Factoids on the Stennis

The first night (30 June) the Captain of the ship (Capt Joseph Kuzmick) greeted all the Tigers and sponsors in the hangar bay and gave us some interesting facts about the Stennis:

This is a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and there are two nuclear reactors on board. The life span of each is 50 years old and the Stennis was commissioned Dec 9 1995 so the carrier has been using the power from these reactors for almost 15 years. They will be refueled when they are 25 years old and can be refueled one time. Therefore, in the words of the Skipper, "we have been operating this carrier for the last 15 years on just half a tank of gas."

If any Tiger or anyone falls off the ship at night, the chance of being found alive is slim. Be aware and be careful.

This is not a cruise ship, it is a warship.

There were over 1000 people standing in the hangar bay for the Skipper's welcome, and the hangar bay was only a fraction full. Plus there were numerous aircraft in the hangar bay as well.

The front of the deck is the bow, the left side as we steam forward is "port" and the right is "starboard", the back of the ship is the stern.

The arresting wires are wrapped around rope so that when the aircraft hook squeezes the wire, the wire will give.

The average age on the ship is 20 years old !!

So far, today is Day 5 on this carrier, and my roommate and I have found a TOTAL of 3Female heads!!

There are about 200 people in Dan's squadron VFA-146 The Blue Diamonds, and 15 of them are F/A 18 Hornet pilots. The remaining people in the squadron are in support of the mission of the F/A 18. There are 22 officers and 184 sailors in the Blue Diamonds. The mission of the squadron is "to lethally employ weapons with Blue Diamond Hornets when called upon by our nation's leaders."

Dan is #10 in seniority of the 15 pilots.

There are 10 Hornet jets in Dan's squadron. The squadron has the oldest Hornets in the Navy but has the highest rate of sortie completion in the Navy- which means they are maintaining and repairing older equipment better than the squadrons that maintain newer equipment. The Hornets in VFA-146 are over 20 years old. The squadron had over a 98% sortie completion rate on this deployment. VFA-146 is targeted to receive the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft first when the JSF is ready for launch. If so, this squadron will transition from the F/A 18 Hornet jet to the JSF.

On this deployment: the Blue Diamonds performed 60,963 maintenance manhours; 13,992 maintenance actions; the pilots flew 1144 sorties and flew 1540 flight hours. The carrier had 7 port visits including Hong Kong, Sacebo Japan, Singapore, Busan Korea, Thailand, Pearl Harbor Hawaii and Everett WA. While in Korea, Dan visited the DMZ and went inside a building that straddles North Korea and South Korea. He made sure to go to the North Korean side. Dan remembers Busan as a fairly uninteresting port but the visit to the DMZ as the most interesting part of any port visit.

There are 6 airwing squadrons on board and that means there are no more than 120 pilots on board. The aircraft on board includes the Sea Hawk helicopter, the EA 6B Prowler, the E-2C Hawkeye, the F/A 18C Hornet and F/A 18F Super Hornet.

The crew on board the Stennis numbers 6200 when the airwing is on board. The ship serves 18,600 meals daily. There are two 30 ton anchors, and each link in each anchor weighs about 350 pounds. (pictures to follow)

There are four catapults- two on the waist of the ship (midship) and on the port side and two more on the bow. The distance of the catapult shoot is about 300'. So when the pilot is shot off the catapult, he has about the size of a football field to get airborne and to accelerate from 0 to about 170 knots.