at the hands of aircraft firing standoff missiles like AGM-65 Mavericks and AGM-84 Harpoons. Particularly effective against the missile patrol boats were SH-60B LAMPS III helicopters from the escorts armed with AGM-119 Penguin air-to-surface missiles (ASMs). Using these little helicopters as perimeter security guards proved to be an efficient way of keeping the Koronan patrol boats at arm's length, without requiring a mission by an F/A-18 or S-3B to kill