This one came over the mil-email transom…
Odd little ‘facts’…
-Nimitz class aircraft carriers get refuelled approximately every 20-25 years. Since the lifespan of an aircraft carrier is about 50 years, that means they only get refuelled once. (This is the nuclear fuel for the reactors – the ship gets jet fuel every few days.)
-Almost all of the food has to be manually carried down to the mess and storage decks. This is a constant painstaking feat considering you’re feeding almost 6000 people, and you’re dealing with anywhere from about 4-8 stories worth of stairs, which can take as much as 10 hours in one resupply.
-All USN Aircraft Carriers are powered by steam from the nuclear plants.
-Machinery and non-airwing personnel can go longer than many submariners without seeing the sun. Many go 90-120+ days straight.
-The screws (propellers) installed on the USS Dwight D Eisenhower weight 366,200lbs (166,105kg) each and there are four of them.
-The Screws are each 25 feet tall.
-In even remotely rough seas, the showers alternate between hot and cold with the rocking of the ship. This is hilarious if you’re just using the bathroom, it’s horrible if you’re the one taking the shower.
-The total anchor weight including 1,082 feet of chain for one (of two anchors) is 735,000 lbs. (333,390kg).
-The machinery spaces are so far below the flight and hanger decks, there are emergency crews trained in mountain rescue, called deep rescue crews. They’re trained to rescue personnel out of the escape shafts which are roughly 80ft tall.
-The total number of crew members including the deployed air wing is over 6,000 personnel.
-Nimitz and later class nuclear carriers have 2 dump-truck size nuclear reactors for power. The one Enterprise class carrier has basically 8 submarine-size nuclear reactors powering it. That may seem trivial, but 8 nuclear reactors on a floating ship, each with essentially independent systems for control and safety, is nothing short of insanity.
-The height of the keel to the mast is the equivalent to a 24-story building.
-The Flight Deck is 4.5 acres.
-Steam piping in the machinery spaces is so hot, it will kill nerve cells before someone realises they touched the wrong thing.
-You can water ski behind an aircraft carrier going full speed, not that it’s safe.
-Aircraft carriers don’t have sonar – the carriers are too noisy for it to be effective. (In truth, they do have sonar depth finders, but those point straight down and are only used when you’re fairly close to shore.)
-Additionally, there’s very little shielding from radiation on the underside of a carrier since it’s usually facing the entire ocean, so a person must be certified and wear a radiation monitoring device to be under the ship in dry dock.
-The USS Midway (obviously a retired carrier) has about 5,000 miles (8046 kilometres) of wiring. A modern carrier, despite having much more electronic equipment, has only about half as much wiring because much of the data is now transported by fibreoptics.
-When the engines are engaged, the shafts rotate/twist more than an entire revolution before the propeller/screw actually moves.
-Nuclear operators on carriers, and submarines and formerly cruisers for that matter, receive much less radiation than normal citizens. You get more radiation commuting to work than the people running nuclear reactors. (Chernobyl, 3 mile island, Fukushima, SL1, and some others notwithstanding)
-Many of the dining tables in the enlisted mess can be converted to hospital beds and even surgical tables in the event of mass casualties.
-Thanks to a sophisticated network of supply ships, fresh milk and soft-serve ice cream is almost always available.
-When resupplying the ship, they actually use a gun with a rope attached to it, to initially retrieve the cables from the supply ships. Just picture cruising at 20 knots with a sailor literally shooting a gun at a supply ship from the hanger deck.
-There are small ramps around the edge of the flight deck, each about 18 inches wide or so, that lead out over the water. These are “bomb chutes,” and provide a way to quickly get bombs and other aircraft weapons over the side and away from the ship in case there’s a fire.
-Any time weapons are brought up from or taken down to the magazines, it always requires two elevators to accomplish. They’re taken about half the way, at which point they have to switch elevators since none of them go the whole distance. This is to eliminate one potential path of escape for any fire or explosion that might break out. It’s not at all uncommon to be eating a meal on the mess decks, with a cart full of bombs or missiles sitting a few feet away as they’re waiting to complete their journey up or down.
-Procedures have been developed and are sometimes practiced that allows for the launching and recovery of aircraft without the use of radios – no speaking whatsoever. It’s called “zip lip.” This is done when the ship is in EMCON condition, or “emissions control,” when radio-based equipment like radar and radios aren’t used in an effort to remain “silent” to enemies that might use the signals to detect the ship.
-There has never been a nuclear accident or uncontrolled release of radioactivity in the history of Naval Nuclear power, including submarines.
-The stern area of the ship at the hangar deck level is home to what’s called the “jet shop.” This is where in-depth repairs are made to jet engines that have been removed from airplanes. That area has jet fuel plumbing so that the engines can be tested at high power while attached (strongly) to the ship.
-It takes more than 2000 people to spell out “Ready Now” or a similarly large phrase on the flight deck.
-Every carrier landing is recorded on video, and each pilot is graded on how well they did. The best you can do is an OK-3wire, which means both the plane and pilot can be used again.
-During daytime and in good weather, during an aircraft recover (landing) cycle, the goal is to have an airplane land every 45 seconds. That means each one should land, come to a stop, get free of the cable it caught and taxi out of the way in 45 seconds or less.
-A deployment is referred to as a cruise by recruiters.
-The actual speeds for a carrier are classified.
