Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, John in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and held the tech are you? It is time for a classic tech Stuff episode. This originally published on April eight. It is the follow up to last week's classic episode. This one is titled How Aircraft Carriers Work, Part two. Enjoy the weight of the structural steal alone sixty tons just in steel on that ship. That's not including all the all the aircraft and the people and all the other stuff. The total area of the flight deck, I think we said this already four and a half acres, the length of the flight deck one thousand nine ft. But again, they don't get to use all of that. Some of it's for launching, some of it's for recovery. Uh, it's it's broken up into different ways. Some of it's just storage. The width of the flight deck and it's the widest point two hundred and fifty seven ft wide, which sounds wide, but then again, you've got planes, you've got people. You got the pilot house, that pilot house, the island island. That's right. Pilot house where you come up with that it sounds like a restaurant. Well you you would technically call it that on a boat, but this is significantly larger than a boat. I'm going to go down to the pilot house for some shrimp. Okay, uh oh, this is interesting. The weight of each anchor, each anchor thirty tons, and in each each link in the section of anchor chain weighs three hundred and sixty pounds. Massive a couple of people just to lift a Look. Each propeller weighs sixty six thousand, two hundred pounds. Each of the rudders weighs four sorry, forty five point five tons. Yeah, that's amazing. Um, all right, how about the storage capacity for aviation fuel, which we would assume would be essential for something like that. Because they're not making power from the the the reactor for the planes, they still have to carry fuel for the actual three point three million gallons is what they carry? That sure is? I mean think about that next time you go to the Georgia Aquarium and you've got that one million gallon tank. Okay, number of telephones on board. We're getting into some of the funner stuff. Um, funner, more fun the most fun, the most fun stuff, it's the bestest stuff is coming up. The number of telephones on board twenty five hundred telephones. The number of televisions on board three thousand. What are they doing watching TV? They got a lot of They got a ship to run. Now you are occasionally allowed a little downtime, and maybe I'm being harsh, I don't know. Anyways, you'd be quite the quartermaster. Thousands, a thousand miles of electrical cable is on board when each one of these ships. Um, let's see, let's go down to some of the other stuff. Um. Number of dentists on board five ye five dentists. So you gotta have that if you have thousands of people actually do have dental offices aboard. They carry enough food to feed six thousand people for seventy days. That's that's that's eighteen thousand meals a day. Yes, that's right, because you're multiplied by three eight thousand meals, and you're right, that's exactly right. So the amount of mail that's processes on board from you know, from the post office, one million pounds of mail goes to all these people throughout the throughout the year. Um, let's see number of medical doctors on board, and this is actually surprisingly low six six considering yeah that you're that's like one per thousand. That's that's a pretty low, right, How about just two more? To wrap it up here, the number of haircuts that they that they give every week fifteen hundred a week. But there's only one barbershop, so that that that dramatic to be fair, Come on, haircut aboard a navy vessel often or involves a pair of electric clippers and not much. Yeah, that wasn't as fun as I thought it was, No, no, no. But but another another one to think about is that you've got about people who are part of the air wing aboard the vessel. Now, the air wing, that's all the people necessary for the flying and main main maintaining of aircraft. So it's not just the pilots, it's also the crew that that the flight cruise, the maintenance cruise, that sort of thing. Then you've got another three thousand who are the ship's company. They're the ones who keep the ship running and have their own jobs aboard there, including people who are super secret like the people who maintain the nuclear reactors, who even aboard ships end up being almost legendary because you don't necessarily know who it is who works on that duty. That it's not always something that is common knowledge aboard ship. There's a there's an amazing and truly amazing ten hour documentary series that PBS did called Carry, where they follow a bunch of sailors aboard the U s S. Nimits, the lead ship of the Nimitz class aircraft carrier, and they talk about their roles aboard the ship, their decisions of going into the Navy, when it's like living aboard this kind of thing. It follows a deployment during the wars in Afghanistan, and so it actually follows these people for a really long time and it's fascinating. And one of the things they talked about is how, yeah, I don't think I've ever met anyone who works in the nuclear reactor area, or if they do, they don't. Yeah, they don't say, which is kind of interesting. I like that. I like that that secretive element too. Yeah. So it's it's really again, it's it's a very specific kind of world. And the the crew quarters I had referred to the beds, are referred to as racks. You have a rack of of you know, and the racks are tiny. I mean, I don't know if you've seen pictures or video of it, but they there's barely enough space for you to climb in to get into your little bed. And they are stacked three to uh to a section, so you've got a lower bunk of middle bunk in an upper bunk. All of these are, like I said, there's just enough clearance for you to climb in essentially. Um. And in fact, I watched the video of a guy getting in one for the first time and he's like, I'm sure I'm going to get better at this. This was the top one he did. He have a bunch of like bruises on his forehead. Yeah, I had a couple of lumps, you know here there uh. And you have like a tiny locker and maybe a foot locker to keep your belongings in otherwise, you know, and you're just sharing this tiny space, and it might be a lot of people sharing a relatively small amount of living space, including a lot of people sharing one bathroom. I mean, it's well, it's no cruise ship. And you know, even even if you do go on a cruise ship, oftentimes you'll you'll get into your room and you realize like, well, this is a pretty small room, but you've got it pretty plush compared to the military. It's luxury compared to the military. So yeah, really really an amazing piece of technology. Now I'm gonna go through a little bit more about the the various aircraft classes that exist, the types of aircraft carriers that have existed in the United States history, and then I think we can conclude by talking a little bit about the the Forward class of super carrier that is soon to be part of the United States Navy and how it has a couple of interesting, interesting new technological improvements. UM that might surprise you because it's not it's not necessarily it's not that it's bigger. It's not that it's not bigger than the nimits really um. And it's not that it's necessarily faster, or that it's able to carry a significantly larger UH component of aircraft. It's more about how it's more efficient and it needs fewer people aboard it, which is kind of cool. So, going back to the earliest days, the first aircraft carrier that the United States had was referred to as a Langley class aircraft carrier. It was the USS Langley. If you hear something class, that means that the name of the class is generally the name of the lead ship of that class, and then other ships in that class were built as using the first one as a reference point, like that's the model, and then all the other ships are going to be built based on that, largely because manufacturing processes at this stage mean that we can actually make copies of stuff. So there might be a dozen Langley class ships out there. There could could have been, yeah, I understand, But then but the first one was named the Langley. Yes, got it. So in this case it's a single ship class, meaning that there was only one ever made is a bad example in my part, but but only because we're talking about the very first one. Um it was. It was a commission in nineteen twenty two as an aircraft carrier. However, that's not how the Langley got got her start, And of course we refer to ships as ladies. So she had a previous life as a collier, which is a type of bulk cargo ship. So she was converted from cargo ship to aircraft carrier. She was originally launched as a cargo ship in nineteen thirteen. No, boy, she the conversion process began in nineteen twenty lasted two years. She was recommission in nineteen twenty two, and she on a wooden deck. Right, yeah, she was she She did not have all the amenities of a modern aircraft carriers. She was slow. She was only capable of traveling at fourteen knots, which is less than half of what we're talking about with the super carriers these days. I could that's a it's a huge problem if you're only going fourteen knots because you were not able to generate amount of air speed that airplanes would really need to take off. So it was not not This is one of the reasons why the Langley is the only one in her class. Um or was the only one, I should say. Now, there was a captain in the Navy who ended up taking control of the Langley. Uh He was given her command and ended up establishing a lot of the handling procedures that became standard operating procedure on aircraft carriers after that. His name was Captain Joseph Reeves. He would eventually rise to the rank of admiral. Uh so a lot of the things that ended up being used every day on aircraft carriers. Were that they were established because Reeves put those practices into as policy. He said, this is the way we're going to do things. Um. Now, the Langley was damaged by Japanese dive bombers in nineteen forty two and the surrounding US ships were forced to scuttle the Langley, so she was sunk by by US forces on purpose. Next, we have the Lexington class, named after the USS Lexington that was commissioned in nineteen seven. Uh. It was originally a battle cruiser, not an aircraft carrier. Strange, so the first two were not necessarily they didn't start out life as an air rack exactly. Uh. And there were two ships in the Lexington class, so really the first three aircraft carrier started as something else. Now here's the interesting thing about why we converted. We being the United States, converted the battle cruiser into an aircraft carrier. So you may have heard of things like a disarmament treaties. This is not a new concept. This does not just refer to the nuclear age. It goes back further back in the old days, like the nineteen twenties. The big weapons were these giant navy ships, and so there was a treaty signed, the Washington Naval Treaty of nineteen twenty two, which placed strict limitations on how many warships a nation would be allowed by international law to have. If the United States built to battle cruisers or actually, i'm sorry, battleships, they weren't even they weren't battle cruisers. Now they were battle cruisers. So they built two battle cruisers, they would go over their limit. However, aircraft carriers at the time were not considered really warships. They were considered support. So instead of building battle cruisers, they just took the the bones of the battle cruisers and converted them into aircraft carriers. Yeah. So this was still in the construction phase. It wasn't like they they had them out and sailing and then converted them. It was all all from the UH at the shipyards. UH. The leadership of the class, the Lexington, was sunk in nineteen forty two during the Battle of the Coral Sea that Scott mentioned. The other was the Saratoga, which made it through World War Two. She was heavily damaged in a couple of different battles, but she made it through and she was later sunk on purpose during a test of nuclear weapons. Yeah, yeah, this is interesting. Huh. Yeah, it's when you start you decide, Hey, we're just gonna we're gonna park this here boat right off the bikini and then we're gonna blow it up. Yeah, but you know what, how else are you going to test that? How else are you going to figure out how that ship is going to stand up to an attack like that? As it turns out, it doesn't, but it certainly proved it in that case. Yeah, so, very interesting fate for those two. Then you have the Ranger class, another single ship class of ships. So in other words, it's almost funny to call it a class when there's only one, but that's what we do. So she was the commission in nineteen thirty four and deep commission in nine. And this is the first ship that was built to be an aircraft carrier. Um. She was only seven hundred thirty ft long or two two point five meters. I say, oh, because that's much shorter than today's super carriers. Had a full crew complement of two thousand, four hundred sixty one people and uh. She was in the Atlantic Ocean during World War two. Because she was too slow to be deemed useful for the Pacific theater. And now you said seven thirty feet, but that was probably sufficient for prop aircraft. Oh yeah, yeah. And and again she was built specifically with aircraft carrier in mind, so this was not a conversion. So she was, you know, designed with those those elements in mind. At that point, all we're still talking about kind of the straight uh landing takeoff strip that caused so many problems early on. Next, we have the York Town Class, which was commission in nineteen thirty seven. There were three ships built in this class. Of course, the lead ship is the York Town. Um. She was sunk in nineteen forty two at the Battle of Midway, So when we talk about Midway classes, guess what that's named after. Anyway. The Hornet was another York Town Class ship. She was sunk also in two at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The third ship was the original U S. S Enterprise. The original well original in the sense of aircraft carriers. Um. Now you know what, I don't think until this morning, when you were talking about I don't think I knew that there were two USS Enterprises. Yeah, yeah, so this one is This one was a York Town class ship. There would later be an Enterprise class ship also known as the U. S. S. Enterprise. So if you guys have been watching a lot of Star Trek and you get confused about which enterprises which, because there's Enterprise, you know, a B, C, D, and then of course there's the previous ones. Uh that dates back all the way to the Navy days, I mean, and of course they named the Enterprise after this particular ship. This was the most decorated ship in US Navy history. It's on the bottom of the ocean. Well you can't, you know, and no one lives forever going through this list. I mean, man, there's a bunch of them down there. Yeah. Yeah, Well she she actually was. She made it through. She was not sunk the way the Yorktown and the Hornet were. That's something. She was seven seventy ft long or two hunts and had a complement of two thousand, two hundred seventeen crew. Next we get to the Wasp class. It's another single ship class, only one ever made. She was commissioned in nineteen forty but sunk in nineteen forty two during the Guadalcanal campaign by a Japanese submarine. She was six eight feet long or two hundred ten and she carried a crew of two thousand, one hundred sixty seven during wartime or around eighteen hundred during peacetime. Now, her construction came down to politics. This was one of the things I thought was fascinating. So you remember that treaty image. In the ninety two treaty, it limited the amount of tonnage. The United States was able to dedicate two aircraft carriers, but they had fifteen thousand ton tonnage left over after every thing else, and they said, well, we don't want that to go to waste. Let's build a an aircraft carrier that will make up this tonnage that we have been allotted. And the Wasp was that ship. That's strange because okay, you're talking, you're talking about at ton aircraft carrier. Yeah, compared to like the thirty thousand plus sixty yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I mean it's it seems like it's so small and how how did that even work? It's called a wasp, very thin metal. Yeah yeah, And she only lasted two years before she was sunk. We'll be back with more about aircraft carriers after this quick break. Now, now we get into one of the like what was the backbone of the United States Navy during World War Two. That's the Essex class of aircraft carriers commission in nineteen forty two. There was also an extended bowel variation. The bow is the front end of the ship. There was an extended bow variation that was commissioned in nineteen four. There were twenty four ships built in the Essex class. There were another eight that had been planned but were canceled before they could be built. Uh So this was the most plentiful of them. Out of those twenty four, fourteens saw combat during World War Two. Not a single one was sunk. That's impressive. So all of them made it through World War two. Uh. They range because there's an extended vowel version. They ranged from about eight hundred twenty feet which is almost two to eight feet which is about two hundred seventy You know, that kind of makes sense though, because we were talking about the role reversal and how you know that became the primary player then the aircraft carrier was during World War two, so they when they went out, you know, these fourteen ships that went out and saw saw action. They were surrounded by support ships and they were protecting them fear sleep, and that's probably the difference. That's probably why all four teen made it through that. I mean, clearly the biggest danger you you face there. I mean, there are plenty of dangerous lots of them, but the biggest one would be submarines because those would be the hardest to detect. Now, a lot of the aircraft carriers, in fact, all aircraft carriers to my knowledge, have anti submarine um UH strategies where they deploy what is essentially a decoy that makes a lot of noise, so a submarine ends up focusing on that. Torpedoes go towards that as opposed to going to the actual aircraft carrier, so you don't want to make a lot of noise. Then you have Independence Class commission in ninety three. This was another conversion. These were light aircraft carriers. They were conversions of Cleveland class light cruisers. So if you look at the list of Independence class ships, you'll see that they have multiple names because they had already had a life as a light cruiser but now had been converted into aircraft carrier. And they got named a new name in that case. Yeah, that's weird because sailors generally think that it's bad luck to rename a ship points called it something, But I guess it was technically a different ship by then. Anyway, cruisers are small to medium sized warships. They usually act as fleet support. And World War two, you the United States had need of a lot more aircraft carriers, but they are expensive, they take a lot of time to make, so there weren't a whole lot of options. The best option was to convert stuff that they already had into aircraft carriers rather than have to build new ones. Makes sense, Yeah, it makes sense. Um, So nine ships were converted ultimately in this way. Now, next we have the Midway class, which was commissioned in There were three of these. They were longer than the Essex class. The leadership of the class. The Midway remained in service until nineteen two too. Not a bad not a bad return on investment is a surprisingly long run. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the aircraft that the United States has depended upon, some of those aircraft have been in service for a really long time. But this is this is truly you know, impressive to me, and they might have changed a little bit between nine. They probably got a couple of refits where they changed changed up. Probably you know where Hey, you finally got the compass to stop wobbling. Um. Yeah, So the last action that the Midway saw was an Operation Desert Storm. She took took part in that, and then, uh, she is now a museum in San Diego, California, which is where I got to. Is the case with with several of these Yeah, a lot of these aircraft carriers are a lot and I'm not mentioning all of them by name because obviously that would We're gonna be running super long if I did that. But a lot of them are now museums in various local Asians. Some of them are in the process of being converted into museums for some places. Um, it's a great use for them. Yeah, it's really it's fascinating to really get an actual look at what the living conditions are like, to see these racks and see how tiny those bunks are, and just think, like anyone who hasn't served time on board a ship, uh you know, I had had had any service board a ship like that. It really kind of gives you a new appreciation for the sacrifice that the men and women who choose to do that. You know what they go through, no doubt. Um. Next, we've got the Saipan class, which was commission in nineteen forty six. There were only two ships built in that class. They were shorter four point six ft long two eight meters or so, and they carried a complement of seventeen hundred. They were designed to carry forty two aircraft, including twelve bombers. They had a relatively short service life because, uh well they just weren't as useful once we started getting the development of the jet engine planes right. They were far too short for that. So they were converted into command and communication ships in the nineteen fifties. Um So that meant that we needed to have a new class of ship designed specifically to accommodate jet fighters. And here we arrive. It's like the modern era. Yeah, this is where we're making that that. You know, we're still not quite the nuclear era, but we're at the super carrier era. This is where we arrive at the aircraft carrier. That wasn't the big one that that started but wasn't completed. The United States class the USS United States didn't. They only work on the beginning production of this thing for just a few days before it was canceled. They had laid the keel down. Depending upon the the account you read, it's between five and nine days. Like the keel was laid out, and within within a week or so it was canceled. And uh. It was supposed to be a ship that would be one thousand ninety ft long or so. This would have been the longest aircraft carrier up to that point. Um she was supposed to be able to carry twelve to eighteen heavy bombers and fifty four jet fighters. Now she was canceled by order of the Secretary of Defense Lewis A. Johnson, who sided with the Air Force in an argument that was going on between the Air Force and the Navy. The Air Force said, listen, we're in the nuclear age, and the best investment is for us to build lots and lots of long range bombers that can fly out over a target drop a nuclear weapon. This is gonna be to terrence will never have a war again. And Johnson said, this is the way I want to go, and it led to what was called the Revolt of the admirals. So you had these admirals in the Navy who all said, no, aircraft carriers are going to still be important. We're going to need a place that we can, uh, we can maneuver into different parts of the world and use as a base of operations for our our air strategy, for our own floating island. Yeah. So you had the Navy arguing that we still needed to have aircraft carriers and the Air Force arguing that no, we did not. Then a little conflict broke out, the Korean War, and the Korean War illustrated that nuclear deterrents would not work in every kind of outbreak of violence, and the United States believed that it had a real stake in the outcome of the Korean War. A fear of the spread of communism was a large part of this. It was all happening as the Cold War is raging, and the Navy said, see, we need aircraft carriers, and so back to building aircraft carriers. The Navy went, now't this something, I mean the research and development. I don't know how long that took before, you know, prior to to the start of the build, but to get nine or ten days or five days or whatever into the build and then just decided to quit. That's remarkable. Yeah, yeah, exactly what was Yeah, I mean it's we're talking like a hundred million dollars at that point. Then we get the Forestal class. This is the one that had the the famous fire, the USS forest All. That was commissioned in nineteen fifty five. There were four of them built um and it was the first actual aircraft carriers to be designated as super carriers. All four were decommissioned in the nineteen nineties, and they were one thousand seventy ft long about three and they still used steam turbines for propulsion like they steam boilers. They didn't have nuclear reactors yet. The crew compliment for that was four thousand three. So we're getting bigger. Someone down there shoveling colon. Yeah, a lot of them actually. Yeah, you know, throw another log on the fire. We need to go a little faster, it's what they're doing. More steam, more steam. Next, we had the Kittie Hawk class now Kitty Hawk obviously nay named after the test flights that the Wright brothers did at Kitty Hawk. Uh. That was commission in nineteen sixty one. There were three ships built in that class, the Kitty Hawk, the Constellation, and the America. UH and they also used steam turbines. Then we get to the Enterprise class and the next USS Enterprise UH commission on November nineteen sixty one. And UH, the USS Enterprise is the only ship in this class there They've never built any other ones. UH. It was one thousand, one hundred one ft long or one thousand hundred feet two inches long three hundred thirty five point six four meters um. It's flight deck was two d fifty two feet wide or seventy five point six meters. It displaced eighty nine thousand, six hundred tons with a full load. Top speed was more than thirty knots. Had more than three thousand, three hundred fifty members of the ship's company and another two thousand, four hundred eighty as the air wing crew. They had a total of five thousand, eight hundred thirty people aboard this thing. That's a huge crew, huge crew. UH. It's armament included anti ship missile defense systems and anti aircraft weapons, and it could hold more than sixty aircraft. UH. And it's to be decommissioned this year. This year so this is one that's probably going to end up being a museum someplace, I would hope. So, yeah, and I hope that they hang up pictures from Star Trek everywhere. All Right, we'll be wrapping up the subject of aircraft carriers in just a moment after this quick break. Next we have the Kennedy class. Uh. This is a subclass of the Kittie Hawk class of aircraft carriers. It was commission there's only one of them, or there was only one of them, the John F. Kennedy, and it was decommissioned in two thousand seven, quite as long as the Enterprise class, but they had a similar propulsion system, which means, you know, the Enterprise being one that was the first one to have nuclear reactors for propulsion. The Kennedy class also had it, so unlike the Kittie Hawk class, this is why it's a subclass, right. It didn't have the steam boilers like Kitty Hawk did. It had nuclear reactors, So that's why it's considered a subclass. Unto itself, it could carry more than eighty aircraft, but it was decommissioned because it was also the most expensive ship to maintain in the fleet and it was due for a major overhaul, and budget cuts said that that was not gonna happen, so they decommissioned it. Yeah, so instead they built the Nimitz class, and this is what we're using today, the largest warship on the seas right now. It's named after World War Two Pacifically Commander Chester W. Nimitz, and the Nimits Class was commissioned on May third, nineteen sev just a short time before I was blinked nineteen seventy five. And we've gone all the way through to two thousand and fifteen or two sixteen really before we come to the next version of class or class of supercarrier, which is the class. Yeah. So she's been in this class of ships has been in service for for more than four decades. Yeah, that's a long time. The Navy has ten Nimits Class aircraft carriers. They are one thousand, ninety two ft long, three thirty two point eight five and one at thirty four at the beam that's fours. That's that's at the bottom of the ship. So here's the thing. The other thing about aircraft carriers is they kind of had this thing where they're narrow at the bottom and they kind of flare out with wise at the top, and obviously you need to have a lot of surface area for your flight deck. That's another element of them. You know, it's interesting. I mean we've got ten supercarriers. That's pretty cool. Yeah, no, it is really cool. Um, the ship's company is between three thousand and thirty two hundred uh crew members plus pilots and crew for the air wing, plus five hundred staff. So your total is between five thousand and five thousand, two hundred people per super carrier. So it's a lot of folks on there. That is I mean the logistics of of maintaining everything that you have to do. I mean we've I know we've talked about it, but even the mail service, the sewage system, uh, fresh food or fresh food and water, um, you know, all of this stuff. I mean, the barbershop, the dentist, the doctor is all that coordinating everything has just got to be an incredible undertake. Yeah, I mean that's that's why you have to have this huge number of staff aboard. I mean you sit there and think, like, what are they doing while they're doing They're making sure everything runs smoothly. They have to. Yeah, I mean it's a military operation and everybody is there for a specific purpose. That's the other thing is that there's six thousand people on board, roughly six thousands that have a specific job that they're doing. It's not like a cruise ship where you go on and you know, more than half the people are there just to have a good time and relax. The other half are there to work. You're not gonna find a lot of people having a good time aboard an aircraft carrier. Well, yeah, maybe they only I get a little little like basketball in or something occasionally. Yeah, sure, But but the thing is they've all got a job. I mean, every single one of them. So it's it's it's just a different way to look at things. Yeah, and um, and you might you know, we haven't talked a lot about the defense systems aboard aircraft carriers, largely because their main their main weapon are the aircraft, right, but they do have various uh defense systems aboard them. With the limits you're talking about C Sparrow missile system, which is an anti aircraft and anti missile weapon and also has the foalanx c I WS defense system to protect against anti ship missiles. It's essentially an automated twenty millimeter gabling gun that tracks and shoots down incoming missiles. Yeah. That's watching videos of this thing working is terrifying. Yeah. And also these this serviced air missiles that use radar seeking UH signals to phone in on whatever they're bouncing the signals off of. So that is another cool thing to watch. I mean to watch the watch the missiles reaching their target based on radar. And they also have a rolling air frame missile mounts which can launch surface to air missiles, which is another anti ship cruise missile defense system. So in other words, if an incoming missiles coming towards the aircraft carrier, you can launch one of these to try and UH and and destroy the missile hits. And then you already talked about the things that they call the nixies, right, Yeah, that's the for the anti submarine. Yeah. What a cool idea that they deploy decoys behind the ship in order to draw in the torpedo file. Very cool. I think of it kind of like flak for aircraft, where you're trying to make sure by by by jettisoning, jettison ng uh lots of stuff that a missile could mistake for the aircraft that you can escape without being being hit by the weapon. Clever. So now we're finally at what is coming up next. So the Nimitz class is the current aircraft carrier the United States Navy depends upon. The next is the Ford class. As we mentioned, it's the same length more or is you know, essentially the same size as the Nimitz class, but it has a wider flight deck. Uh, it's four ft wider. It's got two or fifty six ft wide or seventy eight, and has two nuclear reactors to provide the propulsion power and electricity. Has same general top speed as the limits more or less. Again, the Navy doesn't really want to show, uh. But the systems aboard the Ford require fewer personnel. So the total crew of a Forward class ship, remember limits is five thousand to five thousand, two hundred Forward class four thousand, five hundred thirty nine. How did they cut the crew down? It's it's incredible that they have streamlined system so that it requires fewer people to maintain and oversee. Uh. And it can also hold more aircraft than the Nimitz class vessel, more than seventy five of them. Similar armament to limits. Um, and it has some advance and aircraft launches. Uh, and one particular that we need to mention. This is how we're going to conclude. We're gonna talk about the difference. So we had talked about the steam catapults earlier. Yeah, the the the Ford class is changing. We're finally getting away from these steam powered pistons that launch aircraft. They're switching to an electro magnetic aircraft launch system also known as EMLS. I like this idea. It's a really cool idea. I gotta say that. You know, my first my initial thought of this was are they going to be able to shorten the decks? Are they're gonna be able to make smaller aircraft carriers? But but then I thought, well, they still need to store the aircraft. It's still gonna need a massive ship. Um, it's not gonna get dramatically smaller. But they might be able to shorten the length of the takeoff area where they might be able to provide more runaways, more takeoff areas, because there's some that have as many as they can launch three or four airplanes. Actually, you know what, the most I've ever seen launched at one time is three simultaneously, but yeah, you could have like four or five catapult areas, and the emails ones can reset much faster than the steam ones. Within forty five seconds they can reset to be able to launch another aircraft. Now, it's probably gonna take longer than forty five seconds for you to get the next aircraft hooked up and ready to go, but that's how long the system requires before it can launch again. So it's very fast. There's some downsides I'll get to it in the second, but the general way this works is that it works on the basic principles of magnetism, right where uh like, polls on the magnet repel and opposite poles attract. So remember that shuttle we talked about with the steam powered one, same sort of thing. You've got a shuttle there, and you have a leading edge the front side of the shuttle, the part that the toebar is gonna connect to, and then you have the back edge of the shuttle, and you've got these two rails that are on either side of the shuttle, just like the pistons would be on the steam powered one, but instead of using steam, you're using electricity to generate magnetic fields. And you are pulling the shuttle in the front, you're creating an opposite charge, so it attracts the front of the shuttle as it starts to you know, it wants to move toward that opposite it's going to slam into the other end. And then you use the same charge on the back to push the shells, so you're pulling and pushing it at the same time. And by changing, by fluctuating this magnetic field at a particular speed down the length of these rails, you propel the shuttle very very quickly down the rails. Now, the power of that push is dependent on a couple of different things. The length of the rails, which in this case are about three feet in length, and the amount of current you're putting through it means you've got to put a lot of current. We're talking about a lot of electricity, a huge amount. We're talking one hundred million watts per launch, which you sound like dr Evil. One hundred million what's doing the pinky thing? Just in case you guys can't see. Also, that's the same amount of electricity a small town would use in that same amount of time. So every time your launch, you're using within that forty five seconds of of launch and recovery. You're using essentially the same amount of electricity a town would use in that. But let me tell you something, who cares Because you've got a nuclear reactor. You're creating it yourself. You're using what you create. It's not like you're you're taking it from somebody else to use it. Yeah, they don't have an extension cord leading all or I don't mean to trivialize it right now what I mean, but I mean it's interesting and I wonder how many Okay, I wonder what safety aspects this brings out? Our safety concerns that brings up for crew members working on the deck. Well, because there's a lot of crew members that each have their own job and they're you know, they got their head down to what they're supposed to be doing. There's gonna be brand new procedures for this, no doubt. Sure. Yeah, it's it requires a smaller crew than the steam powered version does. But obviously that crew does need to be alert because if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, I mean, when those jet engines, uh fire up. I read I read a story about a guy aboard an aircraft carrier who got sucked into the intake but did not get sucked into the actual jet engine itself. He suffered injuries, but they were not not critical injuries because he didn't get pulled all the way into the engine. He was just stuck in a terribly uncomfortable position right at the very entrance of it. But that's a real concern, you know, And that's going to be a concern whether it's a steam powered one or electromagnetic because because again, the pilot is still going to have to power up full throttle so that they can take off properly. Okay, I was getting I was getting more to the point of, you know, somebody whose job it is to to hook up the shuttle to the to the the landing gear, and if they mistakenly touch you know, I don't touch the metal on the plane and the metal on the on the deck here at the same time. Um I can I understand. But there's also there's also huge dangers with the steam powered Yeah. Well, I mean you're talking about a massive amount of steam under huge pressure. Something's going to throw a plane off of a ship. I mean, it's gonna be it's gonna be dangerous no matter what. Right. So this has been one of those things that some people have claimed has held up the development of the Ford Supercarrier because obviously, like we're saying, you need to make sure the system is going to work, it's going to replace something that already exists. So there's some who would argue, well, why are you replacing something that has been proven to work, And the answer is that, well, this system could potentially take up much less space. You still have to have a massive amount space just for the power generator to send the electricity to the rails, but it's still going to be smaller than the steam uh pistons that you would be using, at least directly under the deck um and uh you know it uses again a mall or crew, so you don't need to have as many people a border aircraft carrier. Military is gonna like that. Yeah, so uh, you know, not the most electrically uh the efficient device maybe, but still really fascinating. Yeah, maybe I should clarify that military budget people are gonna but the but the thing is, I still wonder, I wonder if it's going to be any faster than the steam system, or if it's going to be more capable than the steam system as far as you know the launch distance, the launch time, because we said that it launches a plane in like in two seconds and it's going a hundred and sixty five miles per hour when it at the end of that of that travel, well, I mean it is the difference between changing the electric current along the rail versus the mechanical action of a piston being pushed forward. So I guess you're going you're going one hundred and sixty five miles per hour instantly. Yeah, instead could approaching that and then at launch your acceleration could be even faster. I would imagine, I mean I I I also imagine that, they said it. So it's not that because obviously we don't want to cause injury to the pilot or damage the vehicle. But yeah, a that that sort of speed. So uh, this was really a lot of fun to talk about, and um, you know, when we first started, I wasn't sure if we were going to get two episodes out of it, but we sure did. Yeah, yeah, we did, I can tell already. So here here's another peak behind the curtain where you new listeners out there. Sometimes we don't know how long an episode is going to be and we don't know how um you know, you know whether or not something's gonna be one part or two parts. And the funny thing is you've already listened to part one and this is the end of part two. But we didn't know it was going to be in the part two until I looked down at Scott's timing device and saw that we're well over an hour and a half. If we wanted to release this as one episode, you were giving them all the secrets, I know, right well, I mean, come on, we just had tech Stuff seven episode, so I feel like I feel like we've had a few moments, me and the listeners probably, so, Scott, thank you so much for joining me for these two episodes. Are really appreciated. You know what. Once again, I had a lot of fun talking about this. You know way more about aircraft carriers than I do, obviously, but I had a great time and it's always a good conversation. So thank you for inviting me, and I'd gladly do it again. Fantastic and next time I swear I'll pick something car related. I hope you enjoyed that classic episode about how aircraft carriers work. Will be back with an all new, old episode next week. I think I'm trying to parse that. I don't know. I need more coffee. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, John in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and held the tech are you? It is time for a classic tech Stuff episode. This originally published on April eight. It is the follow up to last week's classic episode. This one is titled How Aircraft Carriers Work, Part two. Enjoy the weight of the structural steal alone sixty tons just in steel on that ship. That's not including all the all the aircraft and the people and all the other stuff. The total area of the flight deck, I think we said this already four and a half acres, the length of the flight deck one thousand nine ft. But again, they don't get to use all of that. Some of it's for launching, some of it's for recovery. Uh, it's it's broken up into different ways. Some of it's just storage. The width of the flight deck and it's the widest point two hundred and fifty seven ft wide, which sounds wide, but then again, you've got planes, you've got people. You got the pilot house, that pilot house, the island island. That's right. Pilot house where you come up with that it sounds like a restaurant. Well you you would technically call it that on a boat, but this is significantly larger than a boat. I'm going to go down to the pilot house for some shrimp. Okay, uh oh, this is interesting. The weight of each anchor, each anchor thirty tons, and in each each link in the section of anchor chain weighs three hundred and sixty pounds. Massive a couple of people just to lift a Look. Each propeller weighs sixty six thousand, two hundred pounds. Each of the rudders weighs four sorry, forty five point five tons. Yeah, that's amazing. Um, all right, how about the storage capacity for aviation fuel, which we would assume would be essential for something like that. Because they're not making power from the the the reactor for the planes, they still have to carry fuel for the actual three point three million gallons is what they carry? That sure is? I mean think about that next time you go to the Georgia Aquarium and you've got that one million gallon tank. Okay, number of telephones on board. We're getting into some of the funner stuff. Um, funner, more fun the most fun, the most fun stuff, it's the bestest stuff is coming up. The number of telephones on board twenty five hundred telephones. The number of televisions on board three thousand. What are they doing watching TV? They got a lot of They got a ship to run. Now you are occasionally allowed a little downtime, and maybe I'm being harsh, I don't know. Anyways, you'd be quite the quartermaster. Thousands, a thousand miles of electrical cable is on board when each one of these ships. Um, let's see, let's go down to some of the other stuff. Um. Number of dentists on board five ye five dentists. So you gotta have that if you have thousands of people actually do have dental offices aboard. They carry enough food to feed six thousand people for seventy days. That's that's that's eighteen thousand meals a day. Yes, that's right, because you're multiplied by three eight thousand meals, and you're right, that's exactly right. So the amount of mail that's processes on board from you know, from the post office, one million pounds of mail goes to all these people throughout the throughout the year. Um, let's see number of medical doctors on board, and this is actually surprisingly low six six considering yeah that you're that's like one per thousand. That's that's a pretty low, right, How about just two more? To wrap it up here, the number of haircuts that they that they give every week fifteen hundred a week. But there's only one barbershop, so that that that dramatic to be fair, Come on, haircut aboard a navy vessel often or involves a pair of electric clippers and not much. Yeah, that wasn't as fun as I thought it was, No, no, no. But but another another one to think about is that you've got about people who are part of the air wing aboard the vessel. Now, the air wing, that's all the people necessary for the flying and main main maintaining of aircraft. So it's not just the pilots, it's also the crew that that the flight cruise, the maintenance cruise, that sort of thing. Then you've got another three thousand who are the ship's company. They're the ones who keep the ship running and have their own jobs aboard there, including people who are super secret like the people who maintain the nuclear reactors, who even aboard ships end up being almost legendary because you don't necessarily know who it is who works on that duty. That it's not always something that is common knowledge aboard ship. There's a there's an amazing and truly amazing ten hour documentary series that PBS did called Carry, where they follow a bunch of sailors aboard the U s S. Nimits, the lead ship of the Nimitz class aircraft carrier, and they talk about their roles aboard the ship, their decisions of going into the Navy, when it's like living aboard this kind of thing. It follows a deployment during the wars in Afghanistan, and so it actually follows these people for a really long time and it's fascinating. And one of the things they talked about is how, yeah, I don't think I've ever met anyone who works in the nuclear reactor area, or if they do, they don't. Yeah, they don't say, which is kind of interesting. I like that. I like that that secretive element too. Yeah. So it's it's really again, it's it's a very specific kind of world. And the the crew quarters I had referred to the beds, are referred to as racks. You have a rack of of you know, and the racks are tiny. I mean, I don't know if you've seen pictures or video of it, but they there's barely enough space for you to climb in to get into your little bed. And they are stacked three to uh to a section, so you've got a lower bunk of middle bunk in an upper bunk. All of these are, like I said, there's just enough clearance for you to climb in essentially. Um. And in fact, I watched the video of a guy getting in one for the first time and he's like, I'm sure I'm going to get better at this. This was the top one he did. He have a bunch of like bruises on his forehead. Yeah, I had a couple of lumps, you know here there uh. And you have like a tiny locker and maybe a foot locker to keep your belongings in otherwise, you know, and you're just sharing this tiny space, and it might be a lot of people sharing a relatively small amount of living space, including a lot of people sharing one bathroom. I mean, it's well, it's no cruise ship. And you know, even even if you do go on a cruise ship, oftentimes you'll you'll get into your room and you realize like, well, this is a pretty small room, but you've got it pretty plush compared to the military. It's luxury compared to the military. So yeah, really really an amazing piece of technology. Now I'm gonna go through a little bit more about the the various aircraft classes that exist, the types of aircraft carriers that have existed in the United States history, and then I think we can conclude by talking a little bit about the the Forward class of super carrier that is soon to be part of the United States Navy and how it has a couple of interesting, interesting new technological improvements. UM that might surprise you because it's not it's not necessarily it's not that it's bigger. It's not that it's not bigger than the nimits really um. And it's not that it's necessarily faster, or that it's able to carry a significantly larger UH component of aircraft. It's more about how it's more efficient and it needs fewer people aboard it, which is kind of cool. So, going back to the earliest days, the first aircraft carrier that the United States had was referred to as a Langley class aircraft carrier. It was the USS Langley. If you hear something class, that means that the name of the class is generally the name of the lead ship of that class, and then other ships in that class were built as using the first one as a reference point, like that's the model, and then all the other ships are going to be built based on that, largely because manufacturing processes at this stage mean that we can actually make copies of stuff. So there might be a dozen Langley class ships out there. There could could have been, yeah, I understand, But then but the first one was named the Langley. Yes, got it. So in this case it's a single ship class, meaning that there was only one ever made is a bad example in my part, but but only because we're talking about the very first one. Um it was. It was a commission in nineteen twenty two as an aircraft carrier. However, that's not how the Langley got got her start, And of course we refer to ships as ladies. So she had a previous life as a collier, which is a type of bulk cargo ship. So she was converted from cargo ship to aircraft carrier. She was originally launched as a cargo ship in nineteen thirteen. No, boy, she the conversion process began in nineteen twenty lasted two years. She was recommission in nineteen twenty two, and she on a wooden deck. Right, yeah, she was she She did not have all the amenities of a modern aircraft carriers. She was slow. She was only capable of traveling at fourteen knots, which is less than half of what we're talking about with the super carriers these days. I could that's a it's a huge problem if you're only going fourteen knots because you were not able to generate amount of air speed that airplanes would really need to take off. So it was not not This is one of the reasons why the Langley is the only one in her class. Um or was the only one, I should say. Now, there was a captain in the Navy who ended up taking control of the Langley. Uh He was given her command and ended up establishing a lot of the handling procedures that became standard operating procedure on aircraft carriers after that. His name was Captain Joseph Reeves. He would eventually rise to the rank of admiral. Uh so a lot of the things that ended up being used every day on aircraft carriers. Were that they were established because Reeves put those practices into as policy. He said, this is the way we're going to do things. Um. Now, the Langley was damaged by Japanese dive bombers in nineteen forty two and the surrounding US ships were forced to scuttle the Langley, so she was sunk by by US forces on purpose. Next, we have the Lexington class, named after the USS Lexington that was commissioned in nineteen seven. Uh. It was originally a battle cruiser, not an aircraft carrier. Strange, so the first two were not necessarily they didn't start out life as an air rack exactly. Uh. And there were two ships in the Lexington class, so really the first three aircraft carrier started as something else. Now here's the interesting thing about why we converted. We being the United States, converted the battle cruiser into an aircraft carrier. So you may have heard of things like a disarmament treaties. This is not a new concept. This does not just refer to the nuclear age. It goes back further back in the old days, like the nineteen twenties. The big weapons were these giant navy ships, and so there was a treaty signed, the Washington Naval Treaty of nineteen twenty two, which placed strict limitations on how many warships a nation would be allowed by international law to have. If the United States built to battle cruisers or actually, i'm sorry, battleships, they weren't even they weren't battle cruisers. Now they were battle cruisers. So they built two battle cruisers, they would go over their limit. However, aircraft carriers at the time were not considered really warships. They were considered support. So instead of building battle cruisers, they just took the the bones of the battle cruisers and converted them into aircraft carriers. Yeah. So this was still in the construction phase. It wasn't like they they had them out and sailing and then converted them. It was all all from the UH at the shipyards. UH. The leadership of the class, the Lexington, was sunk in nineteen forty two during the Battle of the Coral Sea that Scott mentioned. The other was the Saratoga, which made it through World War Two. She was heavily damaged in a couple of different battles, but she made it through and she was later sunk on purpose during a test of nuclear weapons. Yeah, yeah, this is interesting. Huh. Yeah, it's when you start you decide, Hey, we're just gonna we're gonna park this here boat right off the bikini and then we're gonna blow it up. Yeah, but you know what, how else are you going to test that? How else are you going to figure out how that ship is going to stand up to an attack like that? As it turns out, it doesn't, but it certainly proved it in that case. Yeah, so, very interesting fate for those two. Then you have the Ranger class, another single ship class of ships. So in other words, it's almost funny to call it a class when there's only one, but that's what we do. So she was the commission in nineteen thirty four and deep commission in nine. And this is the first ship that was built to be an aircraft carrier. Um. She was only seven hundred thirty ft long or two two point five meters. I say, oh, because that's much shorter than today's super carriers. Had a full crew complement of two thousand, four hundred sixty one people and uh. She was in the Atlantic Ocean during World War two. Because she was too slow to be deemed useful for the Pacific theater. And now you said seven thirty feet, but that was probably sufficient for prop aircraft. Oh yeah, yeah. And and again she was built specifically with aircraft carrier in mind, so this was not a conversion. So she was, you know, designed with those those elements in mind. At that point, all we're still talking about kind of the straight uh landing takeoff strip that caused so many problems early on. Next, we have the York Town Class, which was commission in nineteen thirty seven. There were three ships built in this class. Of course, the lead ship is the York Town. Um. She was sunk in nineteen forty two at the Battle of Midway, So when we talk about Midway classes, guess what that's named after. Anyway. The Hornet was another York Town Class ship. She was sunk also in two at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The third ship was the original U S. S Enterprise. The original well original in the sense of aircraft carriers. Um. Now you know what, I don't think until this morning, when you were talking about I don't think I knew that there were two USS Enterprises. Yeah, yeah, so this one is This one was a York Town class ship. There would later be an Enterprise class ship also known as the U. S. S. Enterprise. So if you guys have been watching a lot of Star Trek and you get confused about which enterprises which, because there's Enterprise, you know, a B, C, D, and then of course there's the previous ones. Uh that dates back all the way to the Navy days, I mean, and of course they named the Enterprise after this particular ship. This was the most decorated ship in US Navy history. It's on the bottom of the ocean. Well you can't, you know, and no one lives forever going through this list. I mean, man, there's a bunch of them down there. Yeah. Yeah, Well she she actually was. She made it through. She was not sunk the way the Yorktown and the Hornet were. That's something. She was seven seventy ft long or two hunts and had a complement of two thousand, two hundred seventeen crew. Next we get to the Wasp class. It's another single ship class, only one ever made. She was commissioned in nineteen forty but sunk in nineteen forty two during the Guadalcanal campaign by a Japanese submarine. She was six eight feet long or two hundred ten and she carried a crew of two thousand, one hundred sixty seven during wartime or around eighteen hundred during peacetime. Now, her construction came down to politics. This was one of the things I thought was fascinating. So you remember that treaty image. In the ninety two treaty, it limited the amount of tonnage. The United States was able to dedicate two aircraft carriers, but they had fifteen thousand ton tonnage left over after every thing else, and they said, well, we don't want that to go to waste. Let's build a an aircraft carrier that will make up this tonnage that we have been allotted. And the Wasp was that ship. That's strange because okay, you're talking, you're talking about at ton aircraft carrier. Yeah, compared to like the thirty thousand plus sixty yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I mean it's it seems like it's so small and how how did that even work? It's called a wasp, very thin metal. Yeah yeah, And she only lasted two years before she was sunk. We'll be back with more about aircraft carriers after this quick break. Now, now we get into one of the like what was the backbone of the United States Navy during World War Two. That's the Essex class of aircraft carriers commission in nineteen forty two. There was also an extended bowel variation. The bow is the front end of the ship. There was an extended bow variation that was commissioned in nineteen four. There were twenty four ships built in the Essex class. There were another eight that had been planned but were canceled before they could be built. Uh So this was the most plentiful of them. Out of those twenty four, fourteens saw combat during World War Two. Not a single one was sunk. That's impressive. So all of them made it through World War two. Uh. They range because there's an extended vowel version. They ranged from about eight hundred twenty feet which is almost two to eight feet which is about two hundred seventy You know, that kind of makes sense though, because we were talking about the role reversal and how you know that became the primary player then the aircraft carrier was during World War two, so they when they went out, you know, these fourteen ships that went out and saw saw action. They were surrounded by support ships and they were protecting them fear sleep, and that's probably the difference. That's probably why all four teen made it through that. I mean, clearly the biggest danger you you face there. I mean, there are plenty of dangerous lots of them, but the biggest one would be submarines because those would be the hardest to detect. Now, a lot of the aircraft carriers, in fact, all aircraft carriers to my knowledge, have anti submarine um UH strategies where they deploy what is essentially a decoy that makes a lot of noise, so a submarine ends up focusing on that. Torpedoes go towards that as opposed to going to the actual aircraft carrier, so you don't want to make a lot of noise. Then you have Independence Class commission in ninety three. This was another conversion. These were light aircraft carriers. They were conversions of Cleveland class light cruisers. So if you look at the list of Independence class ships, you'll see that they have multiple names because they had already had a life as a light cruiser but now had been converted into aircraft carrier. And they got named a new name in that case. Yeah, that's weird because sailors generally think that it's bad luck to rename a ship points called it something, But I guess it was technically a different ship by then. Anyway, cruisers are small to medium sized warships. They usually act as fleet support. And World War two, you the United States had need of a lot more aircraft carriers, but they are expensive, they take a lot of time to make, so there weren't a whole lot of options. The best option was to convert stuff that they already had into aircraft carriers rather than have to build new ones. Makes sense, Yeah, it makes sense. Um, So nine ships were converted ultimately in this way. Now, next we have the Midway class, which was commissioned in There were three of these. They were longer than the Essex class. The leadership of the class. The Midway remained in service until nineteen two too. Not a bad not a bad return on investment is a surprisingly long run. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the aircraft that the United States has depended upon, some of those aircraft have been in service for a really long time. But this is this is truly you know, impressive to me, and they might have changed a little bit between nine. They probably got a couple of refits where they changed changed up. Probably you know where Hey, you finally got the compass to stop wobbling. Um. Yeah, So the last action that the Midway saw was an Operation Desert Storm. She took took part in that, and then, uh, she is now a museum in San Diego, California, which is where I got to. Is the case with with several of these Yeah, a lot of these aircraft carriers are a lot and I'm not mentioning all of them by name because obviously that would We're gonna be running super long if I did that. But a lot of them are now museums in various local Asians. Some of them are in the process of being converted into museums for some places. Um, it's a great use for them. Yeah, it's really it's fascinating to really get an actual look at what the living conditions are like, to see these racks and see how tiny those bunks are, and just think, like anyone who hasn't served time on board a ship, uh you know, I had had had any service board a ship like that. It really kind of gives you a new appreciation for the sacrifice that the men and women who choose to do that. You know what they go through, no doubt. Um. Next, we've got the Saipan class, which was commission in nineteen forty six. There were only two ships built in that class. They were shorter four point six ft long two eight meters or so, and they carried a complement of seventeen hundred. They were designed to carry forty two aircraft, including twelve bombers. They had a relatively short service life because, uh well they just weren't as useful once we started getting the development of the jet engine planes right. They were far too short for that. So they were converted into command and communication ships in the nineteen fifties. Um So that meant that we needed to have a new class of ship designed specifically to accommodate jet fighters. And here we arrive. It's like the modern era. Yeah, this is where we're making that that. You know, we're still not quite the nuclear era, but we're at the super carrier era. This is where we arrive at the aircraft carrier. That wasn't the big one that that started but wasn't completed. The United States class the USS United States didn't. They only work on the beginning production of this thing for just a few days before it was canceled. They had laid the keel down. Depending upon the the account you read, it's between five and nine days. Like the keel was laid out, and within within a week or so it was canceled. And uh. It was supposed to be a ship that would be one thousand ninety ft long or so. This would have been the longest aircraft carrier up to that point. Um she was supposed to be able to carry twelve to eighteen heavy bombers and fifty four jet fighters. Now she was canceled by order of the Secretary of Defense Lewis A. Johnson, who sided with the Air Force in an argument that was going on between the Air Force and the Navy. The Air Force said, listen, we're in the nuclear age, and the best investment is for us to build lots and lots of long range bombers that can fly out over a target drop a nuclear weapon. This is gonna be to terrence will never have a war again. And Johnson said, this is the way I want to go, and it led to what was called the Revolt of the admirals. So you had these admirals in the Navy who all said, no, aircraft carriers are going to still be important. We're going to need a place that we can, uh, we can maneuver into different parts of the world and use as a base of operations for our our air strategy, for our own floating island. Yeah. So you had the Navy arguing that we still needed to have aircraft carriers and the Air Force arguing that no, we did not. Then a little conflict broke out, the Korean War, and the Korean War illustrated that nuclear deterrents would not work in every kind of outbreak of violence, and the United States believed that it had a real stake in the outcome of the Korean War. A fear of the spread of communism was a large part of this. It was all happening as the Cold War is raging, and the Navy said, see, we need aircraft carriers, and so back to building aircraft carriers. The Navy went, now't this something, I mean the research and development. I don't know how long that took before, you know, prior to to the start of the build, but to get nine or ten days or five days or whatever into the build and then just decided to quit. That's remarkable. Yeah, yeah, exactly what was Yeah, I mean it's we're talking like a hundred million dollars at that point. Then we get the Forestal class. This is the one that had the the famous fire, the USS forest All. That was commissioned in nineteen fifty five. There were four of them built um and it was the first actual aircraft carriers to be designated as super carriers. All four were decommissioned in the nineteen nineties, and they were one thousand seventy ft long about three and they still used steam turbines for propulsion like they steam boilers. They didn't have nuclear reactors yet. The crew compliment for that was four thousand three. So we're getting bigger. Someone down there shoveling colon. Yeah, a lot of them actually. Yeah, you know, throw another log on the fire. We need to go a little faster, it's what they're doing. More steam, more steam. Next, we had the Kittie Hawk class now Kitty Hawk obviously nay named after the test flights that the Wright brothers did at Kitty Hawk. Uh. That was commission in nineteen sixty one. There were three ships built in that class, the Kitty Hawk, the Constellation, and the America. UH and they also used steam turbines. Then we get to the Enterprise class and the next USS Enterprise UH commission on November nineteen sixty one. And UH, the USS Enterprise is the only ship in this class there They've never built any other ones. UH. It was one thousand, one hundred one ft long or one thousand hundred feet two inches long three hundred thirty five point six four meters um. It's flight deck was two d fifty two feet wide or seventy five point six meters. It displaced eighty nine thousand, six hundred tons with a full load. Top speed was more than thirty knots. Had more than three thousand, three hundred fifty members of the ship's company and another two thousand, four hundred eighty as the air wing crew. They had a total of five thousand, eight hundred thirty people aboard this thing. That's a huge crew, huge crew. UH. It's armament included anti ship missile defense systems and anti aircraft weapons, and it could hold more than sixty aircraft. UH. And it's to be decommissioned this year. This year so this is one that's probably going to end up being a museum someplace, I would hope. So, yeah, and I hope that they hang up pictures from Star Trek everywhere. All Right, we'll be wrapping up the subject of aircraft carriers in just a moment after this quick break. Next we have the Kennedy class. Uh. This is a subclass of the Kittie Hawk class of aircraft carriers. It was commission there's only one of them, or there was only one of them, the John F. Kennedy, and it was decommissioned in two thousand seven, quite as long as the Enterprise class, but they had a similar propulsion system, which means, you know, the Enterprise being one that was the first one to have nuclear reactors for propulsion. The Kennedy class also had it, so unlike the Kittie Hawk class, this is why it's a subclass, right. It didn't have the steam boilers like Kitty Hawk did. It had nuclear reactors, So that's why it's considered a subclass. Unto itself, it could carry more than eighty aircraft, but it was decommissioned because it was also the most expensive ship to maintain in the fleet and it was due for a major overhaul, and budget cuts said that that was not gonna happen, so they decommissioned it. Yeah, so instead they built the Nimitz class, and this is what we're using today, the largest warship on the seas right now. It's named after World War Two Pacifically Commander Chester W. Nimitz, and the Nimits Class was commissioned on May third, nineteen sev just a short time before I was blinked nineteen seventy five. And we've gone all the way through to two thousand and fifteen or two sixteen really before we come to the next version of class or class of supercarrier, which is the class. Yeah. So she's been in this class of ships has been in service for for more than four decades. Yeah, that's a long time. The Navy has ten Nimits Class aircraft carriers. They are one thousand, ninety two ft long, three thirty two point eight five and one at thirty four at the beam that's fours. That's that's at the bottom of the ship. So here's the thing. The other thing about aircraft carriers is they kind of had this thing where they're narrow at the bottom and they kind of flare out with wise at the top, and obviously you need to have a lot of surface area for your flight deck. That's another element of them. You know, it's interesting. I mean we've got ten supercarriers. That's pretty cool. Yeah, no, it is really cool. Um, the ship's company is between three thousand and thirty two hundred uh crew members plus pilots and crew for the air wing, plus five hundred staff. So your total is between five thousand and five thousand, two hundred people per super carrier. So it's a lot of folks on there. That is I mean the logistics of of maintaining everything that you have to do. I mean we've I know we've talked about it, but even the mail service, the sewage system, uh, fresh food or fresh food and water, um, you know, all of this stuff. I mean, the barbershop, the dentist, the doctor is all that coordinating everything has just got to be an incredible undertake. Yeah, I mean that's that's why you have to have this huge number of staff aboard. I mean you sit there and think, like, what are they doing while they're doing They're making sure everything runs smoothly. They have to. Yeah, I mean it's a military operation and everybody is there for a specific purpose. That's the other thing is that there's six thousand people on board, roughly six thousands that have a specific job that they're doing. It's not like a cruise ship where you go on and you know, more than half the people are there just to have a good time and relax. The other half are there to work. You're not gonna find a lot of people having a good time aboard an aircraft carrier. Well, yeah, maybe they only I get a little little like basketball in or something occasionally. Yeah, sure, But but the thing is they've all got a job. I mean, every single one of them. So it's it's it's just a different way to look at things. Yeah, and um, and you might you know, we haven't talked a lot about the defense systems aboard aircraft carriers, largely because their main their main weapon are the aircraft, right, but they do have various uh defense systems aboard them. With the limits you're talking about C Sparrow missile system, which is an anti aircraft and anti missile weapon and also has the foalanx c I WS defense system to protect against anti ship missiles. It's essentially an automated twenty millimeter gabling gun that tracks and shoots down incoming missiles. Yeah. That's watching videos of this thing working is terrifying. Yeah. And also these this serviced air missiles that use radar seeking UH signals to phone in on whatever they're bouncing the signals off of. So that is another cool thing to watch. I mean to watch the watch the missiles reaching their target based on radar. And they also have a rolling air frame missile mounts which can launch surface to air missiles, which is another anti ship cruise missile defense system. So in other words, if an incoming missiles coming towards the aircraft carrier, you can launch one of these to try and UH and and destroy the missile hits. And then you already talked about the things that they call the nixies, right, Yeah, that's the for the anti submarine. Yeah. What a cool idea that they deploy decoys behind the ship in order to draw in the torpedo file. Very cool. I think of it kind of like flak for aircraft, where you're trying to make sure by by by jettisoning, jettison ng uh lots of stuff that a missile could mistake for the aircraft that you can escape without being being hit by the weapon. Clever. So now we're finally at what is coming up next. So the Nimitz class is the current aircraft carrier the United States Navy depends upon. The next is the Ford class. As we mentioned, it's the same length more or is you know, essentially the same size as the Nimitz class, but it has a wider flight deck. Uh, it's four ft wider. It's got two or fifty six ft wide or seventy eight, and has two nuclear reactors to provide the propulsion power and electricity. Has same general top speed as the limits more or less. Again, the Navy doesn't really want to show, uh. But the systems aboard the Ford require fewer personnel. So the total crew of a Forward class ship, remember limits is five thousand to five thousand, two hundred Forward class four thousand, five hundred thirty nine. How did they cut the crew down? It's it's incredible that they have streamlined system so that it requires fewer people to maintain and oversee. Uh. And it can also hold more aircraft than the Nimitz class vessel, more than seventy five of them. Similar armament to limits. Um, and it has some advance and aircraft launches. Uh, and one particular that we need to mention. This is how we're going to conclude. We're gonna talk about the difference. So we had talked about the steam catapults earlier. Yeah, the the the Ford class is changing. We're finally getting away from these steam powered pistons that launch aircraft. They're switching to an electro magnetic aircraft launch system also known as EMLS. I like this idea. It's a really cool idea. I gotta say that. You know, my first my initial thought of this was are they going to be able to shorten the decks? Are they're gonna be able to make smaller aircraft carriers? But but then I thought, well, they still need to store the aircraft. It's still gonna need a massive ship. Um, it's not gonna get dramatically smaller. But they might be able to shorten the length of the takeoff area where they might be able to provide more runaways, more takeoff areas, because there's some that have as many as they can launch three or four airplanes. Actually, you know what, the most I've ever seen launched at one time is three simultaneously, but yeah, you could have like four or five catapult areas, and the emails ones can reset much faster than the steam ones. Within forty five seconds they can reset to be able to launch another aircraft. Now, it's probably gonna take longer than forty five seconds for you to get the next aircraft hooked up and ready to go, but that's how long the system requires before it can launch again. So it's very fast. There's some downsides I'll get to it in the second, but the general way this works is that it works on the basic principles of magnetism, right where uh like, polls on the magnet repel and opposite poles attract. So remember that shuttle we talked about with the steam powered one, same sort of thing. You've got a shuttle there, and you have a leading edge the front side of the shuttle, the part that the toebar is gonna connect to, and then you have the back edge of the shuttle, and you've got these two rails that are on either side of the shuttle, just like the pistons would be on the steam powered one, but instead of using steam, you're using electricity to generate magnetic fields. And you are pulling the shuttle in the front, you're creating an opposite charge, so it attracts the front of the shuttle as it starts to you know, it wants to move toward that opposite it's going to slam into the other end. And then you use the same charge on the back to push the shells, so you're pulling and pushing it at the same time. And by changing, by fluctuating this magnetic field at a particular speed down the length of these rails, you propel the shuttle very very quickly down the rails. Now, the power of that push is dependent on a couple of different things. The length of the rails, which in this case are about three feet in length, and the amount of current you're putting through it means you've got to put a lot of current. We're talking about a lot of electricity, a huge amount. We're talking one hundred million watts per launch, which you sound like dr Evil. One hundred million what's doing the pinky thing? Just in case you guys can't see. Also, that's the same amount of electricity a small town would use in that same amount of time. So every time your launch, you're using within that forty five seconds of of launch and recovery. You're using essentially the same amount of electricity a town would use in that. But let me tell you something, who cares Because you've got a nuclear reactor. You're creating it yourself. You're using what you create. It's not like you're you're taking it from somebody else to use it. Yeah, they don't have an extension cord leading all or I don't mean to trivialize it right now what I mean, but I mean it's interesting and I wonder how many Okay, I wonder what safety aspects this brings out? Our safety concerns that brings up for crew members working on the deck. Well, because there's a lot of crew members that each have their own job and they're you know, they got their head down to what they're supposed to be doing. There's gonna be brand new procedures for this, no doubt. Sure. Yeah, it's it requires a smaller crew than the steam powered version does. But obviously that crew does need to be alert because if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, I mean, when those jet engines, uh fire up. I read I read a story about a guy aboard an aircraft carrier who got sucked into the intake but did not get sucked into the actual jet engine itself. He suffered injuries, but they were not not critical injuries because he didn't get pulled all the way into the engine. He was just stuck in a terribly uncomfortable position right at the very entrance of it. But that's a real concern, you know, And that's going to be a concern whether it's a steam powered one or electromagnetic because because again, the pilot is still going to have to power up full throttle so that they can take off properly. Okay, I was getting I was getting more to the point of, you know, somebody whose job it is to to hook up the shuttle to the to the the landing gear, and if they mistakenly touch you know, I don't touch the metal on the plane and the metal on the on the deck here at the same time. Um I can I understand. But there's also there's also huge dangers with the steam powered Yeah. Well, I mean you're talking about a massive amount of steam under huge pressure. Something's going to throw a plane off of a ship. I mean, it's gonna be it's gonna be dangerous no matter what. Right. So this has been one of those things that some people have claimed has held up the development of the Ford Supercarrier because obviously, like we're saying, you need to make sure the system is going to work, it's going to replace something that already exists. So there's some who would argue, well, why are you replacing something that has been proven to work, And the answer is that, well, this system could potentially take up much less space. You still have to have a massive amount space just for the power generator to send the electricity to the rails, but it's still going to be smaller than the steam uh pistons that you would be using, at least directly under the deck um and uh you know it uses again a mall or crew, so you don't need to have as many people a border aircraft carrier. Military is gonna like that. Yeah, so uh, you know, not the most electrically uh the efficient device maybe, but still really fascinating. Yeah, maybe I should clarify that military budget people are gonna but the but the thing is, I still wonder, I wonder if it's going to be any faster than the steam system, or if it's going to be more capable than the steam system as far as you know the launch distance, the launch time, because we said that it launches a plane in like in two seconds and it's going a hundred and sixty five miles per hour when it at the end of that of that travel, well, I mean it is the difference between changing the electric current along the rail versus the mechanical action of a piston being pushed forward. So I guess you're going you're going one hundred and sixty five miles per hour instantly. Yeah, instead could approaching that and then at launch your acceleration could be even faster. I would imagine, I mean I I I also imagine that, they said it. So it's not that because obviously we don't want to cause injury to the pilot or damage the vehicle. But yeah, a that that sort of speed. So uh, this was really a lot of fun to talk about, and um, you know, when we first started, I wasn't sure if we were going to get two episodes out of it, but we sure did. Yeah, yeah, we did, I can tell already. So here here's another peak behind the curtain where you new listeners out there. Sometimes we don't know how long an episode is going to be and we don't know how um you know, you know whether or not something's gonna be one part or two parts. And the funny thing is you've already listened to part one and this is the end of part two. But we didn't know it was going to be in the part two until I looked down at Scott's timing device and saw that we're well over an hour and a half. If we wanted to release this as one episode, you were giving them all the secrets, I know, right well, I mean, come on, we just had tech Stuff seven episode, so I feel like I feel like we've had a few moments, me and the listeners probably, so, Scott, thank you so much for joining me for these two episodes. Are really appreciated. You know what. Once again, I had a lot of fun talking about this. You know way more about aircraft carriers than I do, obviously, but I had a great time and it's always a good conversation. So thank you for inviting me, and I'd gladly do it again. Fantastic and next time I swear I'll pick something car related. I hope you enjoyed that classic episode about how aircraft carriers work. Will be back with an all new, old episode next week. I think I'm trying to parse that. I don't know. I need more coffee. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows