A Personal Experience

Have you ever gone from zero to 130 m.p.h. in just two seconds? I have, and it's an unbelievable sensation, like being fired out of a cannon. It happened to me at the conclusion of my visit to the nuclear aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, when the plane in which I was flying was catapulted off the flight deck.

Early in March I received an invitation from the office of the Secretary of the Navy through an organization to which I belong: The SHAEF Veterans Association. SHAEF, the acronym for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces, was General Eisenhower's staff in Europe during World War II. The invitation was extended to 16 members of Ike's former staff to visit the carrier as it cruised the Atlantic a hundred miles or so off Norfolk, Virginia, its home port.

The fact sheet contained the admonition "Shipboard life is arduous and you will be doing considerable walking and climbing many flights of stairs." They weren't kidding.

Our group met on a Monday morning at the Naval Air Station in Norfolk and received the first of many briefings. This one was to acquaint us on how to survive in the water in the event our aircraft missed or overran its approach to the carrier. Not a very happy thought. We were given tags for our luggage and told that our bags would be delivered to our staterooms aboard the carrier.

Next, we were dressed in life vests equipped with strobe lights, dye markers, whistles and inflation cartridges. Now, thoroughly apprehensive, the group was led out to a fairly large airplane called a "COD" which were told stood for "carrier on deck delivery". It was a twin-engine turboprop with a cruising speed of two hundred mph. We boarded the plane by walking up a ramp which had been lowered from the tail. The windowless fuselage contained 24 metal bucket seats facing rearward in six rows of four seats across with a center aisle. We were strapped into shoulder harnesses and lap belts. We took off and sat in semi-darkness. The engine noise made conversation impossible. About 40 minutes later the crew chief sitting in the first row raised his hand to signal us that we were about to land on the carrier deck. A few seconds later we touched down and the plane's tail hook caught an arresting wire, and we went from 110 m.p.h. to a dead stop in 300 feet (I later learned that this was called a "trap"). We had discovered why the seats were facing the rear of the plane. We were completely flattened against the backs of our seats and held there for about eight seconds.

We were met by our escort officers who greeted us enthusiastically with, "Welcome aboard the mighty Ike." We had arrived on the largest and most powerful warship in the world.

We were taken to the Ward Room and given folders with all kinds of ship information and gold-colored, etched, personalized name plates. We were briefed for an hour or so on what we were going to do and see for the next 30 hours. We were then divided into two groups of eight, each group led by an officer and a petty officer.

The first impression of the ship is its huge size. Its length is 1,092 feet and its width, 252 feet. It's too large to go through the Panama Canal. Its flight deck is 4.5 acres.

The crew of the Eisenhower at full complement numbers about 6,300 men and women. The latter account for about 10 percent of the crew. She carries 84 jet fighters consisting of F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets plus 20 to 30 other support airplanes including EWAKs, CODs and helicopters.

The Eisenhower is powered by two nuclear reactors at speeds in excess of 30 knots. The reactors do not require refueling for 18 years.

The innards of the carrier are like a rabbit warren: a maze of compartments, narrow passageways and narrow flights of stairs, called "ladders." I asked several sailors how long it took them to find their way around the ship and the consensus was a month. As we were shown through the ship we were required to carry a plastic card with emergency telephone numbers on it in case we got lost.

The ship carries three million gallons of fuel for its aircraft. While we were being shown the Hangar Deck, a space which makes you feel you are in a sports arena, the captain announced that we would be taking on fuel. We soon came alongside a Navy tanker, the Laramie, which shot lines across a gap of about 50 feet between the two ships. The lines were attached to hoses which were hauled aboard the Ike. During the next two hours while both ships maintained a constant speed and common course, 350,000 gallons of jet fuel were brought aboard the Ike.

After an excellent lunch, served cafeteria style in the officers mess, we explored the "island." The first installation, about five ladders up, was the aircraft handler's bridge. The aircraft handler is th equivalent of the ground controller at a conventional airport. He/she is in charge of all the activity on the flight deck which would include all the aircraft after landing and before takeoff.

As we continued to climb the ladders in the island, we came to the admiral's bridge. When the Eisenhower is part of a battle group, the admiral directs the ships in the group from this bridge on the Ike. Above this bridge is the captain's bridge. It is from here that the captain runs the ship. Flight operations were underway while we were on the bridge. An officer was continually calling out course changes to the helmsman as he steered so as maintain position directly into the wind for the takeoff and landing of airplanes.

Finally, the top bridge on the island is occupied by the "air boss", as his shirt proclaimed. He operates in the manner of a tower controller at a conventional airport. His position is 20 stories above the surface of the sea. He not only controls the landings, but also the takeoffs, using the four steam catapults on the Ike's deck. He has the capability of putting fighter planes in the air, at the rate of one every 30 seconds. This bridge is equipped with a great deal of instrumentation including radar and communications gear which allow the air boss to talk to the planes and the launch crew while conducting flight operations. There is always one of the Eisenhower's rescue helicopters orbiting a few hundred yards off the flight deck in the event anyone goes into the water.

After descending the island, we were taken to the combat operations room, the heart and brains of all the ship's combat systems. When we entered the room I felt like I was in a network control room, with all the monitors in front of a lower desk at which a television director would ordinarily be stationed. But in this case the monitors were radar and computer screens and the director was the combat operations officer. The briefing officer demonstrated the equipment with a tape of a simulated attack on the Eisenhower by enemy missiles. The combat ops officer used the ship's Sea Sparrow surfact-to-air missiles to shoot down the incoming missiles. However, one of the enemy missiles got through the Sea Sparrows and had to be engaged with a 20 millimeter Gatling gun aboard the Ike. The combat ops officer is the only person aboard the Ike, other than the captain, who has the authority to fire the ship's weapons.

Our next stop was the weather bureau. It had all the forecasting and communications equipment a state-of the-art, shore-based weather bureau would have. It has satellite reception and transmitting capability. It not only provides detailed weather information to the Eisenhower but also to other ships in the fleet.

We were outfitted with life jackets, helmets, goggles and ear protectors and taken for a tour of the active flight deck. We observed the crew wearing colored shirts which indicated their function on the deck. Green shirts hook planes to the catapults and handle arresting wires. Blue shirts check and chain aircraft, red shirts handle weapons and ammunition, silver suits indicate firemen, while yellow shirts direct the movement of the aircraft on the flight deck. Because of the wind and the jet noise, all communication on the flight deck is by hand signals. Each of us had a crewman assigned to "keep us out of harm's way" while on the deck.

We were assigned individual staterooms on the "03" deck in the center of the ship. The staterooms were windowless, but had a comfortable bunk, lockers, a sink with a medicine cabinet, a closet, and mine even had a television set. The entire ship is wired for closed-circuit television which is used for instruction, viewing the ship's activities such as flight deck operations, and also entertainment. A fully-equipped television studio and control room with videotape facilities lets the ship originate its own programming and tape lectures and instruction sessions for future broadcast.

The Eisenhower also publishes a daily newspaper and operates a radio station for the crew.

Dinner was served in the officers' mess and as with lunch the food was excellent and very tastefully presented. I asked my dinner companion how they stored enough food to accomplish the 20,000 meals they served a day. He told me that their refrigerator was 14,000 cubic feet, large enough to drive a small car around.

After dinner the tour continued and some of our group went up to the topmost part of the ship to observe the Halle-Bopp comet. I opted for a shower and bed about 10 p.m., not realizing that flight operations were still going on, and the catapults were right over my stateroom. At least they felt and sounded that way. The noise and vibration was like being in a subway station with a train passing through every few minutes When the planes revved their engines to full military power on the catapults, it sounded like they were in my stateroom. Finally, at midnight they called it a day and sleep came quickly.

When my alarm sounded at 5:30 a.m., I had time to shave and dress and head for the crew mess where each of us was placed at a table with eight crewmembers. At my table they were all young, between 18 and 22, and they came from all over the U.S. Their morale and pride in their ship was superb. All of them wanted to make the Navy their career and several expressed their desire to become officers.

Our tour continued through the morning and included the ship's hospital which had operating rooms, x-ray rooms, laboratories, a pharmacy and beds for 64 patients. The hospital was fully staffed with a surgeon, a team of nurses and technicians. They also had a complete dental clinic in operation.

In the 20 years since the Eisenhower was commissioned, she has been deployed in the Mediterranean several times in support of our land-based troops from Lebanon and Iraq to Bosnia.

From the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, Ike has provided a U.S. presence wherever needed. She was only the second nuclear carrier to transit the Suez Canal. Early in 1994 the first women began reporting to the Eisenhower. In October of 1994 Ike departed for a six month deployment in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. This marked the first time that women had deployed as crew members of a U.S. Navy combatant. There were 400 women aboard.

After lunch on Tuesday we saw more of the ship including the Ike mall, a shopping center with a supermarket, clothing store and a post office. The captain gave us a final briefing on the bridge and the executive officer presented us with "Trap" certificates signed by the captain. These were inscribed with our names and attested to the fact that we completed a successful arrested landing aboard the Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In mid-afternoon we donned our helmets, goggles and life vests again. We and our luggage were delivered to the flight deck and put aboard the COD. We taxied to one of the catapults. The engines roared, and we were shot into the sky for the short flight back to Norfolk. Tired and suffering from information overload we landed back at the Norfolk Naval Air Station.

It is impossible to come away from an experience like this without feeling tremendous pride in our navy and our country.

(Editors Note: This is the first in a series of personal experiences by Caucus members which we hope will interest our members and our readers.)