Carrier Battle Group

My ship was part of a Carrier Battle Group which escorted us anytime we were deployed to the Arabian Gulf. The Carrier Battle Group consists of:

1 Aircraft Carrier
2 Guided Missile Cruisers
2 Anti Aircraft Warships
1-2 Anti Submarine Destroyers or Frigates.

We never saw any of the ships who were escorting us. They are so far away from our ship, on the outer perimeter, we could not see them with the naked eye. The radar on the USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75) could detect anything within 200 nautical miles with the exception of submarines. Our radar linked to the radar of the other ships in the Battle Group, and therefore, we were able to detect anything coming within 200 nautical miles of the ship on the outermost perimeter of the group.

Here's an interesting observation I made on one of our underways in preparation for deployment. On this particular underway, we were accompanied by the two submarines that were assigned to our battle group. They were doing training exercises and were pinging us with their SONAR. Despite the enormous size of a carrier (as I've said before we're talking 97,0006 tons of steel at a MINIMUM), you could actually hear the SONAR pinging of the steel of the ship's hull It no matter where you were on the ship. It sounds like a little chirping/whirring sound. Every time we heard it, we knew the submarine's SONAR was hitting us.

Jet Engines

For a jet going slower than the speed of sound, the engine is moving through the air at about 1000 km/h (600 mph). We can think of the engine as being stationary and the cold air moving toward it at this speed.
A fan at the front sucks the cold air into the engine.
A second fan called a compressor squeezes the air (increases its pressure) by about eight times. This slows the air down by about 60 percent and it's speed is now about 400 km/h (240 mph).
Kerosene (liquid fuel) is squirted into the engine from a fuel tank in the plane's wing.
In the combustion chamber, just behind the compressor, the kerosene mixes with the compressed air and burns fiercely, giving off hot exhaust gases. The burning mixture reaches a temperature of around 900°C (1650°F).
The exhaust gases rush past a set of turbine blades, spinning them like a windmill.
The turbine blades are connected to a long axle (represented by the middle gray line) that runs the length of the engine. The compressor and the fan are also connected to this axle. So, as the turbine blades spin, they also turn the compressor and the fan.

The hot exhaust gases exit the engine through a tapering exhaust nozzle. The tapering design helps to accelerate the gases to a speed of over 2100 km/h (1300 mph). So the hot air leaving the engine at the back is traveling over twice the speed of the cold air entering it at the front—and that's what powers the plane. Military jets often have an after burner that squirts fuel into the exhaust jet to produce extra thrust. The backward-moving exhaust gases power the jet forward. Because the plane is much bigger and heavier than the exhaust gases it produces, the exhaust gases have to zoom backward much faster than the plane's own speed.

Massive thrust! A Pratt and Whitney F119 jet aircraft engine creates 156,000 newtons (35,000 pounds) of thrust during this US Air Force test in 2002.

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/jetengine.html

Flight Operations

A lot of people probably don't realize a carrier has to be moving in order for a jet to take off. There has to be a certain amount of wind going across the flight deck to aid something as enormous as a jet in taking off. The flight deck must also be level, and that is achieved by filling tanks placed strategically on the bottom of the boat.
One time after flight operations, the tilt of the flight deck was a little too extreme, and one of our jets (with the pilot in it!) rolled across the flight deck and over the side. Fortunately, the jet's nose got caught in the catwalk below which prevented it from dropping 100 feet to the ocean. Once in the water the pilot would have not been able to get out and would have died.

USS Harry S Truman- Interesting Facts

The USS Harry S Truman is a Nimitz class, nuclear powered aircraft carrier. It's around 97,000 tons of steel. The flight deck is the size of a football field. It can cruise at speeds up to 37 mph. It's steam powered by the heat of it's two reactor. Therefore, it only needs to refuel every 20 years!!! It carries 90 jets.

2.5 Stay Alive

I graduated high school 5th in my class out of 273 people. I made a 29 on the ACT and a 99 on the ASVAB (twice). Having said that, I found Naval Nuclear Power school extremely challenging. I was in class for 8 hours a day, minus time for a short lunch and only a 5 minute break between subjects/classes to go to the bathroom and go to the next class. The instructors lectured page after page of new information every day and rarely spent much time covering any one particular subject. At night we received homework problem samples from the new material, and the next day we moved on to new topics of equal difficulty. We would take pages and pages of notes.

At the end of each week we were tested on new information and were expected to be able to regurgitate it all back onto paper in essay form. Our answers had to be almost verbatim to the "key words and tricky phrases" used by the instructors. It was an enormous volume of information. While being tested at the end of each week, if even a few of the words in our responses were wrong our scores would be low or failing, and we might have received a GCE which stood for Gross Conceptual Error.

The subjects we were learning we're no joke. We were learning things like physics on an atomic level, reactor theory, electrical theory and more. The grading scale was 4.0 with anything below a 2.5 being a failing grade. This is where the term "2.5 stay alive" came from. Failure was not an option. This was military school not high school or college. We were essentially ordered to learn this stuff and perform at a satisfactory level, and if we were failing that opened up a whole new can of worms such as possible dereliction of duty.

Naval Nuclear Power School

"The nuclear program is widely acknowledged as having the most demanding academic program in the U.S. military. The school operates at a fast pace, with stringent academic standards in all subjects. Students typically spend 45 hours per week in the classroom, and study an additional 10 to 35 hours per week outside of lecture hours, six days per week. Because the classified materials are restricted from leaving the training building, students cannot study outside of the classroom.

Students who fail tests and otherwise struggle academically are required to review their performance with instructors. The student may be given remedial homework or other study requirements. Failing scores due to personal negligence, rather than a lack of ability, can result in charges of dereliction of duty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Failing students may be held back to repeat the coursework with a new group of classmates, but failing students are typically released from the Nuclear Power Program and are re-designated or discharged."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_School

A history of womens' roles in the Navy

Article detailing womens' roles in the Navy