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US Navy aircraft carriers
US Navy aircraft carriers continue to be the centerpiece of the forces necessary for operating forward. In times of crisis, the first question leaders ask is: “Where are the carriers?”
Often the presence of an aircraft carrier has deterred potential adversaries from striking against US interests. Aircraft carriers support and operate aircraft that engage in attacks on airborne, afloat and ashore targets that threaten free use of the sea and engage in sustained power projection operations in support of US and coalition forces.
The Nimitz and Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers are the largest warships in the world, each designed for an approximately 50-year service life with just a single mid-life refueling. USS Nimitz (CVN 68), USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) have all completed their refueling complex overhauls (RCOH) at Newport News, Virginia, with USS George Washington (CVN 73) and USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) currently in Refueling Complex Overhaul.
The lead ship of the next generation of aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) was delivered in 2017 as the force structure replacement for USS Enterprise (CVN 65), which was inactivated in 2012.
With a speed of 30+ knots (34.5+ miles per hour) Nimitz and Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers are also very fast.
Tiger Cruise
Dave Merk, former US Navy Mass Communications/ Photographer aboard USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, recalls on Quora;
‘Years ago (as in almost 2 decades now) When I was in the Navy, I got to witness a rather interesting race. We were deployed aboard USS Nimitz on something called a Tiger cruise. That’s the last part of the deployment where the ship would invite family members aboard for the final leg between Hawaii and our home port on the West Coast. The cruise was very popular, and many family members came aboard. I want to remember over a thousand and lot of the crew were asked to start their leave early to make room for the “Tigers”.
‘Anyway, during the weeklong cruise, the ship performed many shows for the tigers, including airshows, mock gun battles, firefighting and damage control drills, and finally near the end, this sort of quarter mile drag race between us and the other ships in our group.
‘Well, drag race, I guess if you replace sports cars with warships, and the quarter mile is actually more like a few miles, and we all had a slow running start so the ships wouldn’t drift into each other. Most of the ships in our group participated.
Drag race: USS Nimitz Vs Cruiser
‘With everyone on the flight deck watching, someone said “go” and the cruiser took off fast. That was impressive. I suppose if the race was only a quarter mile, the cruiser would win every time. The cruisers being light and fast, powered basically by 2 shaft 4 engine power plants [the LM2500 gas turbine is the main engine and there are 4 of them, 2 per shaft. Each engine is rated at 20,000SHP. For a total of 80,000SHP @ 1.3MfTlb of torque]. Rather than using the thrust, they gear it to the shafts to turn their screws. But anyway, they get the best proverbial “0–60” quarter mile win, hands down. And this was an older Ticonderoga class. I Imagine the newer Burkes might be even faster, but feel free to comment your knowledge.
‘However, after a couple minutes we could see that even though we were behind them, we were at least keeping up, if not slowly catching up with the other ships and sub safely behind us in the wake [modern subs are faster when submerged, so they didn’t really have a fair fight on this occasion]. Unfortunately for us, the race ended before we could catch them, so we took second place. But now the plot twist.
‘The captain then over the 1mc (intercom loudspeaker) revealed that only 3 of our 4 shafts were running, those of us who didn’t already know then learned that number 4, had been offline for much of the deployment. I guess revealing something like that when the deployment only a few days had left, wasn’t really a big deal and helped explain our second-place finish to those were expecting us to win. (Nimitz was scheduled for a major drydock overhaul once we got back and that was already pretty well publicized).
USS Nimitz nearly winning drag race with 3 out of 4 shafts running
‘Anyway, we nearly won that race on 75% power. I think if the race was longer, we would have certainly won. In the worst case after couple days(ish?) at flank speed, the cruiser would burn all its gas and loose its advantage while it slowed to refuel (feel free to comment if you know better), while us being nuclear could have just kept going. Looking back months before the show, I think what is impressive was seeing us do regular operations, flight ops and so on at regular operating speeds on only 3 of the 4 screws for most of our deployment. As pointed out in the comments, If any other ship lost an entire shaft, it would be limping, while Nimitz kind of just shrugged off like an Olympic sprinter can shrug off a mildly sore ankle, and still claim a medal.
‘So sorry, I Couldn’t tell you if an aircraft carrier is the fastest ship (the actual top speed is classified anyway), but if it’s in a race anything longer than a quarter mile, I’m not betting against it.’
Merk concludes;
‘Oh, if you ever get a chance to do one of those Tiger cruises, just say yes! It’s like you get to experience life in the Navy for a few days without actually having to join the Navy!’
Photo credit: U.S. Navy
