Flight Deck

Aviation Week and Space Technology, 1988
Time-Life Video/Air Power, 1990

[@donnovanringler3782]

I am a simple man. I see military documentary. First ten seconds has a tomcat. I know it will be good. I am pleased with my choice of video.

[@josephmarrett6356]

1965, operation rolling thunder, VA 75, A6A intruders. I worked nights as a trouble shooter on flight deck. South China sea.

[@LEDeclipse]

The landing at 35:00 is by far the most insane thing ive ever seen.

[@millergeddes]

I am on this video at 19:15 just a skinny kid. I was a purple shirt working flight deck control.

[@footsy420]

very nice, I've seen carrier documentaries from ww2, nam and some more modern ones but this is sweet because the f14 is king yet there are a few f18s. RIP f14

[@NeoExtentialist]

Thanks 🙂

[@allandavis8201]

As British naval aviation gets relaunched with our two new carriers I have been watching a lot of uploads about carrier operations through the decades,whilst up until recently(ish) British fleet air arm was a brilliant asset to our military. A lot of the developments adopted by almost every country that has ever operated carriers are British,a fact that we should be proud of. However I think the most iconic and best aircraft have almost invariably been of American origin, I can’t think of the last British fixed wing aircraft that could really be described as iconic,only the Harrier/AVAB comes close,and was used in combat and proved its pedigree,and robustness. The US navy has a over abundance of types throughout the decades. I hope that the Lightning II will prove to be in that category of success but having read a lot of praise and derogatory comments the jury is still out on that one. As a 24 year veteran of the Royal Air Force I never had the opportunity to do any carrier operations and was and are still fascinated by the choreography that it takes to operate the environment as safely and effectively as possible. I don’t think the flight deck operations could ever be made or regarded as safe. Thanks for this upload it might be a little out of date,but still enthralling to use older generations of “plane spotters”. I am glad to see that the British Royal Navy have travelled to the USA to get the skills lost by our brief period of time out of carrier ops back and learn new skills that without them our carriers would just be a floating car park. I think the carrier aircraft that stands out as the best in my opinion would have to be the Tomcat,it just looks so “mean “ and “unstoppable “ . Thanks again for the upload and God bless our military personnel whatever service they are in.

[@satchpersaud8762]

I was watching a doc the other day about the avro arrow, and how the program for that plane just got shut down, and they ended up buying u.s planes, I feel the British fighter plane industry suffered the same fate which sucks cause u guys made some awesome planes, the lightning, the tornado, I mean u guys damn near invented the jet engine in the 30's.....

[@ajharvey]

Maverick you’re at 3 quarters of a mile, call the ball.

[@reccerat4446]

“Roger, Maverick has the ball”

[@tmdickey1989]

I got to work on the A7 @ 12:36 number 310 painted it up made it look nice and send it to Texas to museum lot of fun

[@KrosanBeast315]

I had this tape many years ago

[@HO-bndk]

"Most formidable floating weapon system ever devised..." Ballistic missile sub wants to have a word with you... ;o)

[@thetreblerebel]

Navy/Marine pilots are the best pilots in the world. If your landing planes on a boat...your good at flying planes.

[@jackstheraptor2791]

with a little aerodynamic improvement , modern cockpit and better englines with thrust vector nozzles , no one can beat a tomcat in dogfight and BVR. Damn this jet kills 3 migs with just 1 phoenix.

[@vitoandreamarchese9732]

so much types of planes, moving....

[@NeoExtentialist]

The U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers are some of the most amazing technological marvels of modern warfare.

[@AvengerII]

May be so but they're expensive as hell to build and the nuclear-powered ships they're finding are not going to be cheap to retire, either! I think France ended up only building one nuclear-powered carrier (which has had huge operational issues including a reactor leak that might have poisoned crew members; so much for France's safe nuclear record!) and decided any future carriers will be conventionally powered. The Brits examined nuclear power but decided in the end it wasn't worth it and they might not be able to afford ANY carriers if they tried to go forward with a nuclear power plant for a carrier! I think they figured $53million to scrap a conventional carrier -- I think that's what I read online --, probably at least 10-15 times ($500million to $750million) as much for a nuclear carrier because of the toxicity of the fuel and all those components (reactors, piping) that have to be disposed specially in a nuclear dump site. I would NOT be surprised is the Enterprise's demolition bill ends up costing well over a billion dollars! When has the government EVER been right about cost estimates for most major defense programs?!? The US Navy may end up wanting to SINK the next nuclear powered carrier (the Nimitz) into the Marianas Trench when they want to retire it! THAT might cheaper! The Enterprise (CVN-65) is proving to be a TREMENDOUS pain-in-the-butt to dispose of because of the eight-reactor layout. It seems to have been a good thing that only one ship was built like that! The ship was "inactivated" in 2012 but six years later the scrapping process is going VERY slow. The previous record holder for aircraft carrier scrapping was the USS Coral Sea which took six years (1994-2000) because of the fact of bankruptcies of at least two wreckers. They literally GAVE away the last 5 conventional carriers to scrapyards because they wouldn't have made any money if they paid anything like scrap value for those retired hulls. They've snipped off the communication and radar aerials and the Enterprise looks very sad now. Most of the immediate recyclables (chains, anchors, etc.) have been circulated back into the active fleet. Now, it's a matter of defueling it (may be done already) and THEN towing it to a shipyard and cut through deck-by-deck lower and lower into the hull to remove the reactors themselves. That's EIGHT massive trenches that have to be cut through all those decks to get at the reactors. THIS is why it was not practical to set the Enterprise or ANY nuclear carrier aside as a museum ship! We have nuclear subs as museum ships (Nautilus is one) but those are doable because they're MUCH smaller ships and it's easier to reweld the hull after the reactors have been removed. It's just not practical to do that for a ship that is 14 stories tall, minimum! How many decks to cut through to prepare the trench to lift the reactors out from near the bottom? At least 8-10? That's a minimum of 64 huge holes that have to be cut through the decks to get the reactors out.

[@cobracoral_oficial]

Phil, do you a pilot?

[@Dave-id6sj]

That was very enjoyable to watch, going into the nuts and bolts but not too deep, or too ooorahh jarhead bullshit, just the day to day shit that makes one of those things tick along. Not tying it to any combat or campaign was a winner, too often when it goes on and on about about how they beat the shit out of a third rate country it ends up looking and sounding like an advert for the contractors and companies who make money from designing and building military kit. Much prefer just folks doing their job and telling us about it.