The Nimitz Class: The Nuclear Powered Supercarrier

hello really walking back to a brand new episode of mega-projects I as always and your host Simon and in this one well who doesn't love learning about absolutely enormous military vehicles that cost many billions of dollars well that's what we're doing today because we're covering the Nimitz class aircraft carrier but before we get into all of that I want to say that this video is brought to you by the wonderful people at World of Tanks what is water tanks well it's a free-to-play historical action game and you can get started today with seven premium days 500 gold and the premium tanks the t 127 there is a link below more on them in a bit let's get into it [Music] they are vast floating worlds dreadnaughts powering through the oceans their decks a frenzy of activity a fighter jet is directed into position where it waits momentarily before hurtling across the flight deck and lifts into the sky and I think I'm correct in saying that that happens it gets up to speed at like 120 miles an hour or something absurd in like two seconds it's wild I'm sure get into it whew man-made objects in this world can compare to the sight of an aircraft carrier in full motion able will drink I've of activity that has been immortalized in countless movies and when it comes to aircraft carriers one class has set the standard for nearly 50 years they are limited stars carriers now despite receiving a relatively mixed critical reaction Top Gun was one of the biggest films of 1986 for a moment they are singing weight critics weigh in on aircraft carriers but no we're talking about Top Gun one of the best movies ever made by the way it's the tale of a maverick fighter pilot who didn't play by the rules who not to subtly was codenamed maverick and it's a movie bursting with merely ego heard the thrill of high-speed dogfights with Russian MiGs whether this film was quite your thing or not that's a question for another day but the film also offered the world some of the most thrilling scenes ever filmed on board an aircraft carrier the film's iconic opening on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise is both a very well-done and a fascinating insight into the working of an aircraft carrier the intricate chaotic web of support personnel going about their work while the imperious fighter jets tore through the sky in front of a Setting Sun with the US Navy reporting a recruitment spike of 20,000 extra applicants after the release of Top Gun I could believe it it was clear that the film had a profound impact on many people how these recruits dealt with the vigorous Navy training process was probably another matter entirely but the allure of the Navy and indeed these vast floating airfields was now more than ever suddenly we all felt the need for speed and of course young Simon definitely at one point would have liked a bit of fighter pilots until 2017 which saw the commissioning of the newer USS Gerald Ford class which is kind of similar but if you'd really like me to do a video about that kind of outlining the differences it's definitely a mega project so let me know below anyway the nimitz-class carriers were the largest warships that were ever put to sea ten of these vast floating contraptions were launched between 1972 and 2006 from the Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia which also happens to be the largest drydock in the Western Hemisphere sort of a mega project in itself I'm not sure that a drydock is interesting enough one of these videos but again if there's enough demand below if I see a comment and it's got like a thousand thumbs up about doing a video about a drydock guess who's gonna do a video about a drydock the first commissioned ship of the class was the USS Nimitz named after world war ii United States Pacific Fleet Commander Fleet Admiral Chester W Nimitz who by the way I've done an entire video about on my by graphics channel which I might link to you below but I often forgets and maybe I'll have to search for it the nine carriers the followed orders don't watch it it's okay the nine carriers that followed which form the Nimitz class all had their own names most named after former US presidents but also for one former politician Carl Vinson a man who held his seat in the House of Representatives for over 50 years and it was hugely influential in the expansion of the u.s. Navy despite being in the same class not all of the ships are identical there are slight differences in design to the carrier's especially between the first three Commission's between 1975 and 1982 and what came after but most of the significant distinctions come with the onboard technology as you can imagine the technology available to carriers has changed radically from the first carrier in 1972 to the final carrier in 2006 and I'm not sure if we mentioned it later in the video but I remember doing some reading around this and one cool thing is like electromagnetically launching the carrier's instead of using like pulleys and stuff again if you want me to do a video about those Gerald Ford carriers use the comments so let us talk about the money the earliest versions cost around 4.5 billion dollars each which you know sounds expensive but is even more expensive when you consider that is twenty seven point six billion dollars today and it with all of the stuff you got to bear in mind like the richest man in the world is not Bill Gates anymore but Bill Gates was worth like a hundred billion so he could only afford like three of these if he sold everything which is crazy they're so expensive the George HW Bush the final nimitz-class carrier and one which was always designed as a bridging carrier to the newer Gerald Ford class cost six point two billion dollars in 2006 which is seven point four billion dollars today so good news they got the price down over time but that isn't the ongoing operational costs that is just the cost of building one of these things in a 1998 report from the US Government Accountability Office it stated that the estimated operating cost for a Nimitz carrier over its 50-year service is eleven point seven billion dollars around two hundred and thirty-four million dollars per year is a million dollars a day that's crazy I like 700 thousands that cost covers general maintenance and personnel costs but importantly it does not cover its refueling complex overhaul or its decommissioning cost so you know they're just tack those on later each carat it's like you know I don't know whenever I go to America it's like you go out for a meal and it's like yeah your meals like twenty dollars and they're like oh yeah but there's tax and service so it's really thirty dollars why do you just put that in the price in the menu like you normal coat like every other country each carrier is required to undergo a refueling overhaul once an incentive service imagine taking your car for a service but you know on a much much bigger scale the primary reason for this is to service the nuclear reactors but it also allows the ship to be outfitted with the latest technology as well as receiving and you lick of paint to leave it gleaming like it once was but this is not a quick job the refueling complex overhaul of the USS Ronald Reagan took four years to complete and cost just 2.6 billion dollars then there is the future cost of taking them out of service these carriers have always been designed to have a 50 years life mean in the USS Nimitz is in its final five years unsurprisingly decommissioning a mighty nuclear aircraft carrier is not particularly straightforward or cheap the cost estimate to simply put the Nimitz safely out of service is believed to be between 750 million and 900 million dollars the figure made all more extraordinary given that a non-nuclear aircraft carrier can be decommissioned for just 53 million dollars so how does all of this cost add up well if we consider everything one of these carriers built today is likely to set you back in the region of twenty-two point four billion dollars over 50 years but this is only calculated in terms of the 2020 dollar with further inflation over the course of service that number is going to rise dramatically obviously the first and most obvious thing that strikes you when you see a nimitz-class carrier is that they are really really big at the water line they measure some 317 meters in length but 333 meters overall with their slight overhang of the flight deck that makes it nine meters longer than the full height of the Eiffel Tower which is also really big they have a beam or width of 41 meters which is about the same as for London double-decker buses lined up lengthways and this ship has a full load displacement of a hundred and two thousand eight hundred and twenty tons if we look at another aircraft carrier as a comparison the UK's HMS Queen Elizabeth the third largest carrier in the world it measures 280 metres in length just over 50 metres shorter than the nimitz-class Vera mind you know the length of the ship it's not just 50 meters longer when you get that extra length you also get extra height and extra beam if we're being nautical it makes the whole thing just extra massive indeed that HMS Queen Elizabeth only displaces 65,000 tonnes so 40,000 tonnes less than the American nimitz-class carriers the ship's come with 558 officers and 5454 enlisted Navy personnel now I'm going to talk about that a little bit later in this video but this includes both the crew of the aircraft carrier itself and the carrier airwing which takes care of the aircraft on board the ship the Nimitz carriers are powered by two a 4w nuclear reactors housed in separate compartments for you know safety steam from these reactors spins for propeller shafts producing a maximum speed of just over 30 knots that's 34 miles per hour or 56 kilometers an hour this has always been the accepted top speed of these carriers but officially the speed is classified so some have speculated that it could be quite a bit higher than that through nuclear fission these reactors heat up water that is passed through four turbines which in turn power for Braun's propellers each with a diameter of seven point six meters to 25 feet in a way to 30 tonnes the two rudders that sit behind the propellers at eight point eight meters high six point seven meters long and each weigh 50 tons the carriers of a maximum power of 260,000 brake horsepower 190 megawatts which is enough to power forty seven thousand five hundred American homes now you might be thinking oh well they're gonna be using a lot of fuel to get all of that done well kinda they use nuclear power obviously so you know they use a lot of power but they don't have to be refueled for twenty years and this is one of the most mind-blowing things about the power density of nuclear power like that one refueling that they go through every 20 years once in their operational life is all they need the amount of diesel not being burned is absolutely just mind-boggling anyway before we get into more mind-boggling stuff it's time for me to tell you about World of Tanks now we're talking about ships today but another type of battle is done in tanks and that's what well the tanks is all about it's a historical action game with a huge tank Arsenal to choose from tank destroyers artillery light medium or heavy tanks 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talk about armaments on aircraft carriers it's important to remember that the carriers themselves are not primarily designed to attack but rather to act as a staging base for an air attack it would be unheard of for a nimitz-class carrier to ever be on its own especially in hostile waters they may be big they may be bad but they also have a soft underbelly and they need protection from the scary world out there the group of ships that were typically accompany an aircraft carrier is known as a carrier Strike Group though each group is modeled on the supposed threat it would typically consist of the carrier itself along with its carrier airwing one or two cruisers two or three destroyers one or two submarines and at least one supply ship so yeah if you're some enemy country yeah that's why we don't mess with America I forgot but that's not to say that carriers are entirely helpless far from it the nimitz-class carriers pack a hell of a punch when it comes to defensive capabilities with three or four NATO our em7 sea sparrow missile launchers used for defense against aircraft and anti-ship missiles as well as three or four 20 millimeter phalanx ciws missile defense cannons none of these are messing around 20 millimetres it's a serious gun they also come bristling with countermeasures which they used to confuse incoming missiles or torpedoes these consist of force to pick an S AR BOC and I don't know if I'm getting all the military terms here because it could be Barkai military people could correct me below I don't know for the future but it's often hard to look up that stands for super rapid bloom off board chaff now if you ever seen powder like substance fired wards missiles in films this is it the trap itself is usually made of tiny pieces of aluminium and they are used distract a missile they kind of like their boom the carrier's also have six barrel MK 36 decoy launchers which deploy an infrared flare countermeasure to be used against heat-seeking missiles but I'm not done yet they also come with an SS TDS torpedo defense system and an aien slq 25 Nixie torpedo countermeasure system the carrier's also use AM slq 32v radar jamming and deception systems to detect and disrupt hostile radar signals oh my god this is a lot of complicated military stuff but I'm guessing they're really well defended to cap it all off they come with their own version of body armor a 6.4 centimeter Kevlar encases vital areas of the ships such as the propulsion system now kevlar is a strong synthetic fiber that is also used in bulletproof vests now it's not gonna do much against a missile attack but it is gonna be enough to repel certain bullets from those critical areas now the question of whether the Nimitz carriers carry nuclear weapons it's never really been answered the u.s. Navy does the old classic Glomar response I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear missiles this is perhaps understandable as you don't want the world to know exactly where your nuclear weapons are and these carriers they're not exactly discreet in 2007 a protest erupted in the Indian city of Chennai over the presence of the USS Nimitz in the city's Harbor as a result Strike Group commander Rear Admiral John Terrence Blake made a statement that the u.s. policy is that we do not routinely deploy nuclear weapons on board Nimitz make of that what you will I guess [Music] now of course an aircraft carrier doesn't count for much unless it comes with some aircraft a carrier will never be deployed without one of ten air carrier wings there are operational organizations that may combine different squadrons and indeed different types of aircraft on average that will consist of 60 to 70 aircraft but the nimitz-class carriers can accommodate a maximum of a hundred and thirty f-18 Hornets or between 85 and 90 different types of aircraft it's worth noting that the aircraft carrier and air carrier wing are very much separate in how they operate along with the pilots the carrier Air Wing is composed of support personnel in various roles in total they make up around 2,000 of the total crew of the carrier's watching a busy flight deck is very cool but also a bit of a bewildering spectacle there's a lot of activity happening in this relatively confined space there's planes taking off and landing there's weapons being loaded and there's people running around in what appears to be every color of the rainbow if you ever wonder what these colors mean well it's your lucky day I'm gonna tell you about them the seven different colors used on an American carrier flight deck each with a particular job it might seem a little strange when you think about traditional Navy uniforms but this simplicity allows the flight deck to operate seamlessly even in high pressure circumstances function over style there we suppose so let's have a look at the individual colors those wearing purple are known as the grapes and are in charge of fueling the aircraft when you see somebody on a flight deck gesturing wildly chances are they're gonna be wearing yellow these are the aircraft handling officers whose role is to direct planes on the flight deck before takeoff and after landing those wearing blue are directed by those in yellow and often act as messengers between crews as well as moving aircraft around the flight deck now the hardest job on the deck falls to those in green who are responsible for the catapults and arresting gear which we're going to get into in a moment this is also one of the most dangerous jobs on the carrier as it's not unheard of for wires to snap across the deck at high speed cutting through anything anything in their way it's no coincidence that those in Reds need to be given a wide berth also known as ordnance men their role is to adjust transport and load weaponry arms of the planes sensible they're wearing the color red the plane captains in brown are the support crew directly responsible for the launch recovery and general well-being of their aircraft these are often the most junior members in the squadron and are assigned a particular aircraft to maintain interestingly on the side of an aircraft there are typically two names the first is of course the pilots but secondly is the planes captain a sign of just how important this role is those in whites are a varied Bunch but typically it will include safety inspectors squadron plane inspectors and landing signal officers who talk down approaching planes while making sure their landing area is clear so now you know what everyone does let's move on [Music] the flight deck comes with four steam catapults each measuring ninety nine meters which are used to launch the fighter jets even with their considerable length these flight decks are far too short for fighter jets to take off unassisted the catapults used by lining up the aircraft over a track on the deck with a piston attached to the nose gear off the aircraft a build-up and then sudden release of steam launches the plane forward and within two or three seconds it is traveling fast enough to take off these launchers go from zero to a hundred and seventy miles an hour in just two seconds comparison here even the 2016 Mercedes Formula One race car needed around eight seconds to reach that kind of speed just another comparison like top-of-the-line sports car three and a half seconds to get to sixty so yeah there the different game the flight decks of the nimitz-class carriers are designed to launch four planes like this every single minute when landing the aircraft uses the arresting gear to rapidly slow it down though the format varies slightly the basic idea is the same on most aircraft carriers the series of steel wires laid out across the landing area which catch the aircraft's tail hook as it comes in to land the aircraft's kinetic energy is transferred to hydraulic dampening systems below the carrier deck which slow the aircraft down before bringing it to a full stop all of the nimitz-class carriers carried four wires to be used for the arresting gear except the USS Ronald Reagan in the USS George HW Bush which both have three as the fourth was deemed unnecessary on the later models in pictures we often see these flight decks packed with aircraft but most are stored in hangars below deck and can be brought up in one of four enormous elevators travelling between the hangars and the flight deck [Music] as I mentioned earlier the first Nimitz class carrier the USS Nimitz was launched in 1972 and commissioned three years later in 1975 this was the exact year that the Vietnam War ended and the last prolonged combat operation of that style that the US was involved in in the last thirty years all the carriers have played at least some part in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm the USS Theodore Roosevelt was involved in combat operations while the for others in service at the time played supporting roles after 9/11 both the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Theodore Roosevelt were some of the earliest participants in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and this is the paradox about these carriers they're designed for prolonged combats and while they've all seen service the need to have ten of them has never actually been met they are often used for ceremonial or diplomatic purposes I mean who can forget President Bush's mission accomplished speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 or they participate in international practice exercises but perhaps more with prestige in minds rather than necessity much of the work done by the Nimitz carriers has been humanitarian relief including in the Philippines after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and across the Pacific in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami these are absolute monsters of the oceans but the world that they entered has fundamentally changed there have been calls in the u.s. to rethink its approach to Navy water perhaps to focus on speed and stealth rather than size but with two of the largest carriers ever seen under construction that probably won't happen anytime soon and we've got more on those beasts in just a moment unsurprisingly considering what they used for the Nimitz carriers have experienced their fair share of accidents over the years the most notable came in 1981 when an ea-6b Prowler crashed on the flight deck of the USS nimitz killing 14 and injuring 45 during the investigation of the crash traces of marijuana were found in many of the aircrew involved though they stopped short of blaming the crash on it it did uh sure in mandatory drug testing for all service personnel I mean if you can't operate a forklift without a clean drug test you definitely shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an air our carrier Zen in 2008 a fire broke out on the USS George Washington while traveling to its new base in Japan the total of 37 sailors were injured with the fire causing 70 million dollars in damage an investigation found the fire had been caused by unauthorized smoking improperly stored flammable refrigerant compressor oil as astonishing as these carriers are their replacements are already in production the Gerald R Ford class carriers which includes the USS jeremiah ford commissioned in 2017 will push the boundaries of aircraft carrier capabilities even further in truth the earliest version at least will closely resemble the nimitz-class carriers as their hulls are very much alike the new carriers are slightly bigger 7 metres in length to be exact but with roughly the same amount of water displacement the most significant differences will be the technology used including be brand new electromagnetic aircraft Launch System mentioned that before it's extremely cool if the USS Nimitz is retired on schedule in five years the Magnificent 10 will be reduced to 9 but we're going to see plenty of the nimitz-class carriers for some time the USS George HW Bush was commissioned in 2006 which means in theory we should see this carrier class at sea until 2056 until then these vast floating airfields will continue to prowl the seas the future of the super carrier however is far less certain with ballooning construction costs and a growing perception that smaller carriers may provide better more cost-effective use the USS Navy is currently evaluating future orders of these super carriers likewise countries around the world seem to be slowing in their drive to accumulate such vast floating warships there may be a dazzling sight to behold but are they really worth it in almost every avenue of warfare we are now developing smaller faster and more powerful machines so it seems logical that aircraft carriers will follow a similar route though we will still see these bare mouths of the water for many years to come the days of the colossal monster they might be coming to an end so everyone I really hope you enjoyed that video I thought I think aircraft carriers are cool I understand why everyone's smaller stuff these days for loads of good reasons but I mean that ridiculously cool and massive and scary if you liked this video smash that like button subscribe to this channel why not all if you want to support this channel keep us making lots more videos World of Tanks get it for free link below thank you for watching you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 1,020,058

Rating: 4.8997288 out of 5

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Id: 698wE744JzI

Length: 24min 49sec (1489 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020