Carrier Episodes 5 & 6
Carrier redeemed itself last night by minimizing the high school drama and drilling down to the core facets of life on a carrier and the battle group. I really feel for the BM that was lost off the Princeton, going overboard was always in the back of your mind and I always kept an overboard plan in my head when out on deck. My biggest concern was staying conscious upon impact and hoping someone saw me go over the side. The worst case scenario would to be blown off at night by a jet turning on you and hitting your head on the way down or being knocked out after falling 90 feet to the water. I could only imagine what the ship would look like as it steamed away from me at 30 knots while I bobbed in the water like a lost cork. That is all kinds of bad right there.
I haven’t heard anyone speak of how fast the Nimitz can steam yet. From my own personal experience on the USS Enterprise (she has 8 reactors…Nimitz has two)…we steamed at a speed of over 50 knots during sea trials after a 4 year yard period. FIFTY…my buddy Woody Hill told me of a time on the Enterprise (when she was in the Pacific) when they did much faster than that. I believe it…the best I ever saw on the Kennedy was just over 30 knots to make enough wind for flight ops. Ya see..if there isn’t enough wind to fly, carriers can make wind by going really fast. The reason for this is that the catapults can only get the planes going X knots and there has to be wind over the deck to provide the lift necessary for the birds not to nosedive into the water off the cat. No wind….no flying. If you need 25 knots of wind to fly, you steam at 25 knots to make it happen.
All in all, a good show last night. Not cheesy like an episode of “Saved By The Bell”….it was good…I wonder if it will continue as such tonight.
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