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Aircraft Carrier: Anyone else ever worked on one?

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StarJar

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2011
Messages
1,723
Location
El Centro, California, USA
First of all 'aircraft carrier' has to be the most inaccurate name of anything I've ever seen. Sure it carrries aircraft, but when you're on one, it's more like being on a screeming, chaotic powder keg.
My first birthing, (where you slept), was right below the third wire of the flight deck. The sound of jets is so loud there, that even when sleeping with earplugs, it's redicuosly loud. You just had to get used to hearing about forty F-14 (in my day) engines mulling about, less than 10 feet above you, as they gathered next to the catapult.
If you are in there to rest for a night shift, you can see daylight through the top of the quarters.
Then you realize, if someone crashes on the deck, fuel could come pouring into your compartment.
I guess that's why they don't let you on, until you've gone through their firefighting program.
The food on the ship is great though. Probably the best in the military. With 5000 people going through there every day, they have an assortment of food that would rival the best smorgasbord in town!
But one time the line was long and led out into the hanger bay. As I joined the line, they started up the engine on an A4. It got so loud, it felt like my brain was getting deranged!
When I was working and got thirsty, sometimes I would have no alternative but to use the drinking fountain. Like the showers, it always tasted, and smelled like jet fuel!
I guess they can't make it too posh, when Marine's are out there with no showers, and catching bullets.

One time I was passing by an A4 in the gigantic hanger bay. It had ingested a bird, and had had a flame out. When I looked in the air intake, there was the smell of fish! I guess what else would a bird eat, way out there!
To describe the whole experience would be very difficult. The thousands of launches with full afterburners. The missed traps, and go a rounds. The comradary, and occasional drama among sailors, and flight crews.
Just an unbelievable place. All disquised by an almost inanimate name, "Aircraft Carrier".
 
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