I lived on an Aircraft Carrier for a week

Week of Nov. 1, 2009

USS Harry Truman

(If you like seeing things that are awesome, this is the link for you)

Getting to stay aboard an aircraft carrier for a week was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. I'm not going to go into super detail here, because the government might punch me in the stomach with "laws," but I'll talk a little bit about what it's like for a civilian roaming around an aircraft carrier, where my only responsibility was to learn how mechanics and pilots deal with jet engine issues. Not a bad deal.

It's bigger in real life

Upon arriving at the airport in Virginia, Rich (another buddy we work with who was on assignment at Norfolk) picked us up in his new Dodge Challenger (he had been talking about buying it for literally over a year until eventually I said "shut up, just buy the fucking thing") and drove us to his, Amanda's, and John's rented house at Virginia Beach. They are all on assignment in the same program we are either at Norfolk or Oceana. On the ride back I was a bit nauseous from the flight and still fairly hungover from Halloween, but luckily I made it outside the new and pristine vehicle when I dropped a barf. Rich would have KILLED me if I had voms'd in his brand new dream-car.
We spent the next day preparing for our stay on the boat: this mostly means that I bought motion sickness medication. We boarded without a hitch, found our quarters, and were underway before we knew it. Hogan and I had the hookup: we were guests of the pilot training group in the flight squadron we were working with back in CA. This means we were treated as officers. We got to eat in the officers dining room (way nicer and about a 45-minute shorter line for food), got to walk around and talk to the training pilots (the squadron we were with was doing a training session for new-ish pilots - they were taking off and landing on the carrier at night for the first time. Believe me, I tried doing that in a flight simulator a few times back at the base: it is FUCKING HARD AS FUCK. I think the only time I came close to landing resulted in my flying into the back of the carrier and exploding.), and finally, it meant that we had our own room (bunk bed, closet space, a SINK! Awesome).

Taking a tour of the flight deck before we're underway. I'm sorry, is this not awesome enough for you? Well fighter jets will be landing on it soon enough, just you wait.

Rich et. al. weren't so lucky. They were guests of the mechanic group of their respective squadron, so they were treated more like enlisted guys: had to eat at the main cafeteria (the line zig-zags up 5 or 6 decks) and had to bunk in the main enlisted area (3-person bunk bed in a room with 50 people, all you had was a single small cubbie). Not so ideal.
We took a tour of the ship with some of the powerplant maintenance guys. It is FUCKING ENORMOUS and extremely easy to get lost. There are all kinds of random corridors and ladders everywhere and sometimes you have to go up or down a few decks to continue moving to the bow or stern of the ship. It took me pretty much the entire week before I was comfortable in locating the nearest bathroom.

Getting lost on our way to our quarters, which was located right beneath the catapult. So whenever a jet was launched at night, we heard "ziiiiiiip BANG." And our room is made of metal so everything is amplified. THERE HAVE BEEN EASIER THINGS TO SLEEP THROUGH.

We spent most of our time wandering around to different parts of the ship and watching F18's takeoff or land. It was... truly epic.

I got paid to watch this happen over and over. Sometimes the world is pretty great.

Whenever we were on the flight deck or in the Crow's Nest (higher deck to watch jets land from above) we had to wear "float coats." In case you were somehow knocked off the ship, these would automatically inflate, mark the spot where you landed, and provide a signal to the rescue helicopter sent out to find you. In reality, if you fell off and didn't break your neck/head from the 60 foot drop, it would take the helicopter a while to get up, locate you, and rescue you, and you would most likely die of hypothermia by the time you were out of the water. If you fell off at night there was very little chance of survival. So the float coats were kind of like "maaaaaybe this will help, but you'll probably die."

Pulling. It. Off.

Luckily seasickness wasn't really an issue since the ship was so effing big. For the first few days, it was an... odd adjustment. My center of gravity was all screwy. I didn't feel nauseous, but definitely a bit weird. But after a bit that went away.
One of my favorite places on the ship was at the back of the ship. You had a great view of the jets as they landed. We were LITERALLY directly under them.

We probably weren't supposed to be back there. Shhhh...

Aww man, that fighter jet totally ruined a perfectly good picture of the Sun

Another cool thing about the back of the boat is that this is where they do engine testing, which is RELEVANT TO MY CONCERNS. However, they can't do engine tests when they are running training exercises, because it could be dangerous/distract the pilot/whatever lame excuse. And they DEFINITELY can't run at night while pilots are training, because it would seriously destroy their chances of not smashing into the ocean. So they had to run the engine tests waaaaaaay late at night after training was over. Which means we had to get up at like 3am to go watch it. But it was totally worth it. I might be slightly more deaf as a result, but holy crap, so awesome.

This is probably on my "Top 5 Coolest Things I've Done at 3am" list

I like to think this made the ship a little bit faster...

We also periodically would go up to the Crow's Nest to watch landings.

Yeah... we started running out of normal poses...

Let's see what else... OH we talked to some of the experienced pilots, who then invited out to the Landing Signal Officer (LSO) deck for a training run. This is where all the experienced pilots "grade" the landings during training exercises. Basically, we got to stand right next to the F18's as they landed. Fucking sweet.

It is almost two years later. This picture is STILL blowing my mind.

Yeah, that's how close we were. I'm glad the picture is waist-up, because it's possible that I crapped my pants from sheer intensity.

One of the funny parts about standing on the LSO deck is that F18's are being moved around the entire time we're there to make more room, move up for takeoff, whatever. One of the maneuvers wasn't so graceful... and resulted in all of us getting blasted in the face with jet exhaust: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AocstJPHXzo
At this point were were all like "ok, we've seen a fair amount of landings," so the powerplants guys we were with were all like "WELL THEN LET'S GO SEE SOME TAKEOFFS!" "ok."
These jets get catapulted off the deck so fast that they really don't have an option: they WILL be airborne. Just hope to god your engines don't immediately shut down... oh wait that's my job. But we got an opportunity to give the final signal for launch, which was friggn awesome.

I'm the one on the right! I MADE THIS PLANE FLY.

Bye!

Stuff happened at night too!

We got to see some more practice landings on the LSO deck at night, which is really intense. All you can see is a set of lights getting progressively closer, and you just hope to god they don't smash into you. Most of the pilots did alright, but there were a few close calls where they were literally about to crash into us, forcing the LSO officers to be like "uh, you're going to have to try again, because I don't want to die in a fireball explosion... yet." And the pictures came out fairly shitty because we can't use flash photography at night. That will get you shot. They are EXTREMELY against that kind of thing, because honestly it will ruin a pilot's day.
Over the course of the week we saw some cool places, like the little window on the deck where the catapult controllers sit, the missile/bomb room, and the deck above the Crow's Nest. Here we were able to watch the FOD walkdown at the end of the day. This is when a bunch of guys walk down the entire flight deck looking for tiny scraps of debris that could potentially fuck up the engine with "foreign object damage."

Don't even TRY to tell me this isn't awesome. Because it is. That is not an opinion; it is fact.

There was some mix-up on when we were getting off the ship. We had a flight back to the west coast set, so we clearly had to be back at Virginia Beach by then, but the COD (the plane that transports people back to... land) trips were filling up and we weren't scheduled for one yet. Hogan and I were lucky enough to get scheduled for the last one of the day, but Rich et. al., who we were staying with, didn't get off until the next morning. But everything worked out; we got a hotel for the night, drank some Yuengling, and then met up with everybody the next morning.
The COD itself was a pretty interesting experience. We sat the opposite way as the plane was going, so launching off the carrier was almost like a roller coaster. It was loud an uncomfortable, but not a bad ride.

Oh I'm smiling? This picture must be BEFORE they turned the engines on. I think I regained my hearing sometime the next week.

So that was my aircraft carrier experience, pretty much the coolest thing ever. I definitely would NOT want to live on one for 8 months like some of the Navy guys do. That would be excruciating. A week was good. Oh what the hell, one more picture.

Lookin for pirates