USS Nimitz - VIP Tour & Flight Deck Action

okay now if this was not one of the coolest things I ever got the opportunity to do this was a while back and I got a chance to go for 24 hours on the USS Nimitz we flew in on a cod a carrier on board delivery plane it was a c2 gray hand and this Nimitz here it cost about 8 1/2 billion dollars it's kind of like a Disney park I was deployed in 1975 this is the cod type airplane that we landed on in fact that's a movie we've just arrived on the ship we flew out of San Diego this ship is a thousand 92 feet long it's got a beam of 134 feet and when we arrived they were launching airplanes as this cool or what all the burners gone our buddies on not on the deck doing their jobs got the blast shields going down waiting for the next guy there goes the blast shields going up there's no rope barriers I'm not sure OSHA is aware of what's going on out there but we were having a good time anyway who's that handsome devil anyway so here they are launching off and I just couldn't believe this I mean when we came in they landed and it was basically you know you hooked the wire and all you could compare it to was that was a really bad landing it was hard yeah my one the deck of course these things designed for it a strong landing here these are basically f-18s was the main airplanes that they're we use and I think they had some like these six is or something this is the arresting cable down there that goes down inside we later got a chance to go down inside and visit the rooms where they were at I think they pay out about a hundred and seventy feet or something like that and they basically you know when he comes in he tries to hit that I think that third wire wham I we got it and it basically decelerates the airplane in a way that absorb the shock but at the same time not rip the airplane apart a team coming in trying to get the third cable and of course I think what happens is when they touch down on the deck they just about touch down on the deck they slam it and they afterburner in case for some reason they missed the wire they got to be able to be in a power situation to go around so to stop and I don't see the burners going but I think the throttle is up at some point they disconnect the cable and then these things will basically now this is a some kind of an observation plane that's not specifically a Cod but it's kind of big radar dome on the top they're probably looking out for enemy subs or you know I'm quite sure what those are some kind of missile or rocket or something but then we went downstairs you gonna see a lot of walking through the ship here because there was just I mean I can't remember the things I don't like about seven decks or something I'm not exactly sure but it's got the potential for nuclear power and I think they can load up and actually go out on the water for like 20 years and not have to refuel of course I don't know what they do about you know getting some food but that's what the cards are for I personally like mine with fried with tartar sauce I don't know about you but I feel like a rat looking for a piece of cheese I hope there's something good at the end of this we came down we had like a little bit of an arrival briefing here and got welcomed by everybody there was just so much going on and you got to realize you know I had asked ahead of time if I could go pro some of this you know so I was pretty much all over trying to take in everything and walking around and keeping up with a group so here we get a little bit briefing and to answer a few questions here and there it was interesting my opportunity to be able to do this came a gentleman by name a terrace lysenko he's doing one of the guys that you know was working with the Navy pulling some of the airplanes out of Lake Michigan and I had an opportunity to dive on a wild cat an SBD at some point anyway he gets the opportunity occasionally to invite people out on these things you can only do this every four years and eclis a rule where you can't take advantage of the situation but because of tariffs had been helping out the Navy he got an opportunity to invite friends occasionally and he called Mark Clark who I bought my first warbirds second warbird the t6 and the p-51d crops almighty from and Mark included me in the group so it was really really great and Steven Bush also from the bush beer and family came along as well and it was just a phenomenal opportunity they flew down and one of Stephens little private airplanes and I met him there in San Diego jumped on a smoker really quickly got down there we hooked up had a nice dinner the night before and the next day man we were in for a treat so here we are getting a chance to kind of see the room here where they control the opps on the deck and all that I'm gonna guy was going to show us here a little bit they've got like a little carrier deck down there that's a static one and they know which ones are being refueled they know which ones it's an exact copy of what's actually happening on the deck so they can see things from you know from a coordination perspective actually being this chair the handler upstairs just taking care of submission so the aircraft handling officer would be sitting in the stairs so this is a square model of flight deck everything this is basically what we have as far as the handlers si your situational awareness to see what's going on on the flight deck and move the aircraft around as well as the hangar bay downstairs so we have the fuel ease over here which is a main position it's 24/7 while we have service to the deck and this right here is you see the dual nuts right there the fuel net means that it's actually getting fewer and this is real time as we go ship on the East Coast actually Edinburgh I'm sorry that the sound quality is not better than it was but I was doing the best I could this was one of the one of the first GoPro karma cam things than I ever did so forgive me so on the flight deck we have about 400 issues people that can work up there at any given time usually when it rains is when you really find out that people that are remain Vettori up there because all the rest kind of scurry around and don't but the average age for the young folks is about eighteen years old and they're expected to be up there anywhere from a minimum of 12 hours to sometimes 18 to 20 hours depending bit challenging at best my left is the dog and the young lady's the pup back there that's the air wing counterparts or interface that we have just introduced and some of the other crew members and I'll explain what their job was onboard deck cam and then and actually there's the handler right there they're just the crew coordination on this was just off the chart that aircraft right now is refueling ii go in mobile any questions on that we call technology and then uh phonology you caught one of the four wires today you ran out 180 feet it didn't told you that that's how far it will actually let you take that track which tomorrow that's first timers here [Music] [Music] [Laughter] yes so we crawl all over this ship and I just kept you know video and any place I could different things a little brass valves and stuff you know of course all the doors are watertight in case they you know have some kind of a hall leak or something they can isolate it easily enough and all the you know that there's no drop ceilings or anything because it's all accessible for maintenance and inspection and stuff like that okay so this is the bridge basically where the captain sits Captain Kirk's here Danny's got the best view to the deck I think this is the most expensive penthouse on the show and then one thing you'll notice this is an angled deck carrier you see he's not taken off directly straight ahead these guys are but what happens with when they come in a land they land on the angled deck from a safety point of view because if they miss the wire and they go off the deck they actually go off the side of the ship instead of going off the end I think is it if you if you had an engine failure or something like that you dumped off the front of the boat the ship had run right over the top of you so in World War two they had straight decks which meant that they landed directly into the you know the the whole line of the ship but later after the war I think probably into Korean stuff I'm not exactly sure but eventually they came over the angle deck see so if he went off the ship there he'd go off the side so they just angle the ship slightly off the the wind to get the wind down the deck there they are retrieving the cable and obviously there is a lot of safety concern that goes on the deck here of things you could imagine if you weren't looking by honey or one of those things grab you and this ship actually has the ship's company as far as the sailors this has like between 3,000 and 3,200 sailors that operate the ship the Air Wing is about 1,500 people and then there's about another 500 people that you know do various other things it's be a Boy Scout compass got some exercise equipment up here in case we get lazy we're about a hundred and thirty five miles off the coast north and there's about 60 airplanes on this ship and they all get stored in the the hangar deck below which we'll see at some point and just inside the ship just goes and goes and goes maybe be out like a minute ago they should have been appeared the bridge so this group here I think basically you know helps control the you know the flight operations you know it's tough job sorry about that yes I think these guys control what happens within 5 miles of the boat they're basically the control tower and then beyond that there's like an air traffic control things that would do anything outside that five mile deal there's their traffic pattern on the boat generally they would come and make an overhead break you know turn base make it down went across when that land on the show and we have our licensed operator right here integrated support the maintenance Ramesh this was the basic info the aircraft is every one day reach how much really had I liked the same sign conferred hey we can actually tell which we can see in which video with Eclipse more they're talking on so and we're intact when it comes to this we're tag-teaming with the air traffic controllers sources so we're in control of I'm 10 miles of the boat and that is obviously they must have you know dual people on board with backup you know so they can rotate so when somebody's you know on staff some of these you know sleeping or resting or something because they've got to rotate everybody oh my god there was just so much going on everywhere I can't even imagine what it takes to even maintain this thing unlike the brass Hey [Music] different rooms for you know we're some of the higher crew stayed and we actually stayed it was basically a 24-hour deal there's the ship finding a chance to stay where along because I was trying to keep up with everybody but we basically we landed you know like maybe right after lunch we had lunch the next day and then we caught it off the ship and it was just really cool it's hot guys and everybody they have like different colored shirts they were to identify who's who just a instant quick recognition especially out on them on the flight deck Savan yeah it's like a pilot be free [Music] kind of like the the briefing quarters you know for the flight ops guys and it was a couple of guys they're deep briefing what they had done and and I think we got a little bit of a you know a video PowerPoint or something like that of what the what kind of airplanes were on the the the ship and any kind of what they did what their their program was come on in hey are you doing sir doing awesome yeah so this is a bit of a wealth I mean father rear-admiral and I don't think he's exactly in command of the ship but there's actually a command or the ship but then he's also on the ship controlling the whole fleet of which this ship is basically the head of his job please excuse my folks as they come around when they get water you can stand up and do it but but what I wanted to do is welcome alia I didn't get a chance to say hi to you when he landed wasn't that awesome coming in well I'm not we're a pro pick'em it's out so I'm a character striker commander and I always said to my folks that bring the DV then I said hey look I sometimes don't get a chance to do this because sometimes our office gets pretty intense and yeah and the rear admiral is just paid basically welcoming us on board he normally sometimes would have been too busy to do that but we were very fortunate to get a chance to meet him as he had a little bit of downtime are you there's Markham up Clark Kurtis aircraft this is the ship store we got a chance to go in there and check out a few things I bought a USS Nimitz hat this is where they load the you get her stuff right here and after cooling oh yeah so everybody got a chance to buy a little something in their little px store there I was gonna buy a Reese's Cup but tell us Frigga might be radioactive that was a cat launch we are in a room right below the cat launch hello what's happening you must be our hotelier she's gonna show us around oh no I neglected to take any video in the showers that are very interesting okay that evening we actually got a assignment morning as a chance to actually eat at the captain's table have dinner it was very nice but I didn't feel it appropriate to take the GoPro camera but we got to talk and you know different things and had a little celebration and I think they did some special things for us looking for the cheese here was the lunch room dinner a breakfast room you can imagine the logistics it takes to basically run a ship like this feedom take care of on the lawn or you got like 5,000 people that you're dealing with on this floating hotel warship oh my gosh our crew good morning everyone as Mark and Steve I'm headed to the end of the line that's mark them up just a little bit Clarke bought my first warbird from him eighty-six G so where you are in a breakfast room you check this pipe out here the runs over the room here it's powerful [Music] I don't think that's grape juice yeah here we are in the machine shop checking it out I think somebody said when the ship was built a lot of these tools were actually old when they got him and when they were and originally installed press the do all think I got one of those shaper I think I can just about match what they've got at the Fantasy of Flight shop when we really get going with act three we're gonna blow these guys away surface grinder here whoa that's a big Leblon late I don't know about you but I've always been impressed with a nice leblanc spinner with a nice rack of cutting-edge accessories I'm just saying monarch way this stuff was all put in when the ship was originally built like 37 years ago and the guy said it's probably was old then sheet metal shop little turtle hunt break shear a roller once we got the welding shop here [Music] got just tons of stuff I've got a welder homeless they kid the final fixers there here we are going down into the hangar deck which is just below the main deck where they store all the airplanes a lot of looks like APU equipment telex things like that there's the hand radar airplane f-18s they got a nice Oceanside view okay let's go see what we can find here in the hangar deck I did some maintenance on some f-18 oh thank God I don't have to collect these a six now only a face a mother could love is this cool or what another so there you have three elevator all on the one side at one point they took us out to the back of the ship there was a little place that was open in the back there was the only place on the ship where if somebody was a smoker they could go smoke yeah up and down elevators no that's what those are they roll the airplanes out on the elevator and then it takes them up to the deck they're literal elevators yeah see that yeah I see that right there he comes down the our goes out there and they lift them up to take him up to the deck or how would they get the planes up there yeah yeah I think mark went on the trip he was trying to see if they wanted to sell anything he could put on his website so if you see an f-18 pop up one day you'll not worry shoot a line over to another boat yeah pull it up here and they can either use these for fueling this boat or they can actually put fuel back on another boat [Music] easily yes he's on the clock smells good here what am i doing just throw those out by hand right I always wear goggles when I play with bombs storing the helicopters yeah we got some nice weather today huh so this morning we're gonna go up and we're going to do a fog walk down during the mod walk down this is an event we do twice a day every single day for me for the last 16 years I really enjoyed it so you got a red guy you've got the yellow guy I think we're gonna start at the other end of the deck and we're gonna walk down the whole ship looking for cameras people drop you know to fix that fell out of our pocket so they don't end up in the dead end the guys in purple are the refuelers they call them grapes wonder why purple guys green guys from a pilot tour their job is to actually shoot the aircraft off of the category now when we shoot it with a nolo like I said it's a functional test and they'll do that here once we get to the fantail they set enough word on the bow and the waist kind of blows one two three and four four aircraft elevators and 4ym you can see in the distance they're just about ready to start due to their a fob so here they come you know a lot of the crew gets out there and they're looking for foreign object damage which is anything that can get sucked up into the jet engines it was interesting while this was happening they were playing a bunch of like rock and roll heavy metal tins over the loudspeakers but we had to delete it off the thing or we would add a copyright issue but just imagine one of the famous rock bands playing something right now the as they were walking along he saw all the different colored shirts when a cat lunch deals it's all steam steam generator when they launch them and you launch off this thing in two and a half seconds and when we land it on the deck I thought that was just a bad landing you know we kind of stopped of course all the seats face backwards in the military of passenger airplanes like c-5s and you know the transport airplanes in for crash protection but when we took off oh my god that was so cool I mean in two-and-a-half seconds we went from zero to 120 miles an hour with her flying off the end of the ship it was pretty exhilarating [Music] what a museum here kind of like a little Museum in here [Music] there's Admiral Nimitz of course he was a famous World War to the head of the Navy and world war two in the Pacific yeah he was actually from Texas there's a Nimitz Museum in Texas and I got my SPD fuselage out over there yeah it was actually a wind machine use out on the movie sets in LA after the war so here we are doing our last lunch that actually looked like it might have been like an officer's well actually might have had separate eating places we get a little bit of briefing here before we launch off back home filling out a little customer survey there we go I'm not sure what DV stands for probably means look at me I'm an idiot and maybe I'm a civilian or something like that guys thanks man good deal Misha good deal all right thank you sir thank you I gotta tell you the biggest biggest take-home from this whole trip was how amazing the crew worked together there was a lot of just young kids out there 18 19 year old kids and the whole thing just a crew coordination was the most impressive thing forget that if we can only take the Washington there we go now we've basically all lined up waiting for them to get us ready to have the airplane set in position and lowered the back end of the cod I guess it'll seat two Greyhound stands for carrier on board delivery and we are about to become a package to be delivered back to the mainland at the base in San Diego there's a elevator going down taking two f-18s down to the hangar deck down below there was just so much going on on the ship all the time it was hard to keep track outright maybe the Ling's fold beckoned drops loading cargo passengers all the seats face backward for crash protection which worked for you when you land it because they landed pretty hard and stopped pretty fast that you went back in the seat but on the takeoff man you had to put your hands up on the seat in front of you and man when you accelerate it was like it was Chuck man it was kick butt one two and a half seconds we were going 20 miles an hour I think that'd be a probably beats a probably one of the best rail dragsters now look what I do oh this camera work for my freaking Facebook fans I hope everybody appreciates this five two nine four that's how they would have identified my body had we not successful takeoff the door is closing your in-flight movie will start shortly yeah I had to sign off couldn't use the camera here we are back at the San Diego big big big naval base there we made it still in one piece this was an amazing opportunity and I think the Navy and all the people that just put all this together and allow you no civilians to come out and appreciate what they do really cool that was a lot of fun I enjoyed that [Music] I like this old building back you soon [Music] like sir [Music] that pretty much ends my trip I'm heading up to the airport I got a hotel up by San Diego I got early flight out in the morning look forward to getting home teller by how much fun I had [Music] life is good [Music]

Channel: Kermit Weeks

Views: 3,253,610

Rating: 4.7063894 out of 5

Keywords: Kermit Weeks, Fantasy of Flight, USS Nimitz, Aircraft Carrier, USS Nimitz SuperCarrier, Navy Ships, Flight Deck, Admiral, Aircraft Carrier Tour

Id: fkuLSG47Gv4

Length: 38min 18sec (2298 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/IchDien]

Did he literally have to wait 5 years before this was okay to post on the internet from an info sec perspective? Or did he just forget he recorded it?

[u/Hawken_Rouge]

is there anything like this for LHD's? this is really interesting

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