8 Bells Lecture | Andrew Faltum: The Supercarriers

thank you very much it's really interesting to be at the Naval War College my wife was commissioned from the Newport women officer school in 1973 and I was as said commissioned from Pensacola we met in the Navy at the Armed Forces air intelligence training center in Denver so the old story if the Navy wanted you to have a wife they would issue one well they do okay I'm going to talk a little bit about some background as to how the Forrestal class came about at the end of World War two the Navy had worked itself out of a job America had a monopoly on atomic weapons and the Air Force regarded other services as anachronism and the meantime the Navy was stressing a need for balance forces and the importance of sea power in the post-war world but struggled at the same time to develop develop its own nuclear capability because if you wanted to be funded you had to be nuclear capable at this time the Navy was coming out with first guided missiles and naval aviation was struggling with several issues introducing jet aircraft to the fleet and the development of heavy attack aircraft that were capable of dropping the atomic weapons at the time which were quite heavy at the time and the Navy's response to developing nuclear capability was the supercarrier the United States and the idea was that it would operate a limited number of jet aircraft that were big enough to carry the atomic bombs of the era which are about the same same size as were dropped by b-29s at the end of World War two now the keel was laid at Newport News on 18 April 1949 but it was cancelled by Secretary of Defense Johnson five days later without even notifying the Navy now the the naval leaders saw this as a just tempte monopolized nuclear warfare on the part of the Air Force and in what's known as the revolt of the Admirals naval officers attack Johnson policies in general and the Air Force claims that its strategic bomber the b-36 was a billion dollar blunder now Johnson's cuts had not only affected Navy but they left all conventional forces short and that includes Army Navy and tactical air so they were ill-prepared to fight the limited wars that would come along in Korea now in the meantime while this controversy was being played out other possibilities arose and that's what became the Forrestal class now the Forrestal class was based in a lot of ways on the canceled United States and the early concept were very similar the the two ships you see the artists deception the United States the Forrestal was very similar except that it had an enclosed bow and it was somewhat smaller now as atomic weapons became smaller in size so did the aircraft needed to deliver them and when the Navy adopted the a 3d sky warrior at a seventy thousand pound gross aircraft versus the hundred thousand pound projected aircraft that the Navy thought it would need for the United States it limited the the size of the carrier needed to carry the aircraft and representative Carl Vinson suggested to the Navy a size limited general of about sixty thousand tons and that's what became the Forrestal design Carl Vinson was longer front time friend of the Navy is known as uncle peril within the Navy leadership now the purpose of the Forrestal design had changed from pure nuclear strategic striker craft by a few aircraft to a general-purpose carrier with a larger air wing with smaller aircraft but what saved the Forrestal design and made it really effective was three British innovations that was the angle deck the steam catapult and the mirror landing system which evolved into the optical landing system now the original design was a flush deck and both of Forrestal and the Saratoga were converted on the building ways to become angle deck carriers and also they decided to install an island no when they adopted the island designed it solved a lot of their problems the piping for the exhaust gases was solved the location of antennas the control of the ship all kinds of things now the electronic shown here this is the Forrestal issue was commissioned and that shows you later in her career now the electronics and the first picture are the SPS 8 height finder radar atop the wheelhouse and an SPS 12 air search radar I'm the pole mast and then the after mast is carried the electronic countermeasures and at the top of the mast is that dome shape ting is the tactical error navigation beacon or take in now a later view shows that rectangular radar that is the SPS 48 medium-range three-dimensional air search radar now the interesting thing about the design was that the mast folded down at the time it was requirement for all major warships that their mast had to fold so they could fit underneath the Brooklyn Bridge because the Brooklyn Navy Yard which is the New York Naval Shipyard was commonly known you had to fold down so the main mast folded down and you can see the hinge at the bottom of the picture folded down to port and laid pretty much on the flight deck and then the after ECM mass would fold aft now the force doll had been ordered from Newport News Shipbuilding and drydock company in Newport News Virginia and the Saratoga was built in the New York Naval Shipyard which is like I said commonly called the Brooklyn Navy Yard one of the major differences between the two ships is that Forrestal was originally completed with six hundred pound per square inch boilers which is the world war two ERA design and the Saratoga was completed the twelve hundred psi which subsequent ships all were completed - and they're very similar in appearance there's some details between the two ships and like I said they were both laid on his flesh deck but converted during construction now this view shows the intrepid the Saratoga in the independence and it illustrates the relative of size between the Forrestal class and the earlier World War two ERA essex-class it also shows a penchant that the Navy has for spelling out things on the flight deck is photo opportunities and in this case it's the 50th anniversary of Naval Aviation in 1961 now Ranger and follow-on independence were the same basic design the most noticeable change if you look at the stern the start is enclosed instead of the knotch turn on the Forrestal and Saratoga they also had different design for the forward gun sponsons they were a different shape than on the Forrestal in Saratoga and this Ranger was unique in that she retained those sponsons later on when the guns were removed she also had an all welded aluminum elevator on the portside and she was actually the first ship laid down as an angle deck carrier now the Ranger was built at Newport News and independence was built at New Yor a V art now this view the independence shows the taking during or April 1959 shakedown cruise now it's an interim design on the flight deck pattern and it's interesting you can usually date a photo of a carrier by the aircraft that she carries aboard in this case a 3d sky warriors on the fantail they're a forty Skyhawks little scooters and f3h demons which is the ancestor of the famous phantom and f8u crusaders now the constellation was the follow on my Susan yeah skip Dave yeah this is the Kittyhawk excuse me okay now the original design was based on the flush deck design so there's a number of features that they corrected on the following class which is the key hawk class the port side forward elevator was moved aft and the island was also moved aft so you had two elevators in front of the island instead of two island two elevators aft that improved the usable space on the flight deck and it was a much better arrangement because the forward port side elevator interfered with both the landing area and the catapults on the port side the waist cats also it had introduced the more powerful c13 steam catapults and it was armed with terrier missiles for surfaced air defense now one other thing is the island had become so crowded with antennas that they introduced a lattice mast after the island to carry all the electronic gear and this is a feature of all later classes of carriers who see it in the Nimitz and follow-on classes the constellation was lead on New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn and it would be the last carrier built some place other than Newport News now while she was fitting out prior to commissioning a fire broke out in December 1960 firefighters extinguished the fire but 50 shipyard workers were killed and it delayed the completion of the ship by seven months now this overhead view shows the constellation in December 1979 and South China Sea and she's conducting underway replenishment with combat story ship Niagara and on the other side is the guided missile cruiser Lee he now following the constellation was the USS Enterprise the first nuclear-powered ship but because of cost overruns with the enterprise she would be the only ship in her class and she she was originally supposed to be a leader of a class of six nuclear-powered carriers but because it cost they decided no more and this was the McNamara era so the next ship the America would be conventionally powered now the changes from the Kitty Hawk included a bow mounted anchor and one astern instead the usual port and starboard and the reason for that was that she was equipped with a sonar the sqs 23 at the time soviet nuclear-powered submarines were attack submarines were getting so fast that they figured they needed to provide some kind of self-defense capability so the she was equipped with sonar now later on the sonar was removed but she was the only carrier that was completed with sonar other ships when they were converted to anti-submarine warfare were equipped with sonar now she also had different Island configuration and you noticed the narrow smokestack compared to prior units and those drum shaped antennas just forwarded the stack there are the SPG 55 that's the fire control radar associated with her terrier missile Armand now this is the Kennedy and although she's similar to earlier ships there were enough differences that she's often put in a class by herself the most significant changes were the different internal design she was originally conceived as a nuclear-powered carrier but it was decided to make her conventional carrier but her internal arrangement of spaces was based on the nuclear version of the ship she also had was intended to carry a bow mounted sonar and tartar missile system but because the cost factors these weren't installed and Kennedy would wind up being the last conventionally powered carrier built for the US Navy and another difference you'll notice is that the port side the angle on the flight deck is less of an angle than on earlier ships and that's something that you'll see on all leader classes of carriers there are nuclear carriers now here is a picture the key the Kennedy when she was going through her decommissioning ceremony in 2007 the top picture shows a bunch of blue shirted plane handlers up in what's called vultures row that's an area on the island where people can watch flight operations and in this case they were trainees and they had to observe operations on the flight deck for a period of time before they were allowed to be on the flight deck the flight deck carrier is called the most dangerous four and a half acres on earth and that is not an exaggeration now as far as the weapons for these ships the original Forrestal class carriers had four mark 42 5-inch 54 automatic dual-purpose mounts and as the threat increased jet aircraft cruise missiles guns just could no longer cut it so later ships of the Kitty Hawk class were cooking with a rim to terrier missile that was part of the Navy's three T's they had the talos which is the biggest carrier medium range and then the Tartar was a small and they had a range out to about forty miles later on these weapons were removed and the ships were modernized and they had the NATO sea sparrow which was adapted from name seven air-to-air missile the Phalanx close-in weapon system 20 million millimeter Gatling gun that was also adapted from an airborne weapon the de volcán and later on they adapted something called the rolling airframe missile which is rolls like a rifle bullet in order to stabilize its flight and that was a later weapon system that was only installed on two of the these ships all of the current ships in the inventory are equipped with rolling airframe missile and they have been improved over years okay now just as when you buy a DVD you'll get the bonus features these are your bonus features one of my lacks last active duty for trainings in naval reserve was an operational orientation aboard the Saratoga in July of 1993 and it was as the Saratoga worked up for her last deployment before she got decommissioned now I need to explain a little bit about the ship's logo the ship's emblem is the fighting and it was adapted to commemorate an event from the Battle of Lake Champlain during the war of 1812 at a critical point in the battle a British shot had burst open the roosters cage and the rooster got mad as hell and just crowed defiantly at the British free for damaging its cage so the crew is so in heartened that they wind up wound up defeating a larger British ship so it's a been part of their emblem ever since now anyone has ever seen a carrier in port is usually impressed by the size and of the ship that's me is a younger version as a commander before the beard and the flight deck looks immense when you're standing on the flight deck II it's it's amazing how big it seems but what most people don't realize is that when you're at sea and there are a lot of airplanes parked on it it does not seem big enough now the captain of the ship is responsible for the readiness of his ship and crew and they designate duties through executive officer XO as he's known in the Navy department heads and the officer of the deck now within departments are divisions which could range from a few dozen sailors up to hundreds and within the operations department is the Intelligence Division the o-z division so the ship's intelligence officer is also known as the Wizard of Oz and these are our happy reservists in the background the two officers are the prospective ship's intelligence officer and the outgoing ships intelligence officer and that chicken is Bob Bob was the mascot of the ship's intelligence division and occasionally the Air Wing would kidnap Bob and hold him for ransom and they would send chicken wings to the oszi division and say if our demands are not met you know this is what's going to happen to Bob so he started out being an officer or chief he had khakis and then he reverted to enlisted rank so he's wearing dungarees and the Saratoga is was in poor material condition by that time and these were my accommodations look like a board ship now the birthing areas for enlisted personnel are even more daunting usually they have like three to four lockers per tier and the butt locker space is very limited and also at sea anybody's been at sea knows there's almost constant noise either from the ventilation system or on a carrier if you're below the flight deck when the aircraft lands you get a loud kaboom if you're up for word and when the catapults go off you get another loud kaboom so it's a definite hazard your eardrums here are some examples of some air operations with Air Wing 17 in this case it's an ea-6b from viq 132 and over on the top left you'll see the optical landing system which evolved from the original mirror landing system that the British invented they'll also notice the life nets which go all around the carrier flight deck you could get blown off the flight deck very easily and those life Nets have saved many a crewmen because it's 60 feet to the water and if you don't enter the water exactly right it's like hitting concrete and then it also shows the jet blast deflector and this is what the view looks like from the catwalk and those up rubber bands that are along the catwalk those are used to seal off the catapults when the catapults air operations are not used because if they have a kind of peculiar waxy greasy smell from the steam catapults now another evolution before World War 2 the Navy developed underway replenishment methods and this gives the Navy great strategic mobility oddly enough the one who pioneered this in World War one was the future Admiral Nimitz and the British had a method where they would trail behind the oiler and they would pass a hose that's a safer but the transfer rates are not good enough and so the Navy developed an alongside method now here the Saratoga is approaching the oiler Kalamazoo now the way we do it is the replenishment ship sets the base course and the ships that's receiving forms on them and it's about 12 to 16 knots speed because that's about the optimum for ship control now when the receiving ship is alongside we have line guns that send messenger lines to the oiler or from the or I should say and they are used to transfer other lines like the communications lines and the fuel hoses and things like that now this is not an easy evolution the ships involved must hold the same course and speed and this is made more difficult by the fact that hydrodynamic forces tend to suck the two ships close together now when the replenishment is complete the receiving ship breaks off and they also practice emergency break ways in case they're surprised here's some more air operations this is kind of a swan song not only for the Saratoga but for a lot of the aircraft that are shown here this is the f-14 from vf-103 and you'll also notice on the top left picture f-18s and here is a I was in an e6 squadron so I have a soft spot in my heart for a six is it's an airplane as they used to say that only a bomb etre navigator could love and the top left hand side is the s3 be from vs 30 and that's equipped as a tanker and you can see it in position on the catapulter now that pretty much completes how I spent my summer vacation does anybody have any questions okay the the Forrestal as originally conceived would not have been successfully if not for those British innovations but if you look at the succeeding classes of nuclear carriers it turns out to be just about the right size because it had plenty of room for growth and there was enough hull to adapt to other developments other technologies so only now are we seeing real changes in technology if you look at the nimitz-class they're about the same size and they're the same configuration so it was the Forrestal class really laid the foundation for all the succeeding carriers now with the the Ford class and the new developments and technology like the magnetic launching systems and other developments we'll see how that that works out but the carrier's that are in service now are all based on the success of the Forrestal class what happens is it's if you go back to World War two the Navy and kamikazes they looked at the air defense issue and the saturation raids well at the end of World War two they realized okay now we're going to face similar situation only with cruise missiles and jet aircraft so you see how they go from gun armament to missile armament and dedicated escort ships that are equipped with missiles and also the naval tactical data system to correlate all that raw information so that you could react in time and the later weapon systems like the rolling airframe missile system and Vulcan phalanx and the sea Sparrow are now integrated so that they cut down the reaction time in response to the growing threats when they developed sea-skimming cruise missiles for example that up the game on from the attack side so there's a corresponding response on the defensive side and it's always evolving because the critics of aircraft care say though they're just big targets they're not so easy to kill and the Navy doesn't stand still waiting for a Russian cruise missile design to take it out so there's been responses over time so the Chinese have told us that the day of the carrier is obsolete then you think anything with their pedestal they're building carriers right that hit that that exact same argument has repeated been repeated since 1945 and around 1950 and into the 60s because as I said the threat evolves and so the response has evolved they've changed tactics the Navy's tactic is to engage them as far out as possible and then also provide for that clothes in under the horizon attacks from sea skimmers and that sort of thing so of the three Nate Nate of the nations that have tried to aircraft carriers I'd say the three that really knew how to do it with a Royal Navy the Imperial Japanese Navy and the US Navy other people have tried to build carriers some of borrowed carriers there's a lot of South American navies they have carriers a lot of them regarded serve like a status symbol but when it comes to something you can really use it right now well the it was the I think the Navy's from what I've heard of people talk it's the Navy's fighter community that wound up killing the Tomcat because they didn't want to adapt it to other roles what usually happens is you develop an air defense fighter and it'll kill anything that flies and then okay now that we've killed everything that flies what else you going to do so then you start doing you know land attack and you know anti-surface target type stuff and so if you don't adapt to that you know if you're good at here you know air superiority you don't have a future because you you shot everything out of the sky so what's what's your next and the folks had developed a hornet were smart they started with the lightweight there was a design competition the Air Force picked the f16 the Navy chose what was the f17 to develop into the f-18 and then I got smart let's just scale it up it looks like the same airplane from the outside but it's a different airframe and it's got more capability there is a Tennessee you go back to look at how air groups were configured they go from a lot of the same type of airplane down to more and more what they call overhead specialized aircraft and as things change the they go back and forth between one aircraft that's versatile does pretty much everything down to same thing happened to the s3 it at the time they were worried about submarines so he came out with the s3 well we don't have to worry about submarines so much anymore the Soviet Union is collapsed so what are we going to do we're gonna be getting a tanker we're going to make an electronic warfare and eventually just phase it out yeah and now they taking the fa fa if eighteen growler how many elevators mckinnon 4 yeah well I was to four to the island one after the island and one on the port side aft and that's it pretty much the configuration all the way through how many aircraft of the f-35 will that I really don't know how many are actually gonna show up like the f-22 and the f-35 or these wonder fighters that we go through an evolution in acquisition where we want to buy this new thing and it's got all the bells and whistles but then we can't afford enough of them so they project so many and it's gonna cost so much per copy but then budget crunch time comes and then they cut back on the number which dries up the unit cost what's the range of that I don't know off the top my head yes sir these papers very there's probably developed with the e2 is interesting that they keep improving it and I don't see the is an overhead aircraft in the air wing I don't see them getting rid of the e2 anytime soon because it's grown in capability over time right they have a similar issue between the Alexei the Army and the Air Force with drones it depends on whether you feel that manned aircraft still have a role in attacking surface targets because if your communications links are lost you're out of luck but if you've got a pilot in a cockpit he can make decisions on the spot so the jury's still out on how effective drones will be I know the Air Force likes to have their drones controlled by rated pilots but but that's a job security issue not the strategic considerations so any other questions well the nimitz-class the enterprise has now finally been decommissioned the nimitz-class and then the the ford-class and there's going to be follow-on and they'll the designs will evolve as they gain experience with the new technologies they've got a lot of technologies they're trying out right now at the Nimitz and her follow-on of the Ford class I'm not sure the first couple are in commission but the succeeding Ford class are going to be they're gonna evolve to have different technologies incorporated I don't know the force levels right now sir all of your carrier classes now are yes yes that started in beckoned I said the McNamara era because at the time the enterprise's conceived they had no idea what the actual advantages were because they had no data and so after the enterprise all cost overruns let's go to conventional power well the advantages of the nuclear power only became evident after they gained actual operational experience with the enterprise and so McNamara became a convert and that's how the Nimitz class came about how does that new carrier under construction in Norfolk area compared to these carriers I'd say is size wise and configuration very similar but as far as the technologies I would have to go specifically like say Newport News and get some specifics on they're introducing a whole bunch of new like say the arresting gear has not changed since World War two it's essentially a hydraulic pulley system now the only big change where the catapults was going from hydraulic which had limitations to steam and now we're going to a magnetic system so we'll have to see how that plays out because a lot of times the new technologies don't play out the way the artist concept they usually show it works perfectly in the artist concept but in practice we'll see how it actually plays out I haven't gotten the particulars on that yet I can tell you about steam catapults Newport News is the only game in town right now is that really true when you talk about the size of an aircraft carrier no no I'm talking about there's not that many places that can even dock a ship that size let alone have the expertise to build it so I don't own any stock in Newport News but what has happened over time is that we used to have multiple sources for major warships but now we don't and it's a matter of the industrial base that could be said for a lot of things for infrastructure not just shipbuilding carriers are in action used to pay over various Wars the number the force level carriers is varied from like ten to fifteen depending on what Congress authorizes and then the number of air wings associated with em is varied and I don't have the current force levels off the top of my head either well it depends because you have so many carriers that are deployed to go through a cycle where it's like six months getting worked up in the dock and then work up cycle for so many months and then deployed for six months and then they rotate out and then occasionally you have major overhaul so I would have to probably go to the latest version of naval aviation news and look at the at sea with carriers with the carriers and see how many are actually out there right now be able to build a little requirement you know we're working at it well I don't think there'll be an issue this personal opinion I don't think there'll be an issue with supply and demand the real issue will be is if we all go to all drones okay who's going to want to be a naval aviator if if it's all run by kids sitting at a console they're gonna call them and they'll probably be operational specialists or something that's a kind of a service cultural call right it was a money on the big of the Bay Road right well a lot of times in history you'll see they run short of pilots because of changes in the political climate or economics like say during the Vietnam War they had a pilot shortage because guys were fighting an air war with one hand tied behind your back and airlines were hiring so so why should I get shot at for you know not very good results when I could get out of the Navy and make make good money as an airline pilot and then when airlines are having trouble you know people would tend to stay in well yeah well okay here's a joke that my Hilo friends say how do most helo pilots view fighter pilots cold wet and scared any other questions when they face out a particular group of planes what decisions do they make with the ones that are remaining the recycling that sort of thing well for the aircraft they usually wind up at davis-monthan and for the Aviators a naval flight officers a lot of times they transition to another community or you know they put their time in and they retire what happens with some of them the Navy is unique in that naval flight officers are eligible to command units that will lead to flag rank because back in the 30s they passed legislation that said if you're going to command carrier units or aviation units you have to be aviation qualified now they made it for naval aviators and what they called naval flight observers and then became Nadel naval flight officers so they get the ticket punches in the different billets so that they can command squadrons and air wings and that sort of stuff so there is a career path for them not if your community gets eliminated that tends to cut down your chances for transitioning to something else what kind of horsepower would be required to bring a carrier up before well I think the the for assault class was two hundred eighty thousand horsepower I'd have to look in my book but you're talking 30-plus knots you've got hydrodynamics involved to the enterprise originally there was you know kind of naval myth that the enterprise could really book she had eight nuclear reactors and there's all kinds of see stories about she just takes off and roostertail out the back but I don't think I think a lot of that's either classified or C story well III know they they over designed the the enterprise because she had two reactors because they weren't sure you know how it would work out technology wise all the newer ones have got improved reactors but there's only two of them so and what point in the construction of the carrier did they adopt those were all baby changes they were laid down and it was adopted before they got to the point where that the changes would have major disruptions there have been other conversions where they've had to cut back what they've done in order to do the modernization but I don't know how far along they got when they made the decision to complete him as angle that carriers but what happened is some of the design features were just too hard to reconfigure like the elevator arrangement and so that's why the Forrestal and class had the elevate arrangement it did because it was sort of based on the hull design for the flush deck carrier you know one thing you forgot you're talking about the high line transfer movies okay I have a seat I have AC story for you I was a DA 115 as a squadron intelligence officer and at one point the squadrons mascot was Clyde the camel because when the squadron had translated the Suez Canal back in the 50s they adopted the callsign Arabs and so Clyde the camel was of course our mascot and when the squadron converted from a ones to a sixes they got some 16 millimeter footage of Clyde the camel in the Seattle Zoo you know camels are and we were gonna watch Clute which was the Jane Fonda Donald Sutherland movie and we had to first pick the movie and they had an implant bark staff had no staff they were just a board for a short while so they said the Admiral wants to see include well I don't think the Admiral did I think one of ADEs do so we were all grousing in the ready room and one of our officers said you know we ought to do we ought to splice them a Clyde right in the middle of the film so we got the Clyde you know 16 we pull it out several feet of Clyde and we got someone of the photo text to splice it into the middle of one of the reels from Luke we sent it up to the flag ranks never heard a word back next day they had already you know come and gone it was like one of those fly-by-night things so so we got next movie night the ready room was packed and we're watching Clute and it's a dramatic scene where someone is stalking you know her and Donald southern is like going up to the rooftop and he opens the door and there's Clyde going so that's my movie see story

Channel: U.S. Naval War College

Views: 13,872

Keywords: Andrew Faltum, The Supercarriers: The Forrestal And Kitty Hawk Classes, Aircraft Carrier (Ship Type), USS Forrestal (CV-59) (Ship), Narragansett Bay (Body Of Water), USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) (Ship), Cold War (Military Conflict), Naval War College (College/University), Lecture (Type Of Public Presentation), USS Saratoga (Ship), USS Constellation (Ship), USS John F. Kennedy (Ship)

Id: TNsXxHTcvyQ

Length: 45min 6sec (2706 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2015