bulkhead.
“What are those doors?” Judith Farrell asked.
“Weapons elevators, ma’am.”
“Does the entire crew eat here?” one of the men asked in an accent Tarkington took to be German.
“Couldn’t be done. There’s fifty-six hundred men on this ship. We’ve got another galley and mess area back aft. The crew eats in both mess areas in shifts. The officers have two ward-rooms and the chief petty officers have their own mess.” The group just stood, looking. “It isn’t exactly eating at the Ritz, but the chow is pretty darn good,” Tarkington added and waved his hand for them to follow.
He led them outboard from the mess area to a ladder that rose steeply. They ascended one deck and followed him through another open watertight door out into the hangar bay.
The hangar was a two-acre cavern crammed with aircraft. The group threaded their way around the myriad of chains that secured each plane to a clear walk area that meandered down the center of the hangar between the planes. Tarkington stopped and the visitors gawked.
“Sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”
“All these planes …” the Frenchman marveled. F-14 Tomcat fighters, A-6 Intruder attack bombers, and F/A- 18 Hornet fighter-bombers, all with folded wings, were crammed in so that not a square yard of space was empty. Tarkington led them to a clear area that divided the space laterally.
“Now this space right here is always kept open, so we can close these big bombproof doors.” Massive doors that were as tall as the bay was high — about twenty-five feet — were recessed into each side of the bay. “There are two of these doors, this one and the one back aft. By closing these we can separate this bay into three compartments and isolate any fire or bomb damage. Up there,” Tarkington pointed at a small compartment with windows visible near the ceiling, “is a station that’s manned twenty-four hours a day. The man on duty there can close these doors from up there and turn on the fire-fighting sprinklers at the first sign of fire or a fuel spill. You will notice we have three of these stations, called CONFLAG stations, one in each of the three bays.” In the window of the nearest CON-FLAG station, the face of the sailor on duty was just visible. He was looking down at them.
One of the reporters pointed at some racks hanging down from the ceiling which held large white shapes pointed at both ends. “Are those bombs?”
“No, sir,” said their guide. “Those are extra drop tanks.” When he saw the puzzlement on the reporter’s face, he added, “Drops are fuel tanks that hang under the wings or belly of an airplane that the pilot can jettison if he has to.” The lieutenant stepped to an A-6 and patted one that hung on a wing station. “Like this one, which holds a ton of fuel.”
The German pointed his camera at the lieutenant. Tarkington shook his head and waved his hands. “Please don’t take any pictures in here, sir. You can get some shots up on the flight deck. I’ll show you where.” He herded them around the planes to a large opening in the side of the ship. A greasy wire on stanchions was the only safety line. About twenty feet below them was the sea. On the horizon the group could see the city of Tangiers and the hills beyond. The spring wind, still raw, was funneling into the hangar through this giant door. Above, a large roof projected out over the sea and obstructed their view of the sky. Tarkington nodded to a sailor on the side of the opening and instantly a loud horn began to wail. Then the huge projecting roof began to fall.
“This is one of the four aircraft elevators that we use to move planes and equipment back and forth to the flight deck. We’ll ride it up.” As the platform reached their level, the safety stanchions sank silently into the deck. When all motion stopped, Tarkington led them out onto it.
The elevator platform was large, about four thousand square feet, and was constructed of grillwork. Several of the journalists looked down through the grating at the sea beneath them as the elevator rose with more sounding of horns, and several kept their eyes firmly on the horizon after a mere glance downward. The wind coming up through the grid swirled Judith Farrell’s dress. As she fought to hold it against her thighs she caught Lieutenant Tarkington looking at her legs. He smiled and winked, then looked away.
On the vast flight deck, they walked around a row of aircraft to a clear area. Their guide stopped at a giant hinged flap that projected out of the deck at a sixty-degree angle. “This is a jet blast deflector, a JBD. The plane on the catapult sits in front of it,” he gestured forward to the launching area, “and this thing comes up and deflects the exhaust gases up and away from the planes behind. The JBDs are cooled internally by salt water.” He showed them the water pipes on the back of the unit, then strolled forward to the catapult hookup area.
He pointed out the slot in which the shuttle traveled. The slot ran forward to the bow of the ship. “The catapult is about a hundred yards long and accelerates the planes up to flying speed.”
“What moves ze shuttle?” a Frenchman asked.
“It’s driven by steam. See, the catapult is right here under these steel deck plates. It’s like a giant double- barreled shotgun. There is a piston in each tube and they are mated together,” he sneaked a glance at Farrell, “and the shuttle sticks up through this slot. The airplane is hooked to the shuttle. Steam drives the pistons forward and tows the plane along.” He held up a hand and slammed it with his fist. “Pow!”
“What is that?” Judith Farrell pointed to a glassed-in compartment between the two bow catapults that protruded eighteen inches out of the deck.
“I’ll show you.” Tarkington led them over and they looked in the windows. “This is the bow catapult control bubble. The cat officer sits at this console facing aft and operates both bow cats. That console facing forward is where the man sits who monitors all the steam and hydraulic pressures and electrical circuits. He’s sort of like a flight engineer on a jetliner.”
The group proceeded to the bow where they looked back down the length of the ship. The view was spectacular. The island superstructure over two hundred yards aft looked like a goatherder’s cottage. Here, Tarkington suggested, was a good place for photographs. Everyone except Judith Farrell began snapping pictures. She turned and stared forward, out to sea.
“That’s east,” Tarkington told her. “You can’t see it, but not too far in that direction is the Strait of Gibralter, the entrance to the Med. We’ll be going through there in a few days.”
“I know my geography.”
“I’ll bet you do, ma’am. Just where in Paris do you live?”
“The Left Bank.”
“Where all those ol’ hippies and crackpots hang out?”
“Precisely there.”
“Oh.” He was silent for a moment. “Is this the first carrier you’ve been on, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you think of her?”
“It’s a waste of billions of dollars when there are people in the world starving.”
“You may be right, ma’am. I always figured that maybe somebody said something like that to Joshua when he was standing there looking at the walls of Jericho and thinking about tooting his horn. But my suspicion is that the folks in Jericho were thinking they hadn’t spent enough bucks on the walls. I reckon it all depends on your point of view.”
She glanced at him with her brows knitted, then turned and began walking aft. Tarkington followed slowly, and the rest of the group lowered their cameras and trailed after them.
They passed the bow catapult control bubble and the upright JBD and approached the island. It had looked small and unobtrusive from the bow, but as they neared, it took on the aura of a ten-story building festooned with radar dishes and radio antennae.
The lieutenant led his five through an oval door — they had to step over the combing — and into a ladderwell. Their footsteps echoed thunderously against the metal walls as they trudged up flight after flight of steep stairs (ladders, the sailors called them), swimming against a steady stream of people trooping down. The ship was so stupendously large, yet the passageways and ladders were narrow, with low ceilings, and crammed with pipes and wires and fire fighting gear; the ship’s interior was incongruously disconcerting to visitors unfamiliar with warship architecture. Some people found themselves slightly claustrophobic inside this rabbit warren of bulkheads and ladders and people charging hither and yon on unimaginable errands. Toad paused on several landings to let his charges catch up and catch their breath.
Six stories up they exited onto a viewing area their guide quaintly referred to as Vulture’s Row. Several other groups of journalists were also there. Everyone with a camera snapped numerous photos of the planes parked neatly in rows on the deck below and the junior officers answered technical questions as fast as they were posed.
