Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are youa This time for a
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published April six,
Speaker 1: twenty It is called How Aircraft Carriers Work? Part One.
Speaker 1: I bet you can't guess what next week's classic episode
Speaker 1: is gonna be. So we're gonna be talking a lot
Speaker 1: about the current state of the art, which is the
Speaker 1: Nimits class aircraft carrier. We'll talk about the next generation,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about previous generations. But to start it all off,
Speaker 1: I wanted to explain how amazing, how old this this
Speaker 1: idea is. It actually pre dates 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, U 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 centuries,
Speaker 1: and so much so that any idea, like any thought
Speaker 1: of using air support was mainly just to get a
Speaker 1: look around and see where the enemy was. Like that
Speaker 1: was the only purpose, right. They were not thought of
Speaker 1: as this would be We're gonna weapon eyes 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 the way we think
Speaker 1: of them now, what surprised me was that it did
Speaker 1: not take long at all from the moment that we
Speaker 1: have controlled flight that is a heavier than air aircraft
Speaker 1: 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, maybe we can launch one of these suckers
Speaker 1: from a boat. Yeah, not a bad idea. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's always the kind of the way it goes
Speaker 1: right with the military. They're thinking, they're thinking, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, this could be a devastating machine of war.
Speaker 1: Exactly where can we make this work for us? And
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 well,
Speaker 1: there's no way really to do that on a boat
Speaker 1: unless we build something that's maybe made out of wood,
Speaker 1: that's a huge flat deck. Let's try that. And they
Speaker 1: 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 break A man, or some might
Speaker 1: say lunatic to attempt to fly a tiny biplane, a
Speaker 1: Curtis biplane fifty horsepower, fifty horsepower, a fifty horse power biplane.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine you're rolling down this wooden this wooden
Speaker 1: platform that's built on top of a battleship. It's the
Speaker 1: battleship was not meant to do this, right, it was
Speaker 1: they had to shore up all this area to create
Speaker 1: a a wooden structure for you to roll across, not
Speaker 1: necessarily knowing if you would be able to reach the
Speaker 1: right speed to be able to take off, or if
Speaker 1: you 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 four,
Speaker 1: a twenty four year old civilian, civilian in 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, we'll realize that
Speaker 1: it wasn't a two month flight and he didn't change
Speaker 1: planes in mid air. They just hadn't figured out the
Speaker 1: landing bit of this yet. Yeah, So so this happens
Speaker 1: like two months apart or three months apart maybe, so,
Speaker 1: ye 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 stop actually come to a stop, right, Because, yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's longer than the boat is, you've got yourself
Speaker 1: a problem. As it turns out, we would come up
Speaker 1: with ways to address that problem. Now here's the interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me. The U. S. Military was very quick
Speaker 1: to test out this idea, but they were not quick
Speaker 1: to implement it. Uh. The Navy at the time was
Speaker 1: largely of the United States Navy, I should say, it
Speaker 1: was largely of the opinion that this was still the
Speaker 1: domain of the big battleships, and soon the cruisers would follow.
Speaker 1: Cruisers would be slightly smaller slightly more maneuverable, faster ships
Speaker 1: than battleships. And we're talking about World War one era,
Speaker 1: yeah ships, yeah, pre World War One, into World War One,
Speaker 1: the United States was not terribly concerned with adding air
Speaker 1: power to that. However, the British were definitely interested and
Speaker 1: they began to innovate in this space early early on. UH.
Speaker 1: They began to experiment with navy ships. First, they were
Speaker 1: using essentially a version of of water landing planes like seaplanes,
Speaker 1: but they were those are very slow there. Once they
Speaker 1: landing and taking off the slow and getting them aboard
Speaker 1: a ship required the use of cranes. So it was
Speaker 1: it was not a good process if you were under
Speaker 1: the possibility of being under fire from an enemy 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 to as opposed to
Speaker 1: having them have to secure them to the flight deck,
Speaker 1: which could be pretty dangerous to put. You know, these
Speaker 1: are huge vehicles. So that lays the groundwork for the
Speaker 1: beginning of aircraft uh aircraft carrier history. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: skip ahead to how they work today and then later
Speaker 1: on I'll tell you more about the various classes of
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers that the United States specifically has used over
Speaker 1: the history of the Navy. Can I can I maybe
Speaker 1: just 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 I found this interesting. There was a
Speaker 1: side note about one of the battles um that was
Speaker 1: fought during World War Two, and it said that the
Speaker 1: Battle of the Coral Sea became the first sea battle
Speaker 1: in history in which neither opposing fleet saw the other one.
Speaker 1: That is so interesting. I mean, imagine that there's a
Speaker 1: there's a sea battle happening where you don't see the
Speaker 1: other ship because the battle is being fought by the
Speaker 1: planes in the air that they're launching towards each other.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's such a strange thought that before
Speaker 1: that that never happened. Exactly. You had you had planes
Speaker 1: that were dropping bombs, They're dropping torpedoes, so the planes
Speaker 1: were the weapons, right instead of instead of ships firing
Speaker 1: guns at one another, there s launching planes at one another.
Speaker 1: And this is so far apart they cannot see each
Speaker 1: And this is so interesting because I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, and again you have to put yourself
Speaker 1: in the mind frame, you know that they were back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties. This is brand new because if
Speaker 1: you wanted to get a plane over a sea battle first,
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't know where it's happening, and you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to communicate that and get that coordinated in
Speaker 1: time before something has already happened. The other thing is
Speaker 1: that the range was just too great for them, because
Speaker 1: fighter planes are often you know, weighted down with lots
Speaker 1: of lots of artillery, and they don't have great range.
Speaker 1: They have a shorter range than plane that's designed to
Speaker 1: fly long distances that don't carry a bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: extra weapons, you know, guns, whatever. Um. So this is
Speaker 1: a this is a brand new idea that we're going
Speaker 1: to take the planes to the battle and and you know,
Speaker 1: launch them from there instead of having to kind of
Speaker 1: you know, keep them far far away and then maybe
Speaker 1: they'll make it, maybe they won't. If they decide that
Speaker 1: they can't you know, hold out long enough to get there,
Speaker 1: they'll have to turn back. It's just it was a
Speaker 1: completely different way of thinking and and and it's just
Speaker 1: such a fascinating time in history when you look back
Speaker 1: at some of the side notes of all these battles
Speaker 1: and the way that they were fought. It's just completely
Speaker 1: different from World War One, completely different. Well, really, what
Speaker 1: what had happened was even during the World War One era,
Speaker 1: the navy navies around the world looked at aircraft carriers
Speaker 1: again as a means of carrying reconnaissance vehicles. Planes were
Speaker 1: not terribly useful in warfare, yet at that point they
Speaker 1: were very useful for finding out where the enemy fleets
Speaker 1: were so that you could direct your fleets and do
Speaker 1: the most damage possible. And what what really changed was
Speaker 1: that you know, you would think of like an aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier was an escort to a battleship, and the battleships
Speaker 1: were your your big boys. Those were the ones that
Speaker 1: actually did the damage until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now,
Speaker 1: when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, the ships that were
Speaker 1: uh that were docked at Pearl Harbor were battleships, but
Speaker 1: the aircraft carriers were out on maneuvers. So the Japanese
Speaker 1: attack affected the battleships but not the aircraft carriers, which
Speaker 1: meant that the United States was forced to reevaluate their
Speaker 1: their strategies and they were forced to use aircraft carriers
Speaker 1: as weapons as opposed to a means of just reconnaissance.
Speaker 1: And that's what led to these things like the Battle
Speaker 1: of the Coral Sea, where we end up getting this
Speaker 1: effect of of of aircraft carriers being used effectively as
Speaker 1: weapons of war. Well also, and I think this goes
Speaker 1: without saying, that the Japanese fleet was launched from an
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier as well, so that the the the squadrons
Speaker 1: that attacked Pearl Harbor came from an aircraft carrier that
Speaker 1: was what several miles off, but you know, stealthily moved
Speaker 1: in and uh and and and was able to retreat
Speaker 1: back to the homeland. Right. It was incredibly effective. It
Speaker 1: was a devastating attack, as we all know. And so
Speaker 1: this was really what ended up changing the way wars
Speaker 1: were fought, uh for for several decades. And so it
Speaker 1: was it was something that that proved the aircraft carriers
Speaker 1: importance as a vehicle in in an arsenal Right, as
Speaker 1: you just mentioned, you know, the you know, it was
Speaker 1: that the aircraft carrier was the support vehicle or the yeah,
Speaker 1: the the add on vehicle, the um the chaperone I
Speaker 1: guess should go along, right, And then the roles reversed.
Speaker 1: I mean then it became that you know, the destroyers
Speaker 1: and the cruisers and all those were um tagging along
Speaker 1: with the 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. But let's talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: these massive and I really do mean massive machines work.
Speaker 1: Now you have seen one in person, I have been
Speaker 1: on the Midway. Okay, i've seen one in person. I've
Speaker 1: never been on one. Yeah, you gotta pack a lunch
Speaker 1: if you're gonna walk from one side to the other.
Speaker 1: They are big. They are huge. I mean we're talking
Speaker 1: like I'm just gonna ballpark these numbers. So we're talking
Speaker 1: like more than a thousand feet long. The deck is
Speaker 1: measured in acres, something like four or five acres four
Speaker 1: and half acres um. They are like it's like taking
Speaker 1: a building. I think I read somewhere that it was like,
Speaker 1: imagine the which building is in New York, the Chrysler
Speaker 1: building in New York until the the Chrysler building on
Speaker 1: its side. Put it in water, and that's the length
Speaker 1: of the built of the of the ship. But then
Speaker 1: even greater than that. It's like it's twenty stories tall
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: stories amazing. I mean, it's it's a huge, huge machine
Speaker 1: with thousands of parts, two thousands, well billion of billion
Speaker 1: parts or something like that is what I read somewhere.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true or not, but I
Speaker 1: mean they literally said it's a billion parts on on
Speaker 1: these ships. And it's it's truly like running a city
Speaker 1: because there are thousands of crew members. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: numbers when we get to it here, but yeah, there
Speaker 1: are thousands of people on board and they have to
Speaker 1: do everything, you know, from collecting the garbage to um
Speaker 1: making sure that you know, people are fed, and of
Speaker 1: course fighting war, maybe potentially 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 were 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. I just want
Speaker 1: to just kind of throw some stuff in here, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear a bunch of notes shuffling because I
Speaker 1: got notes everyone too. This is the first for me
Speaker 1: because usually I have my computer in here, but actually
Speaker 1: I'm using the stuff called paper on low tech. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of crazy. I do it all the time,
Speaker 1: low tech low tech. Alright, So, um, the US Enterprise.
Speaker 1: USS Enterprise was which was built in nineteen fifty eight, well,
Speaker 1: actually built between n and nineteen sixty one. This is
Speaker 1: a big ship. This is an enterprise class ship because
Speaker 1: there was a previous ship that was also known as
Speaker 1: the U. S. S Enterprise. And by the way, neither
Speaker 1: of these were the ones that carried Kirk and Spock.
Speaker 1: Good point. I'm glad. I'm really glad you pointed that out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although I think they did visit it and Star Trek
Speaker 1: for the voyage home. Maybe maybe they went because they said, Captain,
Speaker 1: we found the vessel and it's the Enterprise. Anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm amused by this. Alright, So al right, it was
Speaker 1: in service between nine and two thousand and twelve, so
Speaker 1: it's only recently decommissioned. UM. This was the first, the
Speaker 1: very first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, and it had eight
Speaker 1: what they called A two W reactors. Now the A
Speaker 1: two W. I was wondering what the heck that stood for,
Speaker 1: so I looked it up. UM. It's pretty simple. Actually,
Speaker 1: A is just aircraft carrier too. Stands for the second
Speaker 1: generation designed by that that UM, that particular UM designer.
Speaker 1: I guess that contractor and W stands for Westinghouse and
Speaker 1: that was the contractor, so A two W. So that's
Speaker 1: the second generation from the 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 nuclear, yeah, nuclear nuclear, I might say it,
Speaker 1: but you know, get ready for that. But it actually
Speaker 1: it UM provided power for four propulsion plans. So each
Speaker 1: each propulsion plant had two reactors that were tied to it.
Speaker 1: And Okay, according according to the way that it's all
Speaker 1: laid out, I guess they each powered two different chefts.
Speaker 1: So let's say there's the one A shaft, the one
Speaker 1: B cheft, the two A shaft, the two B seft,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the way it worked, right, all right,
Speaker 1: And I'll try to try to walk through this carefully
Speaker 1: here so we don't miss too much. I know it's
Speaker 1: going to be a simplified version. UM. But each one
Speaker 1: of these was capable of running on just one reactor
Speaker 1: if it had to, but two were required for full power.
Speaker 1: So if they're gonna steam ahead, it was a top
Speaker 1: be like thirty knots maybe, which is about which is
Speaker 1: about thirty four point five mile. Actually, the Navy has
Speaker 1: been very careful to never divulge the the specifics. There
Speaker 1: were some sources I saw where they said they could
Speaker 1: 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 would bear with the water ski behind it.
Speaker 1: I would like to try that. That would be kind
Speaker 1: of exciting. Yeah, all right, So, UM, so you could
Speaker 1: run on one, you know, one reactor per cheft, but
Speaker 1: they said it was you know too are required for
Speaker 1: full power and you know, for plane launching capability, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about why that's important in a little while. UM.
Speaker 1: Now again the simplified version of how these reactors work,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to get into it or not,
Speaker 1: I don't know. UM it's they're actually fueled by enriched
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five. And all this is is foreign
Speaker 1: to me. I'm like that I'm speaking another language, so
Speaker 1: bear with me. But they use um something called halfnium
Speaker 1: control rods, you know, karactor, and that's how that's how
Speaker 1: they control um, just how much scheme they're creating able
Speaker 1: to to submerse or or pull them out to a
Speaker 1: level that reaches what they're called the criticality point. And
Speaker 1: I hope I'm saying that right. But that's the point
Speaker 1: which nuclear fission reactors reach a place where they're self sustaining. Yes,
Speaker 1: they they create their own energy. What's happening is that
Speaker 1: when when one of those atoms decays, it generates some
Speaker 1: very high energy particles, which when they collide with other atoms,
Speaker 1: cause them to decay, and then you get a self
Speaker 1: sustaining reaction, which, by the way, if you aren't able
Speaker 1: to contain, becomes a meltdown. So so anytime we're talking
Speaker 1: nuclear power with fission, it's a very uh scientific approach,
Speaker 1: a delicate balance to make sure that you have the
Speaker 1: balance between generating the heat you need so that you
Speaker 1: can create the steam you need to turn a turbine
Speaker 1: and preventing it from getting out of control. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that's part of you know why they have these cool
Speaker 1: down towers and all that, right, So their their water
Speaker 1: cooled and that's where the steam is created because of
Speaker 1: the cooling water that they use for these things. So
Speaker 1: the steam or the the and then this is again
Speaker 1: very very simplified because there's a lot of processes that
Speaker 1: happened here. But the steam is sent to the main
Speaker 1: engine area, UM, you know for the electrical generators, UM,
Speaker 1: the air aircraft catapult system, and lots of other auxiliary
Speaker 1: features that that they'll talk that they mentioned here in
Speaker 1: this article. UM so runs just about it. Actually it
Speaker 1: does run everything on board, so anything I mean you
Speaker 1: flip light switch that's being run by while steam power,
Speaker 1: but from nuclear from a nuclear rear. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: So the turbines, which are double ended, are then caused
Speaker 1: to spin at a high rate of speed from from
Speaker 1: the steam and the main shaft UM, which which is
Speaker 1: you know, spinning with the turbine, you know, at the
Speaker 1: very very high rate of speed. It goes through a
Speaker 1: reduction gear which kind of steps down the power to
Speaker 1: a point where they're able to use it even to
Speaker 1: prepare all the ship. Because those propellers are giants. They're
Speaker 1: 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 reduce the power in
Speaker 1: 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. Y. Yeah, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Uh So why go with 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. Obviously food would be something that they would need.
Speaker 1: Supplies for water not so much, because they have desalination plants.
Speaker 1: They can actually convert seawater into drinkable water. But it
Speaker 1: does mean that they don't have to refuel, uh nearly
Speaker 1: as frequently. When they do refuel, that's a multi year
Speaker 1: process because nuclear fuel is snow joke. But it they
Speaker 1: can go decades before needing to refuel. It's amazing. Amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that over and over again. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be 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 know,
Speaker 1: that extent out from the coast, out a certain number
Speaker 1: of miles into the ocean, as long as the aircraft
Speaker 1: carry years outside of that is technically a part of
Speaker 1: whatever nation owns that aircraft carriers. So in the United
Speaker 1: States sense, you are on US quote unquote soil while
Speaker 1: you're on an aircraft carrier. Even if that aircraft carrier
Speaker 1: is parked way out and you know, in in the
Speaker 1: Middle East or in Asia or wherever, you're still on
Speaker 1: US soil. I like that idea. Yeah, So it really
Speaker 1: is like a floating city, you know, is the city
Speaker 1: itself can actually relocate. Uh. So let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about some of the different parts of this. We
Speaker 1: 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 that,
Speaker 1: and they have a they have a truncated uh, takeoff
Speaker 1: strip right because it's they're limited by the length of
Speaker 1: the vessel. And it's not even the full length of
Speaker 1: the vessel, no, it's it's part of it. So it's
Speaker 1: like three basically yeah. So there are two things that
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers due to to improve the ability of jets
Speaker 1: to take off. One is they turn into the wind
Speaker 1: and 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 general 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 honest with you,
Speaker 1: I think this matches up with a lot of the
Speaker 1: way that they're launching some current roller coasters. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've seen this. I can't. There's one in um see
Speaker 1: your point in Michigan, I mean sorry, in Ohiole 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. Keep in mind, the steam is coming from
Speaker 1: the the nuclear power generator. That's what's that's what's creating
Speaker 1: the heat, that's creating the steam. So there's plenty of it.
Speaker 1: There's no shortage of steam here. And just build and
Speaker 1: build the pressure until you've reached the right amount, which
Speaker 1: by the way, is determined by a flight controller and
Speaker 1: it's based upon the type of aircraft that needs to
Speaker 1: launch and the current deck conditions. Again, very smart, because
Speaker 1: they found out that you know, uh, certain planes require
Speaker 1: more force to be able to launch at a certain speed,
Speaker 1: and if you don't do it hard enough, it's gonna
Speaker 1: go right off into the ocean and that's bad news
Speaker 1: for everybody. Exactly. So, the the aircraft have what's called
Speaker 1: a toe bar, which connects into the shuttle. The shuttle
Speaker 1: is the element on the aircraft carrier that actually moves
Speaker 1: through the steam kettaple that then accelerates at this incredible rate.
Speaker 1: The pistons, there's actually a pair of them. So there's
Speaker 1: cylinder on either side that connect to this this shuttle.
Speaker 1: The toe bar hooks in uh, and the toe bar
Speaker 1: is connected to the nose of the aircraft. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: wheels up front, and there's also something called a hold
Speaker 1: back which they fastened between the back of the wheel
Speaker 1: and the shuttle. UM. And the whole back is was
Speaker 1: it does just what it says, it holds back the
Speaker 1: jet because one of the other things you have to do,
Speaker 1: let's turn on those jet engines. Yeah, this is interesting
Speaker 1: because they do raise something that big platform behind it
Speaker 1: that raises up behind the the airplane. You can picture this.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a wall that stands up behind the plane.
Speaker 1: And what that does is it's a it's just a
Speaker 1: jet blast deflector in fact, that's what they call it.
Speaker 1: And that just doesn't allow you know, somebody get blown overboard,
Speaker 1: you know, behind them when you know you go full
Speaker 1: throttle on F A teen or whatever exactly. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: so that that launches up. And just before launch, I
Speaker 1: mean they're you know, they're checking everything. They're all they
Speaker 1: getting all the signals for the go and everything, and
Speaker 1: the pilot has to go full throttle while he's still
Speaker 1: attached to the shuttle via the toebar and the hole
Speaker 1: back is still in place. He's going full throttle and
Speaker 1: then they give the and then they finally give the
Speaker 1: the go I guess for the Shuttle to to launch.
Speaker 1: And that's what catapults the the aircraft off the end,
Speaker 1: the plane off the end of the deck. Essentially you say,
Speaker 1: release the the so that the pressure can push the
Speaker 1: 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 caught the tobar by the shuttle at an incredible speed.
Speaker 1: When it gets to the end, it can then take
Speaker 1: off and fly off into the great Blue yonder hopefully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if everything has gone well, And this was the Shuttle
Speaker 1: technology again was pioneered by the British, and you know what,
Speaker 1: just to give you an idea how strong this is,
Speaker 1: and you get back to the British in just a second,
Speaker 1: but this is a really strong system and we're talking
Speaker 1: about steam and you might think it's not all that
Speaker 1: that forceful, but or maybe you do. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it takes a forty five thousand pound plane from
Speaker 1: zero to one hundred and sixty five miles per hour
Speaker 1: in two seconds. Yeah that's that's faster than a Tesla
Speaker 1: two seconds. Yeah, that's considerably fast. It's not quite as
Speaker 1: fast as the top fuel dragster, which is pretty by
Speaker 1: the way, it's a it's an intense roller coaster. Uh
Speaker 1: two times I wrote that. Yeah, Oh, I wasn't even
Speaker 1: think of that. I think of the real deal, in
Speaker 1: the real the real car. And I've heard, you know,
Speaker 1: I've talked to guys that drive those top fueld directors
Speaker 1: that kind of look like long rails, you know, the
Speaker 1: real the thirty ft long ones or whatever the length is.
Speaker 1: They said, it feels like you're sitting in a stoplight
Speaker 1: and a semi hits you from behind at about two miles.
Speaker 1: That's what it feels like when those things launched. So
Speaker 1: that's got to be exactly what the pilots feel when
Speaker 1: they launch off of a deck of an aircraft carry
Speaker 1: It's it's even more exhilarating than a standard if you
Speaker 1: can call it that, a standard runway takeoff because they
Speaker 1: have so much greater distance and a much greater amount
Speaker 1: of time to be able to get up to speed,
Speaker 1: greater margin of area to suppose. Uh, speaking of margin
Speaker 1: of error is something that uh, you have you have
Speaker 1: very low margin of error is landing on an aircraft
Speaker 1: carry Oh yeah, okay. That's another really interesting aspect of
Speaker 1: this whole thing is that you know, and it took
Speaker 1: him a couple of months to figure out initially, remember,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, they were thinking about it. But it's become
Speaker 1: even more complex with jets. Yeah. So, Uh. The idea
Speaker 1: of the method that the main method is used to
Speaker 1: stop aircraft, to help aircraft come to a stop when
Speaker 1: they land on an aircraft carrier dates back to the
Speaker 1: propeller plane days, but it has become increasingly important in
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: people there there. In older ships there's 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 ones,
Speaker 1: where there's only three wires, you're supposed to hit the
Speaker 1: second one, So again you're aiming for the one the
Speaker 1: 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 one of the wires, it obviously starts to pull
Speaker 1: on that wire. The hydraulics act as sort of a
Speaker 1: breaking mechanism. Now, when you watch one of these aircraft land,
Speaker 1: it looks like it stops almost immediately. What's actually happening
Speaker 1: is that it's not just a tot wire that's attached
Speaker 1: to like anchored down to two stationary points, because that
Speaker 1: would very likely cause damage to the aircraft or to
Speaker 1: the aircraft carrier both and it could the person the
Speaker 1: human beings. It's tough to stop immediately. Yeah, And there's
Speaker 1: lots of footage, tragic footage of aircraft that were unable
Speaker 1: to stop, uh, including ones where they had not yet
Speaker 1: started using arresting wires. And you see, uh like there's
Speaker 1: I saw one where it not only did skid continuously
Speaker 1: down the landing strip, it collided with aircraft that were
Speaker 1: further down. The aircraft carrier you're talking about prop planes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: super dangerous uh stuff. In fact, um, there's a there's
Speaker 1: an article I read called several Reasons Why Aircraft Carriers
Speaker 1: are Super Dangerous by Sam Lagron, who worked in the
Speaker 1: Naval Institute, and uh, he talked about how how how
Speaker 1: precise you had to be, how closely these things could
Speaker 1: uh come between, you know, success and failure, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty terrifying. It actually mentions that, uh that if you
Speaker 1: were flying some of the larger aircraft like the Navy's
Speaker 1: E two Hawkeye, Let's say that you don't hit that
Speaker 1: third cave, when you don't hit the fourth cable, what
Speaker 1: you have to do then is you have to throttle
Speaker 1: up full speed so that you can fly up and
Speaker 1: then come back around and try again. Can I tell
Speaker 1: you something I think that even if you hit that
Speaker 1: third wire, or you hit the second wire, the first wire,
Speaker 1: I think, you still go full throttle. Um. This is
Speaker 1: which is so weird because you would think that, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's it's snagged, it's it's secure, But they don't know
Speaker 1: that yet. They don't know if it's gonna skip over it,
Speaker 1: if it's gonna if it's got a tenuous grasp on
Speaker 1: itt that you know it's gonna let go. Um. So
Speaker 1: they're they're trained that when that contact is made, even
Speaker 1: though you feel a grab, you still go full throttle,
Speaker 1: just for a brief second, just in case, because that's
Speaker 1: your 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. Yeah,
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 that 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 if it again, yeah, twelve
Speaker 1: and well, I mean it is incredible. You think about
Speaker 1: the amazing uh skill and encourage it takes to handle
Speaker 1: this kind of aircraft. We'll be back with more about
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers in just a moment. Imagine that you've got
Speaker 1: like a two by four, all right, and then you've
Speaker 1: got a ruler, so that's not as wide as your
Speaker 1: two bike board, and you lay the ruler down and
Speaker 1: the ruler represents the landings drip on your aircraft carrier knee.
Speaker 1: The two by four itself is just barely longer than
Speaker 1: the ruler. Uh. And and so those were the early
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers, right. You had just kind of a straight
Speaker 1: 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: turn that off the line of the keel exactly. So
Speaker 1: that meant that you could you could have a mustering
Speaker 1: area for aircraft that was not directly in the path
Speaker 1: of where aircraft were landing. The British were the ones
Speaker 1: who came up with that. The British were the ones
Speaker 1: that came up with the arresting wires, and then the
Speaker 1: United States and other nations said, this is a really
Speaker 1: 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 puts 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 lak Own quotes a
Speaker 1: statistic that really is eye opening. Between nineteen forty eight
Speaker 1: and nine, the number of US sailors and marines that
Speaker 1: died in and around aircraft carriers was eight thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred in forty years. Eight thousand, five hundred people dying.
Speaker 1: Now that includes that includes combat, but that actually makes
Speaker 1: a much smaller number than accidents. Kidding, Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: I can I can mention a couple of accidents if
Speaker 1: you want me to chuck about them. All right. So,
Speaker 1: during the nineteen sixties there was kind of a bleak
Speaker 1: time for the U. S. Navy. They suffered three fires
Speaker 1: aboard aircraft carriers in the nineteen sixties, and these you
Speaker 1: can what's interesting about this is you can go back
Speaker 1: and look at these. You can look at photographs because
Speaker 1: they 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 the
Speaker 1: USS or riskin e UM c v A thirty four,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in that designation, the hall 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 hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: other 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 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 that crew that killed one and thirty
Speaker 1: four crew members as a 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 uses the
Speaker 1: training film of what can go wrong. And then in
Speaker 1: nineteen nine to kind of round out the decade with
Speaker 1: another disaster here uh the U. S. S. Enterprise, you know,
Speaker 1: the first nuclear powered UM carrier had US at a
Speaker 1: terrible fire as well. UM similar to the Forest hell fire. UM,
Speaker 1: but this was a rocket that ignited and hit another
Speaker 1: aircraft and you know, due to exhaust heat I think
Speaker 1: is what set this one off. But it took four
Speaker 1: hours to extinguish that one and crew members were killed
Speaker 1: during that and fifteen aircraft were destroyed. So they had
Speaker 1: their fair share of you know, hard knocks in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, throughout the whole decade. And I know that
Speaker 1: you know, safety has improved over the over the decades,
Speaker 1: but there's probably still a lot of small things that
Speaker 1: happen on board apparently. I mean, if eight thousand people
Speaker 1: have died on these these are dangerous places to be, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, well even if like there there can be
Speaker 1: things that have nothing to do with the the flight
Speaker 1: deck or the hangar or the aircraft or any of
Speaker 1: the weaponry. Even I mean, you're just talking about a
Speaker 1: confined environment where you have several thousand people existing there,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of opportunities for accidents that you know,
Speaker 1: there's same sort of accents that you could encounter in
Speaker 1: any other environment. So the figures that I mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: not all of those were necessarily the result of some
Speaker 1: sort of catastrophic accident like the ones we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: but it does illustrate that this is an environment that
Speaker 1: that is by its very nature dangerous. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can fall and bump your head, you can choke
Speaker 1: on something in the yeah, exactly right, and and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, you'd fall all overboard. A friend of mine
Speaker 1: served in the Navy. He didn't serve a board an
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier, but one of the one of the descriptions
Speaker 1: he gave me, I imagined there were probably lots of
Speaker 1: bumps and bruises whenever sea's got particularly rough, because he
Speaker 1: talked about, how, uh, if you're going above or below
Speaker 1: whatever deck you're on in a ship, we call them decks.
Speaker 1: They're not floors. So if you're on a deck and
Speaker 1: you need to go up or down, you you climb
Speaker 1: what is almost a ladder the the they are sets
Speaker 1: of stairs technically, but they are so steep that it's
Speaker 1: practically a ladders at a premium exactly. And if the
Speaker 1: seas are really really rough, the world around you was moving,
Speaker 1: and he talked about how, yeah, there were times where
Speaker 1: he would start to climb and because of the way
Speaker 1: the ship would roll, he would end up being at
Speaker 1: the top of the stairs way faster than he had anticipated.
Speaker 1: Like he would take a step and then the ship
Speaker 1: would role as he was stepping, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like when you would jump on a trampoline just right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you suddenly end up much higher up than you expected. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be actually terrifying. I have I have one
Speaker 1: really cool story of an accident that was averted by
Speaker 1: someone who was in a different accident that was the
Speaker 1: thankfully tragedy was also averted. This guy just had the
Speaker 1: best luck. Captain Jim Lovell this. If the name sounds familiar,
Speaker 1: it's probably because you've watched Apollo thirteen. He was the
Speaker 1: commander of the Apollo thirteen space mission. He also, in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four was flying a mission in a McDonald
Speaker 1: F two H Banshee night fighter 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 luminescent trail from luminescent algae that was left
Speaker 1: in the wake of the carrier and followed it to
Speaker 1: the carrier so that he could land successful. And it's
Speaker 1: so smart. What that guy hasn't lived through or he
Speaker 1: hadn't lived through, it's pretty crazy. Yeah. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we've really driven it home. But yeah, dangerous location. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we haven't talked about yet.
Speaker 1: It's also on the flight deck is the island. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is important. This is where the I guess all
Speaker 1: the radar capabilities and the satellite. Yeah, the crew of
Speaker 1: the the commanders are walking around up there, um telling
Speaker 1: people what to do. So this is this is like
Speaker 1: the tower structure that you would see on the top
Speaker 1: of an aircraft carrier. Um. It's the command center and
Speaker 1: it it's the command center for the flight deck as
Speaker 1: well as the general ship. Right, and it has uh
Speaker 1: lots of different decks to it as well. It is
Speaker 1: about a hundred fifty ft tall that's about forty six
Speaker 1: but only about twenty ft wide or six ms wide
Speaker 1: at the base of the island. That's also because you
Speaker 1: don't want to take up too much space on the
Speaker 1: flight deck. You want to have as much of that
Speaker 1: space available as possible. Uh. And this is where you
Speaker 1: have lots of different decks that have important elements to it.
Speaker 1: So at the very top you've got that array of
Speaker 1: satellite dishes, radar dishes, that kind of stuff. Below that
Speaker 1: is the primary flight control or price fly. The Navy
Speaker 1: has lots of fun names for everything, like like know
Speaker 1: when we mentioned about the arresting wires and landing in them. Yes,
Speaker 1: I watched a documentary where the guy said, yeah, they
Speaker 1: call that landing in the spaghetti when you're when you're
Speaker 1: landing in the cables, landing in the spaghetti. Good term
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, I mean it really does, And it
Speaker 1: always makes me wonder if he's just if they're just
Speaker 1: yanking our chains at that point, like what can we
Speaker 1: tell them? And they're like, they're watch they're gonna start
Speaker 1: using that. Yeah, they're kind of call landings alright, so
Speaker 1: blow the price fly if that's what they call it.
Speaker 1: Um is the bridge and that's the ship's command center. Yes,
Speaker 1: the bridge. Now this is where I am in my
Speaker 1: familiar element because I love ships. I love ships, and
Speaker 1: the bridge is that command center where the captain oversees
Speaker 1: the control of the ship. Uh. Now keep in mind
Speaker 1: that aircraft carriers typically are part of a larger group
Speaker 1: of ships that they don't they aren't traveling on their own.
Speaker 1: They have escort ships. So that you have generally speaking,
Speaker 1: several in your group. Now, a captain only commands one ship.
Speaker 1: That is, the captain's responsibility is to that ship and
Speaker 1: that ship alone. So the captain is on the bridge,
Speaker 1: um and can That's where you have your your helmsman,
Speaker 1: who is controlling the steering of the the vehicle, the
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier. You have another one, the lee helmsman, who
Speaker 1: controls the since commands down to engineering for the speed,
Speaker 1: so you know, Mr Scott, down and engineering can give it,
Speaker 1: give it or more powder? Captain was the worst Scottish
Speaker 1: accent I've ever tried. Um. You you have also the
Speaker 1: quartermaster of the watch who is keeping track of the
Speaker 1: navigation information. Uh and uh. Below that you have a
Speaker 1: deck where you have the flag bridge. That's where the
Speaker 1: admiral is. Now. The admiral is in charge of all
Speaker 1: the vessels in that group, not just the aircraft carrier.
Speaker 1: So the captain commands the aircraft carrier. The admiral has
Speaker 1: the the job of of administering for the entire group
Speaker 1: of shops, and then below the flag bridge is just
Speaker 1: a various operational centers. I mean these are these are
Speaker 1: where they monitor the deck, control and launch operations and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I mean, let's say it's a love again.
Speaker 1: Some of the names, like the aircraft handling officers sometimes
Speaker 1: called the handler or mangler. That's a big difference between
Speaker 1: the handler and the mangler, if you ask me. My
Speaker 1: my favorite description in this how Stuff Works article, which
Speaker 1: by the way, is fantastic. I highly recommend if you're
Speaker 1: interested in this to go to how Stuff Works and
Speaker 1: look up how aircraft carriers work. My favorite description is
Speaker 1: how the aircraft handler. Their job is to track which
Speaker 1: aircraft are on the flight deck, which ones are in
Speaker 1: the hangar, which ones are out you know, have flown
Speaker 1: off um. And they do so using something called the
Speaker 1: Uiji board. Oh yes, this is like a cool toy.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, this is really neat. Yeah it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a transparent table that has out lines of the flight
Speaker 1: deck and the hangar deck and little cutouts that represent
Speaker 1: each aircraft. And they're to scale, so the bigger aircraft
Speaker 1: have bigger cutouts than the smaller aircraft. Well, they have to.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't know how many would fit and where they
Speaker 1: would exactly. It's at all the scale, so they know
Speaker 1: exactly how to place everything and exactly where it fits out.
Speaker 1: So I like this. I like this. I like it
Speaker 1: when things are measured and and organized like I enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: I like this procedure. It looks like it sounds to
Speaker 1: me like like it's it's it's the super coolest version
Speaker 1: of risk. Does you know you're moving? All right? I
Speaker 1: need to move these aircraft from my hangar to the
Speaker 1: flight deck, and then I move these little models from
Speaker 1: this part of the etching to that part of etching
Speaker 1: to represent that. And not only that. You look at
Speaker 1: the window and it happens in real life, A little
Speaker 1: real plane on a real ship. The best again, the
Speaker 1: best game of risk ever. Right. Uh. Then you also
Speaker 1: have the combat direction center. Obviously that would be very
Speaker 1: important whenever the ship is actively involved in combat. You've
Speaker 1: got the galley deck that's immediately below the flight deck.
Speaker 1: You've got the hanger 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 the 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 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, a
Speaker 1: very back end if they can open up a door
Speaker 1: and they can test jet engines off the back of
Speaker 1: the of the boat, only safe place to do it
Speaker 1: because it's open to the air. Yeah. That's uh, that's
Speaker 1: just aft of the aircraft inter Intermediate Maintenance Division or
Speaker 1: ai m D shops. That's where they would do the
Speaker 1: basic maintenance that would be needed to make sure the
Speaker 1: aircraft remain in you know, fliable condition. Uh. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: again all of this is necessary just for the basic
Speaker 1: function of the aircraft carrier as its purpose as a
Speaker 1: military vehicle. Then on top of that you have all
Speaker 1: the mess halls, the galleys, the sleeping arrangements, which are
Speaker 1: cozy at best. I hope you enjoyed that classic episode
Speaker 1: on how aircraft carriers work. As was indicated, we will
Speaker 1: be back next week with part two of this classic episode,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, if you have suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: that should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please
Speaker 1: reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.