Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from Hey
Speaker 1: there and welcome to Text Stuff. I am your host
Speaker 1: extordanaire Jonathan Strickland and with me in the studio today.
Speaker 1: Is you know him? You love him? Scott Benjamin? Oh,
Speaker 1: they do? Really, I get notes people love when you're
Speaker 1: on the show. That's impressive. Yeah, yeah, people? What that
Speaker 1: my that my listeners can read and write? Now? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I wasn't saying that. It was just you never know
Speaker 1: these things. That's true. That's true. Yeah. You you come
Speaker 1: on as a guest onto my show and you are
Speaker 1: not pretty to the community case that come into the
Speaker 1: tech stuff world. I should let you know more frequently
Speaker 1: that people do enjoy when you're on. Well, that's nice.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, and I have a great time when
Speaker 1: I'm here. So I'm glad to be back. And this
Speaker 1: is a topic that I'm I'm pretty excited about talking
Speaker 1: about today. Yeah. I picked something that was outside of
Speaker 1: our our our respective wheelhouses a little bit. Aircraft carriers
Speaker 1: and super carriers. And this this was something that came
Speaker 1: about because many ages ago, when I was first making
Speaker 1: up the topic list of potential topics for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: One of the news items at the time was about
Speaker 1: the next generation of super carriers here in the United States,
Speaker 1: the Ford class aircraft carrier. So we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: a lot about the current state of the art, which
Speaker 1: is the Nimmits class aircraft carrier. We'll talk about the
Speaker 1: next generation, we'll talk about previous generations. But to start
Speaker 1: it all off, I wanted to explain how amazing, how
Speaker 1: old this this idea is. It actually predates controlled flight. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know a whole lot about this,
Speaker 1: because we did. We were digging into aircraft carriers and
Speaker 1: just kind of as a side note of some some
Speaker 1: article that I was reading, it had mentioned that in
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century they were using ships to launch
Speaker 1: manned balloons, right for reconnaissance, uh missions and things like that.
Speaker 1: It was always it was always about reconnaissance, and it
Speaker 1: was about monitoring the enemy, right, because in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: the navies around the world, we're relying heavily upon battleship
Speaker 1: class dreadnoughts, these enormous ships with heavy weaponry on them
Speaker 1: that would batter one another. That was how naval battles
Speaker 1: were decided back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
Speaker 1: centuries and so much so that any idea, like any
Speaker 1: thought of using air support was mainly just to get
Speaker 1: a look around and see where the enemy was. Like
Speaker 1: that was the only purpose, right. They were not thought
Speaker 1: of as this would be, We're gonna weaponize balloons. It
Speaker 1: was more like, we need eyes in the sky so
Speaker 1: that we know where the enemy might be. Well, even
Speaker 1: during the American Civil War they use balloons, uh, they would.
Speaker 1: They would flow a balloon from their camp to check
Speaker 1: out what the enemy was doing, you know, on the
Speaker 1: other side of the hill, and then bring it back down.
Speaker 1: But then the intent was never to to fire from
Speaker 1: up there anything. It was just to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on the on the enemy exactly exactly. And that's the
Speaker 1: same thing is true with the earliest days of aircraft
Speaker 1: carriers in the in the respect and the way we
Speaker 1: think of them now. What surprised me was that it
Speaker 1: did not take long at all from the moment that
Speaker 1: we have controlled flight that is a heavier than air
Speaker 1: aircraft that can fly through the control of a human being,
Speaker 1: and the first attempts at making an aircraft carrier. So
Speaker 1: I know that there is some disagreement about who was
Speaker 1: truly responsible for the first heavier than air aircraft. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go with the right brothers for this one. And
Speaker 1: they flew at Kittie Hawk in nineteen o three. It
Speaker 1: took less than a decade before the United States military
Speaker 1: started saying, may maybe we can launch one of these
Speaker 1: suckers from a boat. Yeah, not a bad idea. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's always the kind of the way
Speaker 1: it goes right with the militator's thinking. They're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, this could be a devastating machine of war.
Speaker 1: Exactly where can we make this work for us? So
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly what they did. They said, well, let's, uh,
Speaker 1: let's try to figure out a way to make it. Well,
Speaker 1: they need a nice big takeoff and landing area, but
Speaker 1: well there's no way really to do that on a
Speaker 1: boat unless we build something that's maybe made out of
Speaker 1: wood that's a huge flat deck. Let's try that. And
Speaker 1: they did and it worked. Yeah, it was It was crazy.
Speaker 1: They built They built a temporary wooden deck on top
Speaker 1: of the USS Birmingham in nineteen ten. This was truly
Speaker 1: just an experiment, right, it was just a proof of concept,
Speaker 1: and they found a brave man, or some might say lunatic,
Speaker 1: to attempt to fly a tiny biplane, a Curtis biplane
Speaker 1: fifty horsepower, fifty horsepower, a fifty hor power biplane. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine you're rolling down this wooden this wooden platform
Speaker 1: that's built on top of a battleship. It's the battleship
Speaker 1: was not meant to do this right, it was they
Speaker 1: had to shore up all this area to create a
Speaker 1: a wooden structure for you to roll across, not necessarily
Speaker 1: knowing if you would be able to reach the right
Speaker 1: speed to be able to take off, or if you
Speaker 1: would just plunge off the end into the ocean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a scary prospect having for
Speaker 1: this guy. I mean, his name is he was actually
Speaker 1: a civilian pilot. His name was Eugene Burton Eli And uh,
Speaker 1: this is so strange the way this is written. And
Speaker 1: I'll read it the way it's written, and then I'll
Speaker 1: explain because it sounds so weird. It says on November fourteen,
Speaker 1: a twenty four year old civilian, civilian pilot, again Eugene,
Speaker 1: took off in a fifty horsepower Curtis plane from the
Speaker 1: bow of the Birmingham, which is a you know, wooden
Speaker 1: platform cruiser again and later landed a Curtis model D
Speaker 1: on Pennsylvania in on January eighteenth of nineteen eleven. So
Speaker 1: those of you that were listening while I will realize
Speaker 1: that it wasn't a two month flight and he didn't
Speaker 1: change planes in mid air. They just hadn't figured out
Speaker 1: the landing bit of this yet. Yeah, So so this
Speaker 1: happens like two months apart or three months apart maybe,
Speaker 1: So you know what happened was they did the first one, uh,
Speaker 1: and then the second, the second attempt. The second test
Speaker 1: took place in San Francisco Bay, that's where the Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: was anchored, and he took off from a from from
Speaker 1: a landing strip on on land, took off, flew out
Speaker 1: to the ship, landed on it, stayed for an hour,
Speaker 1: took off from the ship, and landed back on the mainland. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so that's actually the first time that both both of
Speaker 1: those things happened at one time. That the initial uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the initial takeoff I guess was it was
Speaker 1: just a one time deal and they just wanted to
Speaker 1: see if they could do it. They didn't even really
Speaker 1: considered landing at this point. I'm sure they were thinking
Speaker 1: about it, but they weren't willing, willing to risk it yet.
Speaker 1: They needed a couple more months to to develop a
Speaker 1: way to do it, or maybe to look into the
Speaker 1: stats of how long it took a Curtis Model D
Speaker 1: to actually come to a stop, right, Because, yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's longer than the boat is, you've got yourself a problem.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, we would come up with ways
Speaker 1: to address that problem. Now here's the interesting thing to me.
Speaker 1: The U. S. Military was very quick to test out
Speaker 1: this idea, but they were not quick to implement it. Uh.
Speaker 1: The navy at the time was largely of the United
Speaker 1: States Navy, I should say, it was largely of the
Speaker 1: opinion that this was still the domain of the big battleships,
Speaker 1: and soon the cruisers would follow. Cruisers would be slightly smaller,
Speaker 1: slightly more maneuverable, faster ships than battleships. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about World War One era, yeah ships. Yeah. Pre World
Speaker 1: War One, into World War One, the United States was
Speaker 1: not terribly concerned with adding air power to that. However,
Speaker 1: the British were definitely interested, and they began to innovate
Speaker 1: in this space. Early early on UH, they began to
Speaker 1: experiment with navy ships. First they were using essentially a
Speaker 1: version of of water landing planes like seaplanes, but they
Speaker 1: were those are very slow there once they landing and
Speaker 1: taking off the slow and getting them aboard a ship
Speaker 1: required the use of cranes. So it was it was
Speaker 1: not a good process if you were under the possibility
Speaker 1: of being under fire from an enemy, have that quick exactly.
Speaker 1: So they started looking into other UH possibilities and it
Speaker 1: was the British Navy in nineteen eighteen that commissioned the
Speaker 1: first true practical aircraft carrier. It was the h M
Speaker 1: S Argus. Interesting and so the Argus is our first
Speaker 1: practical aircraft carrier. It had a large flat deck, which
Speaker 1: became standard for all aircraft carriers following ever since UM
Speaker 1: and that allowed for the landing and taking off of aircraft.
Speaker 1: It was also the first that had an electrically powered
Speaker 1: elevator to move aircraft from the hangar deck to the
Speaker 1: flight deck. Very smart and it's something we still see today. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that means that you can actually carry a lot
Speaker 1: more vehicles. Plus you don't have to worry like if
Speaker 1: if really bad weather is coming in. You can house
Speaker 1: them in the hangar deck as as opposed to having
Speaker 1: them have to secure them to the flight deck, which
Speaker 1: could be pretty dangerous to put. You know, these are
Speaker 1: huge vehicles. So that lays the groundwork for the beginning
Speaker 1: of aircraft uh aircraft carrier history. But we're gonna skip
Speaker 1: ahead to how they work today, and then later on
Speaker 1: I'll tell you more about the various classes of aircraft
Speaker 1: carriers that the United States specifically has used over the
Speaker 1: history of the Navy. Can I kind of maybe just
Speaker 1: say one thing here, and maybe I'm jumping too far ahead,
Speaker 1: but during World War One their use was extremely limited.
Speaker 1: They really didn't even put any kind of emphasis on
Speaker 1: it at all. It really wasn't part of World War
Speaker 1: One strategy in any way. But during World War Two
Speaker 1: they played a critical role. Instrumental, Yeah, extremely critical because
Speaker 1: and this is this I found this interesting. There was
Speaker 1: a side note about one of the battles um that
Speaker 1: was fought during World War Two, and it said that
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Coral Sea became the first sea
Speaker 1: battle in history in which neither opposing fleet saw the
Speaker 1: other one. That is so interesting. I mean, imagine that
Speaker 1: there's a there's a sea battle happening where you don't
Speaker 1: see the other ship right because the battle is being
Speaker 1: fought by the planes in the air that they're launching
Speaker 1: towards each other. I mean, it's it's such a strange
Speaker 1: thought that before that that never happened. Exactly you had
Speaker 1: you had planes that were dropping bombs. They're dropping torpedoes,
Speaker 1: so the planes were the weapons, right instead of instead
Speaker 1: of ships firing guns at one another, they're essentially launching
Speaker 1: planes at one another. And this is so far apart
Speaker 1: they cannot see each and this is so interesting because
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about it, and again you
Speaker 1: have to put yourself in the mind frame, you know
Speaker 1: that they were back in the nineteen forties. This is
Speaker 1: brand new because if you want to get a plane
Speaker 1: over a se battle, first, you probably wouldn't know where
Speaker 1: it's happening, and you wouldn't be able to communicate that
Speaker 1: and get that coordinated in time before something has already happened.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that the range was just too
Speaker 1: great for them, because fighter planes are often you know,
Speaker 1: weighted down with lots of lots of artillery, and they
Speaker 1: don't have great range. They have a shorter range than
Speaker 1: plane that's designed to fly long distances, that don't carry
Speaker 1: a bunch of you know, extra weapons, bombers, you know, guns, whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is a this is a brand new idea
Speaker 1: that we're going to take the planes to the battle
Speaker 1: and and you know, we launch them from there instead
Speaker 1: of having to kind of you know, keep them far
Speaker 1: far away and then maybe they'll make it, maybe they won't.
Speaker 1: If they decide that they can't, you hold out long
Speaker 1: enough to get there and they'll have to turn back.
Speaker 1: It's just it was a completely different way of thinking
Speaker 1: and and it's just such a fascinating time in history
Speaker 1: when you look back at some of the side notes
Speaker 1: of all these battles and the way that they were fought.
Speaker 1: It's just completely different from World War One. Completely different. Well, really,
Speaker 1: what what had happened was even during the World War
Speaker 1: One era, the navy navies around the world looked at
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers again as a means of carrying reconnaissance vehicles.
Speaker 1: Planes were not terribly useful in warfare, yet at that
Speaker 1: point they were very useful for finding out where the
Speaker 1: enemy fleets were so that you could direct your fleets
Speaker 1: and do the most damage possible. And what what really
Speaker 1: changed was that you know, you would think of like
Speaker 1: an aircraft carrier was an escort to a battleship, and
Speaker 1: the battleships were your your big boys, those were the
Speaker 1: ones that actually did the damage until the attack on
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor. Now, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the
Speaker 1: ships that were uh that were docked at Pearl Harbor
Speaker 1: were battleships, but the aircraft carriers were out on maneuvers.
Speaker 1: So the Japanese attack affected the battleships but not the
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers, which meant that the United States was forced
Speaker 1: to re evaluate their their strategies and they were forced
Speaker 1: to use aircraft carriers as weapons as opposed to a
Speaker 1: means of just reconnaissance. And that's what led to these
Speaker 1: things like the Battle of the Coral Sea where we
Speaker 1: end up getting this effect of of of aircraft carriers
Speaker 1: being used effectively as weapons of war. Well, also, and
Speaker 1: I think this goes without saying, that the Japanese fleet
Speaker 1: was launched from an aircraft carrier as well, so that
Speaker 1: the the the squadrons that attacked Pearl Harbor came from
Speaker 1: an aircraft carrier that was what several miles off, but
Speaker 1: you know, stealthily moved in and uh and and and
Speaker 1: was able to retreat back to the homeland. Right. It
Speaker 1: was incredibly effective. It was a devastating attack, as we
Speaker 1: all know. And so this was really what ended up
Speaker 1: changing the way wars were fought, uh for for several decades.
Speaker 1: And so it was it was something that that proved
Speaker 1: the aircraft carrier's importance as a vehicle in in an arsenal. Right,
Speaker 1: as you just mentioned, you know, the you know, it
Speaker 1: was that the aircraft carrier was the support vehicle or
Speaker 1: the yeah, the add on vehicle, the um the chaperone,
Speaker 1: I guess, right, and then the roles reversed. I mean
Speaker 1: then it became that you know, the destroyers and the
Speaker 1: cruisers and all those were um tagging along with the
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier because that was the big guns. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had those there to protect the aircraft carrier, because
Speaker 1: the aircraft carrier had all the really valuable aircraft on
Speaker 1: it that could do devastating damage very very quickly. So
Speaker 1: it was interesting to see such a dramatic shift and
Speaker 1: it was it was a dramatic shift that, by the way,
Speaker 1: did not happen smoothly that it took the work of
Speaker 1: lots of people in the Navy to convince other branches
Speaker 1: of the military that this, in fact was the best
Speaker 1: way of going forward. We'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of the um interesting battles in the United States
Speaker 1: that had nothing to do with using weapons or fighting
Speaker 1: an enemy. It was really the battles being fought between
Speaker 1: different branches of the military, particularly the Air Force and
Speaker 1: the Navy. There's a there's a story about the aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier that wasn't. It was one that was almost but
Speaker 1: then wasn't. Let's talk a little bit about how these
Speaker 1: massive and I really do mean massive machines work. Now
Speaker 1: you have seen one in person, but you've been on
Speaker 1: the midway. Okay, I've seen one in person. I've never
Speaker 1: been on one. Yeah, you gotta pack a lunch if
Speaker 1: you're gonna walk from one side to the other. They
Speaker 1: are big. They are huge. I mean we're talking like
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna ballpark. These numbers so sure, we're talking
Speaker 1: like more than a thousand feet long. The deck is
Speaker 1: measured in acres, something like four or four acres four
Speaker 1: and a half acres um. They are like it's like
Speaker 1: taking a building. I think I read somewhere that it
Speaker 1: was like, imagine the which building is in New York,
Speaker 1: the Chrysler building in New York. Tilt the Chrysler building
Speaker 1: on its side, put it in water, and that's the
Speaker 1: length of the built of the of the ship. But
Speaker 1: then even greater than that. It's like it's twenty stories
Speaker 1: tall when it's floating. Yeah, yeah, it's got it's you know,
Speaker 1: if you go from the keel of the ship. The
Speaker 1: keel is the backbone of the ship, the part that's
Speaker 1: at the very bottom center, all the way to the
Speaker 1: very top, you're talking like the equivalent of twenty four stories. Amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a huge, huge machine with thousands
Speaker 1: of parts, two thousands, well billion, a billion parts or
Speaker 1: something like that is what I read somewhere. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's true or not, but I mean they
Speaker 1: literally said it's a billion parts on on these ships,
Speaker 1: and it's it's truly like running a city because there
Speaker 1: are thousands of crew members. We'll talk about numbers when
Speaker 1: we get to it here, but yeah, there are thousands
Speaker 1: of people on board and they have to do everything
Speaker 1: you know, from collecting the garbage to um, making sure
Speaker 1: that you know, people are fed, and of course fighting
Speaker 1: the war maybe potentially uh running just you know, doing
Speaker 1: regular missions. I guess, you know, if they're they're just
Speaker 1: stationed off the coast of you know, whatever country, they
Speaker 1: just have to make sure that everything is operating smoothly. Um.
Speaker 1: There's just every concern you would have with a with
Speaker 1: a small city is happening on that ship, and there
Speaker 1: has to be somebody to take care of it. A
Speaker 1: small city that relies on nuclear power, because that makes
Speaker 1: it even more complicated. So all modern supercarriers use nuclear
Speaker 1: power to generate steam. The ones that we talked about
Speaker 1: today have two nuclear power plants on them, uh that
Speaker 1: are that's actually different from previous ones. Earlier supercarriers had
Speaker 1: more nuclear power plants, not fewer, but more because they
Speaker 1: had a bunch of smaller ones. But there are there
Speaker 1: are as many as eight, yes, with like four different
Speaker 1: shafts that steam would go through to turn propellers. So
Speaker 1: you you generate steam. I mean really, if you talk
Speaker 1: about old aircraft carriers, you're still talking steam. But in
Speaker 1: those days that you're talking about a boiler that's being uh,
Speaker 1: that's being uh heated through using fossil fuels. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about using nuclear power to heat up water to
Speaker 1: turn it to steam. It turns steam steam turbines, which
Speaker 1: do two things. Two main things. It generates the energy
Speaker 1: needed to turn the massive propellers. We're talking like more
Speaker 1: than twenty feet in diameter, right, These are huge propellers
Speaker 1: that that uh, that propel the ship through the water,
Speaker 1: and they are used to generate electricity on board the ship.
Speaker 1: I've got a little bit more info on that if
Speaker 1: you like, we can talk about it. But I just
Speaker 1: want to just kind of throw some stuff in here,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna hear a bunch of notes shuffling, because
Speaker 1: I got notes every time. This is the first for
Speaker 1: me because usually I have my computer in here, but
Speaker 1: actually I'm using the stuff called paper. You go on
Speaker 1: low tech like, yeah, that's kind of crazy. I do
Speaker 1: it all the time, low tech, low tech. Alright, So, um,
Speaker 1: the US Enterprise USS Enterprise was which was built in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, actually built between n and nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: This is a big ship. Now, this is an enterprise
Speaker 1: class ship because there was a previous ship that was
Speaker 1: also known as the U S S Enterprise. And by
Speaker 1: the way, neither of these were the ones that carried
Speaker 1: Kirk and Spock. Good point. I'm glad. I'm really that
Speaker 1: you pointed that out. Yeah, although I think they did
Speaker 1: visit it and Star Trek for the voyage home. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe they went because they said, Captain, we've found the
Speaker 1: vessel and it's the Enterprise. Anyway, Okay, I'm amused by this. Alright,
Speaker 1: So al right, it was in service between nine and
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve, so it's only recently decommissioned. Um.
Speaker 1: This was the first, the very first nuclear powered aircraft carrier,
Speaker 1: and it had eight what they called A two W reactors. Now,
Speaker 1: the A two W. I was wondering what the heck
Speaker 1: that stood for, so I looked it up. UM, it's
Speaker 1: pretty simple. Actually, A is just aircraft carrier. Too. Stands
Speaker 1: for the second generation designed by that that UM, that
Speaker 1: particular UM designer. I guess that contractor, and W stands
Speaker 1: for Westinghouse and that was the contractor. So A two W.
Speaker 1: So that's the second generation Westinghouse aircraft carrier power source
Speaker 1: all right, and UM used in Okay, so of course
Speaker 1: it was used in you know the first you know,
Speaker 1: this is the first nuclear powered and I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: nuclear nuclear nuclear clear yea, not nuclear nuclear, I might
Speaker 1: say it, but you know, get ready for that. But
Speaker 1: it actually it UM provided power for four propulsion plants.
Speaker 1: So each each propulsion plant had two reactors that were
Speaker 1: tied to it. And Okay, according according to the way
Speaker 1: that it's all laid out, I guess they each powered
Speaker 1: two different chefts. So let's say there's the one A shaft,
Speaker 1: the one B cheft, the two A shaft, the two
Speaker 1: B scheft, And that's kind of the way it worked, right,
Speaker 1: all right, And I'll try to try to walk through
Speaker 1: this carefully here so we don't miss too much. I
Speaker 1: know it's going to be a simplified version UM. But
Speaker 1: each one of these was capable of of running on
Speaker 1: just one reactor if it had to, but two were
Speaker 1: required for full power. So if they're gonna steam ahead,
Speaker 1: it was a top speed like thirty knots maybe, which
Speaker 1: is about which is about thirty four point. Actually, the
Speaker 1: Navy has been very careful to never divulge the the specifics.
Speaker 1: There were some sources I saw where they said they
Speaker 1: could move in excess of forty knots, which is incredible speed.
Speaker 1: At that speed, you can water ski behind the aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier without skis water ski behind it. I would like
Speaker 1: to try that. That would be kind of exciting. Yeah
Speaker 1: all right, So, um, so you could run on one,
Speaker 1: you know, one reactor per scheft, but they said it
Speaker 1: was you know too are required for full power and
Speaker 1: you know for plane launching capability, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: why that's important in a little while. Um. Now again
Speaker 1: the simplified version of how these reactors work, if you
Speaker 1: if you want to get into it or not, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um, it's they're actually fueled by enriched uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty five. And all this is is foreign to me,
Speaker 1: Like that I'm speaking another language, so bear with me.
Speaker 1: But they use um something called halfnium control rods, you know,
Speaker 1: actor and that's how that's how they control, um, just
Speaker 1: how much steam they're creating able to to submerse or
Speaker 1: or pull them out to a level that reaches what
Speaker 1: they're called the criticality point. And I hope I'm saying
Speaker 1: that right. But that's the point which nuclear fission reactors
Speaker 1: reach a place where they're self sustaining. Yes, they create
Speaker 1: their own energy. What's happening is that when when one
Speaker 1: of those atoms decays, it generates some very high energy
Speaker 1: particles which when they collide with other atoms cause them
Speaker 1: to decay, and then you get a self sustaining reaction, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you aren't able to contain, becomes
Speaker 1: a meltdown. So so anytime we're talking nuclear power with fission,
Speaker 1: it's a very uh scientific approach, a delicate balance to
Speaker 1: make sure that you have the balance between generating the
Speaker 1: heat you need so that you can create the steam
Speaker 1: you need to turn a turbine and preventing it from
Speaker 1: getting out of control. Yes, and that's part of you
Speaker 1: know why they have these cool down towers and all that, right,
Speaker 1: So their their water cooled and that's where the steam
Speaker 1: is created because of the cooling water that they use
Speaker 1: for these things. So the steam or the the and
Speaker 1: this is again very very simplified because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of processes that happened here. But the steam is sent
Speaker 1: to the main engine area um you know for the
Speaker 1: electrical generators, um their aircraft catapult system and lots of
Speaker 1: other auxiliary features that that they'll talk that they mentioned
Speaker 1: here in this article. Um SO runs just about it.
Speaker 1: Actually it does run everything on board, so anything, I
Speaker 1: mean you flip light switch that's being run by well
Speaker 1: steam power, but from nuclear from a nuclear r Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. So the turbines, which are double ended, are
Speaker 1: then caused to spin at a high rate of speed
Speaker 1: from from the steam and the main shaft um which
Speaker 1: which is you know, spinning with a turbine, you know,
Speaker 1: at a very very high rate of speed. It goes
Speaker 1: through a reduction gear which kind of steps down the
Speaker 1: power to a point where they're able to use it
Speaker 1: even to propel the ship. Because those propellers are giant.
Speaker 1: They're like twenty one ft across and there's four of them,
Speaker 1: huge huge screws on these things. And for them to
Speaker 1: even be able to use that power, there's so much
Speaker 1: power there that they have to read us the power
Speaker 1: in order to be able to propel the ship forward. Right,
Speaker 1: I can imagine like what's really important there, at least initially,
Speaker 1: is the torque you gotta create. You gotta create the
Speaker 1: torque necessary to get those things moving. I would think
Speaker 1: it's important. Yes, yeah, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Uh So whine go in nuclear power
Speaker 1: in the first place. Well, the big reason is that
Speaker 1: you don't need to refuel for many, many years. Yes,
Speaker 1: no range anxiety. That's what I was. I wrote that
Speaker 1: down here in this when I when I wrote that
Speaker 1: self sustaining part, I wrote down no range anxiety. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: So they can go out and they can spend a
Speaker 1: year out at sea if they want to, two years
Speaker 1: or three years or whatever, and and you know they're
Speaker 1: able to. Now, obviously food would be something that they
Speaker 1: would need. Supplies for water not so much, because they
Speaker 1: have desalination plants. They can actually convert seawater into drinkable water.
Speaker 1: But it does mean that they don't have to refuel
Speaker 1: uh nearly as frequently. When they do refuel, that's a
Speaker 1: multi year process because nuclear fuel is no joke. But
Speaker 1: it they can go decades before needing to refueling. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say that over and over again. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: saying something. I'm just gonna say, that's incredible. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: And another thing that makes this really uh interesting is
Speaker 1: not from the technological point of view, but from the
Speaker 1: political point of view. Aircraft carriers are considered sovereign territory,
Speaker 1: so as long as that sovereign territory does not venture
Speaker 1: too close to say, a country's borders within it, you
Speaker 1: know that extend out from the coast out a certain
Speaker 1: number of miles into the ocean. As long as the
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier is outside of that, it is technically a
Speaker 1: part of whatever nation owns that aircraft carrier. So in
Speaker 1: the United States sense, you are on US quote unquote
Speaker 1: soil while you're on an aircraft carrier. Even if that
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier is parked way out and you know, in
Speaker 1: in the Middle East or in Asia or wherever, you're
Speaker 1: still on US soil. I like that idea. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it really is like a floating city, you know, is
Speaker 1: the city itself can actually relocate. Uh. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of the different parts of this.
Speaker 1: We we mentioned that the top deck is the flight deck.
Speaker 1: That is, of course, where all the planes take off
Speaker 1: and land. In the old days, we're talking propeller planes.
Speaker 1: These days were talking jets. Uh. The the design of
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers has had to change dramatically along with the
Speaker 1: evolution of aircraft. And we'll talk more about that when
Speaker 1: I get into the different classes of aircraft. Carriers. One
Speaker 1: of the things that you mentioned, Scott was the steam
Speaker 1: powered catapult, and you guys might be wondering, what is that.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by catapult? Is there like an
Speaker 1: medieval catapult that you put the plane in and it
Speaker 1: launches it? Not quite, no, no, Well, the idea is
Speaker 1: that you know, with with the advent of of jet
Speaker 1: aircraft and the idea that you want to put them
Speaker 1: on a on a boat and launch them. That requires
Speaker 1: a lot of airflow over the surface of the of
Speaker 1: the wing in order for it to get enough lift
Speaker 1: to be able to get off this ship. Right, and
Speaker 1: that and they have a they have a truncated uh
Speaker 1: takeoff strip right because it's they're limited by the length
Speaker 1: of the vessel. And it's not even the full length
Speaker 1: of the vessel, it's it's part of it. So it's
Speaker 1: like basically yeah, So there are two things that aircraft
Speaker 1: carriers do to to improve the ability of jets to
Speaker 1: take off. One is they turn into the wind and
Speaker 1: they go as fast as they can into the wind,
Speaker 1: which generates more airflow. That is so smart, right, You
Speaker 1: don't want to go away because then that reduces airflow.
Speaker 1: So they turn into the wind and they go as
Speaker 1: fast as they can to generate airflow, and then they
Speaker 1: have to find a way to have these jets accelerate
Speaker 1: rapidly so that they can get to a speed where
Speaker 1: they can take off. And that's where this steam catapult
Speaker 1: comes in. And it looks like a slot on the
Speaker 1: deck of the ship and that's all it looks like. Really,
Speaker 1: And if you you know what, I'll be on us
Speaker 1: with you. I think this matches up with a lot
Speaker 1: of the way that they're launching some current roller coasters. Now, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've seen this, Yeah I can't. There's one in um
Speaker 1: see your point in Michigan, I'm sorry, in Ohio, and
Speaker 1: it's called top fuel dragster, I think. And you sit
Speaker 1: on the launch pad and it's going to the roller
Speaker 1: coaster you have. Okay, so it's the same idea. You
Speaker 1: can probably describe it. I mean, it's it's it's steam
Speaker 1: pressure that builds it. And I don't know if it's steam.
Speaker 1: In that case, it builds up pressure in the cylinder
Speaker 1: and you're holding it back. You're you're you're resisting that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're allowing that pressure to continue to build. There's a
Speaker 1: piston that's at the end of the cylinder, and behind
Speaker 1: that piston is where you're building up this incredible amount
Speaker 1: of pressure. To keep in mind, the steam is coming
Speaker 1: from the the nuclear power generator. That's what's that's what's
Speaker 1: creating the heat, that's creating the steam, so there's plenty
Speaker 1: of it. There's no shortage of steam here, and you
Speaker 1: just build and build the pressure until you've reached the
Speaker 1: right amount, which by the way, is determined by a
Speaker 1: flight controller and it's based upon the type of aircraft
Speaker 1: that needs to launch and the current deck conditions. Again
Speaker 1: very smart because they found out that you know, uh,
Speaker 1: certain planes require more force to be able to launch
Speaker 1: at a certain speed, and if you don't do it
Speaker 1: hard enough, it's going to go right off into the
Speaker 1: ocean and that's bad news for everybody exactly. So the
Speaker 1: aircraft have what's called a toe bar which connects into
Speaker 1: the shuttle. The shuttle is the element on the aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier that actually moves through the steam ketticle that then
Speaker 1: accelerates at this incredible rate. The pistons, there's actually a
Speaker 1: pair of them, so there's cylinder on either side that
Speaker 1: connect to this this shuttle. The toebar hooks in uh,
Speaker 1: and the toe bar is connected to the nose of
Speaker 1: the aircraft. Yeah, the wheels up front, and there's also
Speaker 1: something called a hold back which they fastened between the
Speaker 1: back of the wheel and shuttle. Um. And the whole
Speaker 1: back is was does just what it says, it holds
Speaker 1: back the jet because one of the other things you
Speaker 1: have to do, let's turn on those jet engines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is interesting because they do raise something that big
Speaker 1: platform behind it that raises up behind the the airplane.
Speaker 1: Can picture this. It's almost like a wall that stands
Speaker 1: up behind the plane. And what that does is it's
Speaker 1: a it's just a jet blast deflector in fact, it's
Speaker 1: what they call it. And that just doesn't allow you know,
Speaker 1: somebody get blown overboard, you know, behind them when you know,
Speaker 1: you go full throttle on F A teen or whatever exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so that that launches up and just before launch,
Speaker 1: I mean they're you know, they're checking everything, they're all
Speaker 1: they getting all the signals for the go and everything,
Speaker 1: and the pilot has to go full throttle while he's
Speaker 1: still attached to the shuttle via the toe bar and
Speaker 1: the whole back is still in place. He's going full
Speaker 1: throttle and then they give the and then they finally
Speaker 1: give the the go I guess for the Shuttle to
Speaker 1: to launch, and that's what catapults the the aircraft off
Speaker 1: the end of the plane, off the end of the deck.
Speaker 1: Essentially say release the so that the pressure can push
Speaker 1: the pistons forward. That so the in a in a way,
Speaker 1: the you know, the plane is being towed, that's why
Speaker 1: you call it the toe bar by the Shuttle at
Speaker 1: an incredible speed. When it gets to the end, it
Speaker 1: can then take off and fly off into the great
Speaker 1: Blue yonder hopefully. Yeah. Uh, if everything has gone well.
Speaker 1: And this was the Shuttle technology again was pioneered by
Speaker 1: the British, and you know what, just to give you
Speaker 1: an idea of how strong this is and you get
Speaker 1: back to the British in just a second, but this
Speaker 1: is a really strong system. And we're talking about steam
Speaker 1: and you might think it's not all that that forceful,
Speaker 1: but or maybe you do. I don't know, but it
Speaker 1: takes a forty five thousand pound plane from zero to
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty five miles per hour in two seconds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's faster than a Tesla two seconds. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: considerably fast. It's not quite as fast as the top
Speaker 1: fuel Dragster, but which is pretty By the way, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an intense roller coaster. H two times I
Speaker 1: wrote that. Yeah, I wasn't even think of that. I
Speaker 1: think of the real deal, the real the real car.
Speaker 1: And I've heard, you know, I've talked to guys that
Speaker 1: drive those top fuel drexters that kind of look like
Speaker 1: long rails, you know, the really the thirty ft long
Speaker 1: ones or whatever the length is. They said, it feel
Speaker 1: like you're sitting in a stoplight and a semi hits
Speaker 1: you from behind at about two miles. That's what it
Speaker 1: feels like when those things launched. So that's got to
Speaker 1: be exactly what the pilots feel when they launch off
Speaker 1: of a deck of an aircraft carrier. It's it's even
Speaker 1: more exhilarating than a standard if you can call it that,
Speaker 1: a standard runway takeoff, because they have so much greater
Speaker 1: distance and a much greater amount of time to be
Speaker 1: able to get up to speed, right, greater margin of
Speaker 1: area to suppose, uh speaking, a margin of error is
Speaker 1: something that uh you have, you have very low margin
Speaker 1: of error is landing on an aircraft carrier. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that's another really interesting aspect of this whole thing is
Speaker 1: that you know, and it took him a couple of
Speaker 1: months to figure out initially, remember said they were thinking
Speaker 1: about it, but it's become even more complex with jets. Yeah. So. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea of the method that the main method is
Speaker 1: used to stop aircraft, to help aircraft come to a
Speaker 1: stop when they land on an aircraft carrier, dates back
Speaker 1: to the propeller plane days, but it has become increasingly
Speaker 1: important in the jet world. As you were pointing out, Scott, Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's using a tailhook. The tailhook is just what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. You have the tail of your aircraft.
Speaker 1: There is a hook that descends down that can hook
Speaker 1: onto something. In this case, we're talking about arresting wires.
Speaker 1: These are very thick cables that stretch across the width
Speaker 1: of the landing area of the flight deck, and your
Speaker 1: goal as a pilot is to hit a specific arresting people.
Speaker 1: They're there. In older ships there's a series of four,
Speaker 1: and more modern ones there are only three. So with
Speaker 1: the older ships you were told to hit the third one. Now,
Speaker 1: isn't this strange? Now, this is the first time that
Speaker 1: I had ever heard this when I was reading this article.
Speaker 1: This is the house Stuff Works article that we're looking
Speaker 1: at here. The goal is to hit the third wire
Speaker 1: in the set, and it's the safest, most effective wire
Speaker 1: to hit. Now, I was thinking, why, why is it
Speaker 1: any worse than I can understand maybe not wanting to
Speaker 1: hit the first one because it's too close to the
Speaker 1: edge and get that. And the last one is kind
Speaker 1: of a you better hit it or else you're going
Speaker 1: over the edge. Um, but why not the second or
Speaker 1: the third? I guess the third just shows some kind
Speaker 1: of precision. Yeah. Well, and and if you were able
Speaker 1: to consistently hit that third one, it would show that
Speaker 1: you were a particularly skilled pilot, and thus you would
Speaker 1: rise up the ranks more quickly because you were showing
Speaker 1: that you had the precision, the skill, and the concern
Speaker 1: necessary to continue in this. If you were not consistently
Speaker 1: hitting it, you might not be flying that much longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's what it's all about, though, I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it's all about, you know, just being
Speaker 1: able to have uh Navy bragging rights you can hit
Speaker 1: the third wire every single time. What do you think
Speaker 1: maybe maybe in the more current ones, the more modern
Speaker 1: ones where there's only three wires, you're supposed to hit
Speaker 1: the second one. So again you're aiming for the one
Speaker 1: the middle one, not the one on either end. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so what these wires do is they're actually connected
Speaker 1: to giant hydraulic systems, and so when the the aircraft
Speaker 1: hooks won the wires, it obviously starts to pull on
Speaker 1: that wire. The hydraulics act as sort of a breaking mechanism. Now,
Speaker 1: when you watch one of these aircraft land, it looks
Speaker 1: like it stops almost immediately. What's actually happening is that
Speaker 1: it's not just a taught wire that's attached to like
Speaker 1: anchored down to two stationary points, because that would very
Speaker 1: likely cause damage to the aircraft or to the aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier both and it could the person. Yet the human
Speaker 1: beings to stop immediately. Yeah, And there's lots of footage,
Speaker 1: tragic footage of aircraft that were unable to stop, uh,
Speaker 1: including ones where they had not yet started using arresting wires.
Speaker 1: And you see, uh, like there's I saw one where
Speaker 1: it not only did skid continuously down the landing strip,
Speaker 1: it collided with the aircraft that were further down the
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier. You're talking about prop planes, Yeah, super dangerous,
Speaker 1: uh stuff. In fact, um, there's a there's an article
Speaker 1: I read called several Reasons Why Aircraft Carriers are Super
Speaker 1: Dangerous by Sam Lagron who worked in the Naval Institute,
Speaker 1: and uh he talked about how how how precise you
Speaker 1: had to be, how closely these things could uh come
Speaker 1: between you know, success and failure, and it's pretty terrifying.
Speaker 1: It actually mentions that that if you were flying some
Speaker 1: of the larger aircraft like the Navy's E two Hawkeye.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you don't hit that third cable and
Speaker 1: you don't hit the fourth cable. What you have to
Speaker 1: do then is you have to throttle up full speed
Speaker 1: so that you can fly up and then come back
Speaker 1: around and try again. Can I tell you something, I
Speaker 1: think that even if you hit that third wire, or
Speaker 1: you hit the second wire, the first wire, I think
Speaker 1: you still go full throughout. Yeah. Um. This is which
Speaker 1: is so weird because you would think that Okay, it's
Speaker 1: it's snagged, it's it's secure, But they don't know that yet.
Speaker 1: They don't know if it's gonna skip over it, if
Speaker 1: it's gonna if it's got a tenuous grasp on itt
Speaker 1: that you know, it's gonna let go. Um. So they're
Speaker 1: they're trained that when that contact is made, even though
Speaker 1: you feel a grab, you still go full throttle, just
Speaker 1: for a brief second, just in case, because that's your
Speaker 1: last chance. Otherwise, if you're going over the edge slow,
Speaker 1: you better hit the ejector because that's your only way
Speaker 1: out because these otherwise you're going in the train. Yea,
Speaker 1: and it always ends up upside down. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you know the the the standard procedure is that you
Speaker 1: need to take off again. It's called you know, you're
Speaker 1: you have to be you have to be a bolter.
Speaker 1: You have to bolt a bolter. Yeah, they're calling bolters
Speaker 1: where you you end up having to take back off again. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Depending on the size of the aircraft,
Speaker 1: you might not have a very large margin of error.
Speaker 1: For example, the Navy's E two Hawkeye, the width margin
Speaker 1: of error can be a foot twelve inches of whether like,
Speaker 1: you have at twelve inches of space to throttle up
Speaker 1: before you are not going to be fast enough to
Speaker 1: get take off again and again. Yeah twelve and well,
Speaker 1: I mean it is incredible. You think about the amazing
Speaker 1: uh skill and encourage it takes to handle this kind
Speaker 1: of aircraft. Another interesting thing is that there was a
Speaker 1: development that made this easier early aircraft. Imagine that you've
Speaker 1: got like a two by four, all right, and then
Speaker 1: you've got a ruler that's not as wide as your
Speaker 1: two by four, and you lay the ruler down and
Speaker 1: the ruler represents the the landing strip on your aircraft carrier.
Speaker 1: Nee the two by four itself is just barely longer
Speaker 1: than the ruler. Uh. And and so those were the
Speaker 1: early aircraft carriers. Right. You had just kind of a
Speaker 1: straight strip that was where you would land and take off,
Speaker 1: and it will also be where you're you would be
Speaker 1: mustering your aircraft, uh, which means that there were a
Speaker 1: lot of potential places where you could have collisions if
Speaker 1: things did not go well. The British came up with
Speaker 1: a brilliant way of getting around this. They decided to
Speaker 1: tilt the landing strip by fourteen degrees so that it
Speaker 1: was not a you know, it didn't go the length
Speaker 1: of the ship. And by tilt, I don't mean that
Speaker 1: it was tilted on uh like, it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: cantid surface. No, it was just it was just instead
Speaker 1: of it being a straight road, imagine that you just
Speaker 1: turned that it's off the line of the keel exactly.
Speaker 1: So that meant that you could you could have a
Speaker 1: mustering area for aircraft that was not directly in the
Speaker 1: path of where aircraft were landing. The British were the
Speaker 1: ones who came up with that. The British were the
Speaker 1: ones who came up with the arresting wires, and then
Speaker 1: the United States and other nations said, this is a
Speaker 1: really good idea that we are going to also employ. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: ways of making something that is, no matter how you
Speaker 1: slice it, incredibly dangerous less. So you know, there's some
Speaker 1: that even have a almost like I think they call
Speaker 1: a ski jump at the end. It looks like a ramp.
Speaker 1: It ramps up at the end so that you get
Speaker 1: just that little bit more of a lift at the end.
Speaker 1: I suppose put you in the right direction, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, and I've also seen ones like you know,
Speaker 1: they had other methods of trying to uh capture aircraft
Speaker 1: that might not have um have hit the arresting wires
Speaker 1: just right, including things like giant nets that would help
Speaker 1: slow down aircraft which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. It
Speaker 1: seems like that would bring its own problems. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: illustrate how dangerous this is again going back to that
Speaker 1: several reasons article I mentioned, um Lagron quotes a statistic
Speaker 1: that really is eye opening. Between nineteen forty eight and nine,
Speaker 1: the number of US sailors and marines that died in
Speaker 1: and around aircraft carriers was eight thousand, five hundred in
Speaker 1: forty years. Eight thousand, five hundred people dying. Now that
Speaker 1: includes that includes combat, but that actually makes a much
Speaker 1: smaller number than accidents, no kidding. Yeah, So okay, I
Speaker 1: can I can mention a couple of accidents if you
Speaker 1: want me to check about them. All right. So during
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties there was kind of a bleak time
Speaker 1: for the U. S. Navy. They suffered three fires aboard
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers in the nineteen sixties, and these you can
Speaker 1: what's interesting about this is you can go back and
Speaker 1: look at these, you can look at photographs because they
Speaker 1: were you know, filmed in a lot of cases, um,
Speaker 1: and they use these these disasters as training films for
Speaker 1: current military members on aircraft, what what not to do?
Speaker 1: And what to do because they got a little better
Speaker 1: at it here. But UM going back to and I'll
Speaker 1: just listen these kind of quickly, but just off the
Speaker 1: coast of Vietnam in nineteen sixty six, on October twenty six,
Speaker 1: the USS or riskin e UM c v A thirty four,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in that designation, the hull designation UM.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of guys that were loading some
Speaker 1: flares into a locker below deck and one of the
Speaker 1: flares went off and there were six ridden fifty other
Speaker 1: flares in the locker they were loading and the guy,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he panicked or what, but when
Speaker 1: the flare went off, he shut the door real quick.
Speaker 1: He didn't try to grab that one flare out and
Speaker 1: the result was a I think it was like a
Speaker 1: huge fire that killed something like forty four men forty
Speaker 1: four crew members on board. So that was there was
Speaker 1: extensive damage to the ship UM. And then just a
Speaker 1: year later, in July of nineteen sixty seven, again off
Speaker 1: the coast of Vietnam, UH, the USS forest all this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is now. This was an accidental rocket deployment UM
Speaker 1: that slammed into a parked A four that was on
Speaker 1: the deck, and then that spread to other aircraft on
Speaker 1: the deck, and you know, of course bombs began to
Speaker 1: explode all over the place. On top of that, you
Speaker 1: can imagine what's going on. This is this is a
Speaker 1: thirteen hour fire. The crew that killed one and thirty
Speaker 1: four crew members. That was huge fire. There were there
Speaker 1: were twenty one aircraft destroyed during this one. And this
Speaker 1: one is the one that I think they used as
Speaker 1: the training film of what can go wrong. And then
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine to kind of round out the
Speaker 1: decade with another disaster, here, uh, the U. S. S. Enterprise,
Speaker 1: you know, the first nuclear powered UM carrier had us
Speaker 1: at a terrible fire as well. UM similar to the
Speaker 1: forest All fire, UM, but this was a rocket that
Speaker 1: ignited and hit another aircraft and you know, due to
Speaker 1: exhaust heat I think is what set this one off.
Speaker 1: But it took four hours to extinguish that one. In
Speaker 1: twenty eight crew members were killed during that and fifteen
Speaker 1: aircraft were destroyed. So they had their fair share of
Speaker 1: you know, hard knocks in nineteen sixty in nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: throughout the whole decade, and I know that you know,
Speaker 1: safety has improved over the over the decades, but there's
Speaker 1: probably still a lot of small things that happened on
Speaker 1: board apparently. I mean, if eight thousand people have died
Speaker 1: on these these are dangerous places to be, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: well even if like there can be things that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the the flight deck or the
Speaker 1: hangar or the aircraft or in the weaponry. Even I mean,
Speaker 1: you're just talking about a confined environment where you have
Speaker 1: several thousand people existing there, there are plenty of opportunities
Speaker 1: for accidents that you know, there's same sort of accidents
Speaker 1: that you could encounter in any other environment. So the
Speaker 1: figures that I mentioned, you know, not all of those
Speaker 1: were necessarily the result of some sort of catastrophic accident
Speaker 1: like the ones we've been talking about, but it does
Speaker 1: illustrate that this is an environment that that is by
Speaker 1: its very nature dangerous. Yeah, I mean you could fall
Speaker 1: and bump your head, you can choke on something in
Speaker 1: the yeah, exactly right, and and stuff like that. You'd
Speaker 1: fall overboard. A friend of mine served in the Navy.
Speaker 1: He didn't serve a board and aircraft carrier, but one
Speaker 1: of the one of the descriptions he gave me, I
Speaker 1: imagined there were probably lots of bumps and bruises whenever
Speaker 1: SE's got particularly rough. Because he talked about how, uh,
Speaker 1: if you're going above or below whatever deck you're on
Speaker 1: in a ship, we call them decks. They're not floors.
Speaker 1: So if you're on a deck and you need to
Speaker 1: go up or down, you you climb what is almost
Speaker 1: a ladder. The the they are sets of stairs technically,
Speaker 1: but they are so steep that it's practically a ladder exactly.
Speaker 1: And if the seas are really really rough, the world
Speaker 1: around you is moving, And he talked about how, yeah,
Speaker 1: there were times where he would start to climb and
Speaker 1: because of the way the ship would roll, he would
Speaker 1: end up being at the top of the stairs way
Speaker 1: faster than he had anticipated. Like he would take a
Speaker 1: step and then the ship would roll as he was stepping.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like when you would jump on
Speaker 1: a trampoline just right, Yeah, you suddenly end up much
Speaker 1: higher up than you expected. Um, yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: actually terrifying. I have I have one really cool story
Speaker 1: of an accident that was averted by someone who was
Speaker 1: in a different accident that was the thankfully tragedy was
Speaker 1: also averted this guy just had the best luck. Captain
Speaker 1: Jim Lovell this. If the name sounds familiar, it's probably
Speaker 1: because you've watched Apollo thirteen. He was the commander of
Speaker 1: the Apollo thirteen space mission. He also in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four was flying a mission in a McDonald F two
Speaker 1: H Banshee night fighter and sound jet. Yeah, yeah, cool jet.
Speaker 1: But he had an issue in that um There was
Speaker 1: an electrical failure on his plane and all his instruments
Speaker 1: went dead. And it's at night and he has to
Speaker 1: find the aircraft carrier by vision, like you have to
Speaker 1: find it, like you know, he didn't have any electric
Speaker 1: electronics to tell him where anything was because the electrical failure,
Speaker 1: So he had to find the carrier the U. S. S.
Speaker 1: Shangri law. And the way he found it was he
Speaker 1: saw a luminous trail from luminescent algae that was left
Speaker 1: in the wake of the carrier and followed it to
Speaker 1: the carriers that he could land. Successful. And what that
Speaker 1: guy hasn't lived through or he hadn't lived through, it's
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. Yeah, So yeah, I think we've really driven
Speaker 1: it home. But yeah, dangerous location, right, one of the
Speaker 1: things that we haven't talked about yet. It's also on
Speaker 1: the flight deck is the island. Yeah, yeah, this is important.
Speaker 1: This is where the I guess all the radar capabilities
Speaker 1: and the satellite yeah, the crew that the commanders are
Speaker 1: walking around up there, um telling people what to do.
Speaker 1: So this is this is like the tower structure that
Speaker 1: you would see on the top of an aircraft carrier. Um.
Speaker 1: It's the command center and it's the command center for
Speaker 1: the flight deck as well as the general ship right,
Speaker 1: and it has uh, lots of different decks to it
Speaker 1: as well. It is about a hundred fifty ft tall
Speaker 1: that's about forty six but only about twenty ft wide
Speaker 1: or six ms wide at the base of the island.
Speaker 1: That's also because you don't want to take up too
Speaker 1: much space on the flight deck. You want to have
Speaker 1: as much of that space available as possible. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this is where you have lots of different decks that
Speaker 1: have important elements to it. So at the very top
Speaker 1: you've got that array of satellite dishes, radar dishes, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Below that is the primary flight control
Speaker 1: or price fly. The Navy has lots of fun names
Speaker 1: for everything. Like you know, when we mentioned about the
Speaker 1: arresting wires and landing in them. I watched a documentary
Speaker 1: where the guy said, yeah, they call that landing in
Speaker 1: the spaghetti when you're when you're landing in the cables,
Speaker 1: landing in the spaghetti. Good term makes sense, right, I
Speaker 1: mean really does. And it always makes me wonder if
Speaker 1: he's just if they're just yanking our chains at that point,
Speaker 1: like what can we tell them? And they're watch they're
Speaker 1: gonna start using that. Yeah, I kind of call land
Speaker 1: against alright, So the price fly if that's what they
Speaker 1: call it. Um is the bridge, and that's the ship's
Speaker 1: command center. Yes, the bridge. Now this is where I
Speaker 1: am in my familiar element because I love ships. I
Speaker 1: love ships, and the bridge is that command center where
Speaker 1: the captain oversees the control of the ship. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that aircraft carriers typically are part of
Speaker 1: a larger group of ships that they don't they aren't
Speaker 1: traveling on their own. They have escort ships, so that
Speaker 1: you have generally speaking, several in your group. Now, a
Speaker 1: captain only commands one ship. That is, the captain's responsibility
Speaker 1: is to that ship and that ship alone. So the
Speaker 1: captain is on the bridge. Um, and can that's where
Speaker 1: you have your your helmsman who is controlling the steering
Speaker 1: of the the vehicle, the aircraft carrier. You have an
Speaker 1: the one the lee helmsman who controls the since commands
Speaker 1: down to engineering for the speed. So you know, Mr
Speaker 1: Scott down and engineering can give it, give it or
Speaker 1: more powder. Captain was the worst Scottish accent I've ever tried. Um.
Speaker 1: You you have also the Quartermaster of the watch who
Speaker 1: is keeping track of the navigation information. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: Below that you have a deck where you have the
Speaker 1: flag bridge. That's where the admiral is now. The admiral
Speaker 1: is in charge of all the vessels in that group,
Speaker 1: not just the aircraft carrier. So the captain commands the
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier. The admiral has the the job of of
Speaker 1: administering for the entire group of shops. And then below
Speaker 1: the flag bridge is just a various operational centers. I
Speaker 1: mean these are these are where they monitor the deck
Speaker 1: control and launch operations and stuff like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's say it's a love again. Some of the names,
Speaker 1: like the aircraft handling officers sometimes called the handler or mangler.
Speaker 1: That's a big difference between the you can learn the
Speaker 1: mangler if you ask me. My My favorite description in
Speaker 1: this how Stuff Works article, which by the way, is fantastic.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend if you're interested in this to go
Speaker 1: to how Stuff Works and look up how aircraft carriers work.
Speaker 1: My favorite description is how the aircraft handler. Their job
Speaker 1: is to track which aircraft are on the flight deck,
Speaker 1: which ones are in the hangar, which ones are out
Speaker 1: you know, have flown off um and they do so
Speaker 1: using something called the Luigi board. Oh yes, this is
Speaker 1: like a cool toy. Yeah, yeah, this is really neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's it's it's a transparent table that has outlines
Speaker 1: of the flight deck and the hangar deck and little
Speaker 1: cutouts that represent each aircraft. And they're to scale, so
Speaker 1: the bigger aircraft have bigger cutouts than the small aircraft.
Speaker 1: Well they have to, otherwise they wouldn't know how many
Speaker 1: would fit and where they would exactly. It's all the scale,
Speaker 1: so they know exactly how to place everything and exactly
Speaker 1: where it fits out. So I like this. I like this. Uh,
Speaker 1: I like it when things are are measured and and organized,
Speaker 1: like I enjoyed it. Like this procedure. It looks like
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like like it's it's it's the
Speaker 1: super coolest version of risk. You know, you're moving, all right,
Speaker 1: I need to move these aircraft from my hangar to
Speaker 1: the flight deck, and then I move these little models
Speaker 1: from this part of the etching to that part of
Speaker 1: etching to represent that. And not only that, you look
Speaker 1: at the window and it happens in real life. A
Speaker 1: real plane on a real ship is the best again,
Speaker 1: the best game of risk ever. Right. Uh. Then you
Speaker 1: also have the combat direction center. Obviously that would be
Speaker 1: very important whenever the ship is actively involved in combat.
Speaker 1: You've got the galley deck that's immediately below the flight deck.
Speaker 1: You've got the hangar deck, which is lower down that's
Speaker 1: where all the aircraft arts. It's actually several decks tall.
Speaker 1: It's called the hangar deck, but it's actually multiple decks
Speaker 1: tall because you have to accommodate those aircraft. By the way,
Speaker 1: do yourself a favor and get on Google images and
Speaker 1: look at a hanger hangar deck at some point. It's amazing,
Speaker 1: it really is. It's so cool the way they they
Speaker 1: position all the planes. I mean, they're all put in
Speaker 1: there exactly in precisely the right way. And this is
Speaker 1: where they move them in and out on the elevators.
Speaker 1: You have a lift systems to get them up to
Speaker 1: the flight deck. It's really it's a neat space. It's
Speaker 1: almost like um, it's like several warehouses is what it
Speaker 1: looks like, linked together, and then they store this just
Speaker 1: an incredible arsenal of planes in there. Some of these
Speaker 1: can have like eighty or more aircraft aboard them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you figure out how to
Speaker 1: move around eighty aircraft without bumping into each other all
Speaker 1: the time. And they even have uh door doors that
Speaker 1: can close between different chambers. Obviously that is a safety precaution.
Speaker 1: Let's say that the aircraft carrier has entered combat. You
Speaker 1: want to be able to shut debt, close off one version,
Speaker 1: one part of the hangar bay from the others. If
Speaker 1: there were an enemy attack that that pierced part of it,
Speaker 1: because you want to control the spread of fire. So
Speaker 1: you might be able to close one of those doors
Speaker 1: and save three quarters of your aircraft in the case
Speaker 1: of catastrophe, or you know, even if it were just
Speaker 1: an accident and not an act of combat, you would
Speaker 1: want that ability. And then at the back end of that,
Speaker 1: the of the hangar area is an open section at
Speaker 1: the at the very aft end of the ship, at
Speaker 1: the very back end, that they can open up a
Speaker 1: door and they can test jet engines off the back
Speaker 1: of the of the boat. Would that be only safe
Speaker 1: place to do it because it's open to the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's just aft of the aircraft inter uh
Speaker 1: intermediate Maintenance division or ai m D shops. That's where
Speaker 1: they would do the basic maintenance that would be needed
Speaker 1: to make sure the aircraft remain in you know, fliable condition. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And again all of this is necessary just for the
Speaker 1: basic function of the aircraft carrier as its purpose as
Speaker 1: a military vehicle. Then on top of that you have
Speaker 1: all the mess halls, the galleys, the sleeping arrangements, which
Speaker 1: are cozy at best. So Scott, Scott, Yeah, okay, you're
Speaker 1: still here. Good, I'm still here, all right? Good. Uh.
Speaker 1: It turns out we had a lot more to say
Speaker 1: about aircraft carriers than than what I might have originally anticipated,
Speaker 1: and therefore we have decided to split the epic episode
Speaker 1: into two slightly less epic episode. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good plan, yeah, because honestly, you can't you guys can't
Speaker 1: handle an hour and forty minute long podcast. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my notes here. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: lot more to cover. I mean, we haven't even talked
Speaker 1: about the classes of ships. So let's get the Well,
Speaker 1: we'll make the second episode the classy episode, the class
Speaker 1: lest episode, and the next one is the classy episode. Guys,
Speaker 1: if you want to if you really want to experience
Speaker 1: class you need to go check out Car Stuff Classy podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you, especially with your classic cars. Uh. You and
Speaker 1: Ben have covered some really cool topics in Car Stuff
Speaker 1: as You've got some amazing videos too, so you guys
Speaker 1: gotta check that out. If you've ever wanted to get
Speaker 1: an up close look at exotic cars, you guys do
Speaker 1: a good job of getting a getting right up, been there.
Speaker 1: Thank You're too kind. Yeah, so check that stuff out. Guys.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for me, you have a
Speaker 1: request for a particular topic, send me a message at
Speaker 1: email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler.
Speaker 1: The handle at all free is tech stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: We'll tell to you again really soon for more on
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