Original subtitles

Zdenek: Each one is over a thousand feet long.

Weights almost a hundred thousand tons.

That's a serious elevator.

And costs three and a half billion dollars.

We caught one.

(laughs)

For 40 years, nimitz class aircraft carriers

Have delivered us military might all over the globe.

But now these legendary ships are being phased out,

To be replaced by new carriers.

Before they're decommissioned,

I'm going aboard a flagship vessel.

I never want to sleep under a flight deck again.

So I can uncover the engineering innovations

That allowed this ship to launch,

Land and relaunch more planes, more quickly

Than ever before.

Now that was some serious engineering.

And see what made the nimitz class supercarriers.

I'm chad zdenek.

I spent seven years

Building rocket engines for nasa.

Now I'm taking things apart.

Breaking down giants of engineering piece by piece.

So I can discover what made them legends of their time.

♪♪

♪♪

Naval base san diego.

Home to this nimitz class aircraft carrier.

One of the us navy's biggest warships

This will be my home for the next five days.

I'm on board the uss carl vinson.

And for the next week I'm going to be working

With engineers, mechanics and sailors,

And show you some incredible pieces of engineering

That keep an aircraft carrier like this operational.

President nixon wrote the check for the carl vinson

Back in 1974

For three billion dollars.

Construction began in 1975 under president ford.

In 1980, the new ship was launched under president carter.

In 1982, it finally entered service under president reagan.

And in 2011, under barack obama's presidency,

The body of osama bin laden was brought on board

For burial at sea.

For 40 years, it's been the ultimate symbol

Of american military might.

An enormous, floating, plane launching machine,

Bigger and stronger than anything that came before.

Verrissimo: The carrier fully loaded maxed out at 97,000 tons,

Its a pretty heavy piece of gear,

The entire engineering suite that it takes

To get this ship through the water

Back and forth over 25 years,

It is just an engineering marvel.

Zdenek: Now this giant piece of engineering

Is on it's way out.

One by one, the nimitz class carriers

Will be decommissioned to make way for the ford class

Raising the bar all over again.

But you don't replace a 40 billion dollar

Fleet of aircraft carriers overnight.

That will take 30 years.

In the meantime,

The nimitz ships have to stay on the cutting edge,

With constant upgrades and upkeep

From a highly specialized mechanical crew.

Each one of them trained in the extraordinary engineering

That keeps this ship running.

Now I'm joining them as the ship heads

Into the pacific to undertake a special mission.

Testing pilots on their ability to take off and land

On a carrier, hoping to win their final qualification,

The last step in a naval aviator's basic training.

I'll work with the engineering teams

Above and below deck

To reveal the engineering innovations

That make it all possible.

The incredible catapult system

That can launch a jet in just two seconds.

The mighty elevators, designed to get 35 tons

Of aircraft on and off the deck in seconds.

The arresting system

That uses cables and hydraulics to stop jets

As they scream in at 150 miles an hour.

And the giant flight deck,

Designed to allow more take off and landings

Than ever before.

Day one of my time on the uss carl vinson.

And my first job is one done by every seamen

Who ever served on any ship.

Removing deck debris.

It's gotta be done as regular as clockwork.

And on a carrier it's more important than ever.

So right now were doing the everyday twice a day.

Basically they get everyone on deck

To comb through arms length distance

And they're scouring for any fod, foreign object debris.

When these jets are coming in or taking off

There's so much suction from the engines

That they suck this off of the deck,

Go into the engines

And can cause some serious damage,

So we gotta check it twice a day everyday.

You would think that there would be fod on this deck,

The wind's about 40 miles an hour,

And this is what I've found, a piece of wood,

Little piece of textile material,

But I also found small rock.

The basic job of an aircraft carrier

Is to take planes wherever they're needed

And then launch them into the sky.

On the uss carl vinson, that's done using a giant catapult.

Or maybe not so giant.

At least not from up here

Where all you can see is the two foot shuttle

Sticking out the flight deck like a shark's fin.

Somehow, this tiny piece of steel

Has to fling a 30 ton jet into the sky

At 150 miles an hour.

♪♪

The simple but incredible engineering

Behind this launching system

Is the result of a 100 year evolution

Of the aircraft carrier.

That began in 1920 with the uss langley.

It was a coal ship.

Until naval engineers bolted a wooden deck on top,

Converting it to the us navy's first ever aircraft carrier.

Its job, to launch planes into the air

From the middle of the ocean.

Using a runway a little over 500 feet long.

Biplanes like these were made of wood, steel and fabric.

They weighed two and a half tons,

Light enough to launch without the need of a catapult.

A good headwind was all it took.

But a fully fueled,

Fully loaded f18 is 10 times as heavy.

To get these planes into the air in just a few hundred feet,

The nimitz carriers needed huge power.

And a way to deliver it suddenly and at great speed.

I love the solution engineers came up with.

They turned to an age old technology.

Steam.

One of the things I've always been fascinated by

Is engineering innovation,

And steam is a perfect example of that.

It helped us in the industrial revolution.

And now today on the uss carl vinson

We're using it to catapult f18s

Off a flight deck,

And through all that the basic properties of steam,

They've stayed the same.

When water is heated into steam,

It expands in volume over a thousand times.

It is a law of physics that engineers first mastered

In the 18th century,

When they used it to create the piston engine.

Over 300 years later,

Nimitz engineers are using the same principle

On the carl vinson.

I've done a little home engineering of my own

To show you how it works.

This is a pressure cooker and I've modified the lid

By drilling a hole in it and adding a ball valve.

I'm pouring in just a small glassful of water.

Then securing the lid,

And heating it to turn the water to steam.

Which expands and is trapped.

Creating high pressure inside the cooker.

We've got steam, and lets see what happens.

Boom.

Instant power.

Enough to drive the piston

On a 19th century steam engine,

Or the catapult on a 20th century aircraft carrier.

The system that runs it is deep below decks.

The start of our steam system all starts right here,

Just beneath us is the power plant,

And all that steam comes up through this giant duct,

And it's actually fed through into our steam fill room,

Right in here, where we've got three control valves

To keep that system pressurized at just the right amount.

Now believe it or not there's three other rooms

Just like this.

What you see here this is only for catapult number two.

The steam for each catapult

Is stored in two giant cylinders and pistons.

Each about as long as a football field.

The pistons are connected to the catapult shuttle on deck.

To launch a plane, the pressure is suddenly released,

Driving the piston and catapult forward

At 150 miles per hour.

There are actually four catapults on board.

Each has its own engine room

And dedicated crew above and below the flight deck.

Otero: Hey stand by real quick.

Hey truman!

Hey, can you turn on the throttle tension?

What you got?

We're at 5-zero.

Copy...

(background noise drowns out dialogue)

Zdenek: When they get the signal,

They fill these pipes with steam

And bring it to pressure arming the catapult.

Then they wait for the signal,

That will shift a 35 ton fighter from stand-still

To 150 miles an hour in just two and half seconds.

It's a system that leaves no room for error,

Which is why it gets tested twice a day, every day.

In just a few minutes I'm going to be able to witness

A no load for the catapult.

It's basically when they test the catapult

Before any day they're doing operations

With no load on it.

This thing's going to fly by us

At about 150 miles an hour and I get to be two feet away.

Pilots' lives depend on this engineering working perfectly,

Which is why crew go through this routine so carefully.

That's why you wanna stay behind the foul line.

So we're loading up right now,

We're bringing back the catapult.

This is a safety line, a foul line,

And everyone's gotta make sure

That they're standing behind it,

And then we're going to launch this all the way down.

♪♪

(mumbled yelling)

Wow.

(laughs)

Now that was some serious engineering.

This catapult, bowling by at 150 miles an hour

And at the end all you see is a bunch of steam coming up

And then a big splash which is the water brake

At the end of the deck.

The no load tests are complete, and everything is ready.

Now this trainee pilot is about to launch his aircraft

For the first time.

And be tested on whether he's got what it takes.

It's just the first in five days of tests and evaluations.

At the end, he's hoping to have done enough to win

His aircraft carrier pilot qualification.

Once the catapult fires,

The pilot needs to accelerate explosively

To get the plane airborne.

Lanham: There is a lot that could go wrong on the deck,

We talk about it,

We brief to those emergencies

And you have to trust your training,

As well as all the training of the flight deck crew

To do their job and to do it well.

Zdenek: The pilot's launch is controlled from a pod

Built into the deck known as the bubble.

Once the catapult fires it's impossible to abort take off.

The pilot's along for the ride.

We're in the bubble and we're launching off of catapult four,

And the wings are literally coming right over our head.

Inside, the catapult officer, or shooter

Makes the precise calculations

Necessary for a perfect launch.

Each plane's standard weight is added to its load.

Butterfield: Confirm on four.

No lights, minus four.

Thumbs, thumbs, head's steady, deck steady, no interval.

So what we're doin' is we're taking the weight

From the aircraft,

And then we put it into our charts to get a setting

For the catapult.

Zdenek: Next, the plane is harnessed to the catapult.

Butterfield: Once everything is good there we take tension.

So I hit that bridle tension button,

And that's when the shuttle moves forward

And locks into that launch bar.

That's when we go to military power.

That's the pilot's signal to spool that power

And start getting his engines ready.

Zdenek: Below deck, the crew sets

The correct steam pressure.

For an f18, that's 520 pounds per square inch.

Butterfield: Once he's good he gives that salute.

And that's when I call salute final,

Push our final ready button.

That gets everything ready into the final status,

Ready to fire the catapult.

From there we just lift the lid and hit fire

And they go.

Salute final.

Five twenty point four.

I got lights lights no lights minus five.

Thumbs, thumbs, head steady, deck steady, no interval.

Zdenek: For this pilot, the next two seconds

All depend on the coordination of his crew

And some precise engineering.

Butterfield: Fire.

Zdenek: Hours of training,

A highly skilled crew,

And incredible engineering

Have all come together for another safe launch.

It's an experience pilots never forget,

Going from zero to 150 miles per hour

In just two and half seconds.

Lanham: Before your first catapult shot, you're anxious,

You've been told what to expect,

But it's way cooler than that.

It's the best ride in the world.

Zdenek: The pilots continue to launch.

Relying on age old steam

To get their state of the art planes safely into the sky.

But this engineering is finally being replaced

As nimitz class carriers are decommissioned.

Their replacements, the ford class,

Will be equipped with an all new catapult system.

Here they test one on an 80,000 pound dead load.

Instead of steam, it will use electricity

To create magnetic power.

This system will require far less maintenance,

But deliver 30 percent more power.

With 20 times greater efficiency than steam.

Meaning the new carriers

Will be able to launch even bigger planes even faster.

But until the fords finally launch,

Daily maintenance is an essential part of life

On the 40 year old carl vinson.

This is a jet blast deflector.

It redirects the high energy exhaust from jet engines

To prevent damage and injury.

So it has to be strong enough

To withstand the intense heat

From jet engines at full thrust,

And to protect crew from flying debris

When the plane is launched.

Today we're here to make sure it's in perfect condition.

Man: Make sure you're getting it around

The o-ring right here.

Zdenek: Yep.

Man: But then get it down here.

And then you gonna wipe it.

So you put more lube right here.

Zdenek: Okay.

♪♪

All right, as I'm learning with the navy,

Everything is twice a day, everyday.

We gotta get these safety locks in place

And then we're wiping down each of these pistons

And applying new oil.

The reason is because if the o-rings inside got too hot,

They would blow and we'd have

A major maintenance issue on our hands.

♪♪

The carl vinson's four incredible launch systems

Means the crew can catapult a jet every 30 seconds

To perform air strikes over 400 miles away.

That made america's cold war adversaries nervous.

Reagan: Would the soviets ever use

Their formidable military power,

Well again can we afford to believe they won't.

Zdenek: And suspicious.

(speaking in foreign language)

Zdenek: On January 24th 1982,

Less than 48 hours after the carl vinson

Began its first sea trials off the coast of virginia,

Russian spy planes flashed onto the ship's radar.

The airforce scrambled 6 jets.

They located two bear surveillance

Aircraft with cameras

Sent up from a russian airbase in cuba

To spy on america's latest super weapon

And test how fast they could launch planes.

The american f15's forced the soviet planes to retreat.

It would become a familiar pattern.

♪♪

In its first 18 months,

The carl vinson had to deploy its planes 28 times

To chase off soviet surveillance aircraft

Intent on uncovering the new ship's secrets.

35 years later,

The carl vinson's air wing

Remains its most effective weapon.

The nimitz class was designed

To carry more aircraft than ever before.

More than 70, split between the flight deck

And the hangar bay.

The problem is,

How do you get a 60,000-pound aircraft

Up to the flight deck to take off?

The answer,

The biggest elevator I've ever seen.

The carl vinson is a plane launching machine, literally.

But there's another big part of an aircraft carrier's job.

That would be the actual carrying.

And as I'm about to see, lifting.

The next engineering system we're going to take a look at

Uses a huge amount of brute force and sheer power

To lift the aircraft on and off a flight deck.

Its known as the elevators

And I wanna show you how it works.

On a nimitz-class aircraft carrier,

There are four giant elevators

Surrounding the aircraft hangar.

So which elevator is this?

Chamberlain: This is aircraft elevator number three.

Zdenek: It has a huge opening.

It has to be big.

It's designed to perform the near-impossible.

Lift fully loaded planes on and off the flight deck

At high speed,

While the vessel pitches in strong winds and high waves.

The elevator is really just

A massive 4000 square foot platform,

Able to fit seamlessly into the hangars below

And the flight deck above.

How heavy is the whole platform?

Chamberlain: The platform itself is 190,000 pounds.

Zdenek: That's a serious elevator.

And how much can it lift?

Chamberlain: It can lift 130,000 pounds.

Zdenek: So, to give me an idea of what is

130,000 pounds worth of gear.

Give me an example of that.

Chamberlain: It's easily over two fully loaded f18s.

♪♪

Zdenek: Of course, this parking lot is often floating

In a war zone.

So it needs to do its lifting fast,

And the nimitz class could do it faster than ever before

At 135 feet per minute.

It's raised and lowered by cable,

But they get their power from below decks.

And another special piece of engineering.

Chamberlain: So welcome.

This is the lower level

Of the aircraft elevator machinery room.

Down here is where we create all our pressure.

Zdenek: Those 20 cables that are lifting the elevator,

They all end up right here at this anchor point.

They wrap around this giant pulley system,

Or shiv system,

And this is controlled by the three pistons

On the back side.

The cables get their enormous power and speed

From a piece of engineering known as an accumulator.

It's a device that can store energy,

And then release it on demand suddenly.

Basically the accumulator is a cylinder

Filled with compressed air.

Then hydraulic fluid is pumped in at high pressure.

Compressing the air even further.

As soon as the elevator is engaged,

A valve releases the pressure.

The compressed air expands instantly,

Forcing the hydraulic fluid out of the cylinder

To push a giant piston forward.

That powers pulleys that lift the elevator

And its 130,000 pound load three decks high

In just 15 seconds.

It's amazing to think that all that pressure

Inside the accumulator,

When its released it can lift an entire load on the elevator

And the elevator itself for a total of over 300,000 pounds.

Like everything else on this ship,

The elevator takes a lot of loving,

And greasing, below decks and up top.

There's so much to elements once you're out at sea,

Whether it's the salt water, the fumes from the planes,

The debris, you have the wind coming in here

And blowing things around.

There's so much that can get into these locks,

That it needs to be cleaned on a very regular basis.

So this is like arts and crafts.

Navy style.

The wear and tear is relentless.

Time to get my oil can out again.

Yeah, it's interesting, the one thing that hasn't changed

Over centuries of sailing is grease and oil.

Constant maintenance and repair

Is critical to the effectiveness of this super weapon.

The carl vinson was commissioned and launched

During the cold war,

When america needed a ship

That could respond to any eventuality,

And survive at sea for as long as necessary.

But that takes enormous energy.

America's biggest ever warship

Needed the world's most potent source of power.

Nuclear fuel.

Hidden in the bowels of the uss carl vinson

Are some amazing technological innovations.

The ship's nuclear-powered reactors.

Of the 5000 on board,

Only a highly specialized mechanical crew

Are allowed anywhere near it.

That's how secret they are,

And I'm definitely not one of them.

What I have learned is that there are two of them.

They heat water to generate the high pressure steam

That powers the launch system.

They also turn giant turbines.

Those spin generators to deliver electrical power

To every system on the ship.

The turbines also rotate four giant screw propellers,

To create more than 280,000 horsepower

And drive the ship forward at 30 knots.

These reactors can run the ship for 25 years.

But 25 years of power doesn't mean much

Unless the rest of the ship is also self sufficient.

Break downs, failures, repairs.

All are dealt with on board by the crew.

Here, in the machine room,

They have the technology to repair and rebuild

Almost any part of the ship.

♪♪

Ward: So really what were doing here on the carl vinson,

Is the name of the game is adapt and overcome,

We're always adapting to whatever breaks.

It's never the same things.

You think about how old the ship is.

A lot of those things that break those companies

Don't exist anymore,

So there's not a lot of ways to get the parts that we need,

And that's where all these guys come in.

All the advanced things that I'm showing you today

That were making,

The machines are older than you and I combined.

Zdenek: The corrosive effects of sea-water

Take a toll on every ship.

So it's no surprise repairs on the carl vinson

Often start with melting metal.

♪♪

This steel is actually really common on a carrier.

Its used for a lot of the decks and bulk heads.

Its called 10-pound plate

Because it weighs 10 pounds per square foot.

This piece is actually going to be used

To repair a rusted out section on the second deck.

It's not always as simple as patching a hole.

This replacement part needs to be machined

To exactly the right size.

Allen: What you're going do now is you're gonna drive this up

To where it's close to the edge of the material,

Not too much, just right, you gotta bump it,

'til you just touch off material, knock off.

Zdenek: Okay.

Allen: See that small circle go,

That's how you know you're there.

Boom, alright now you can back this up all the way

And you're out of the way,

And you're good.

You just did a facing cut, turn it off.

There you go.

Zdenek: That's not bad.

Allen: Pretty nice, right.

Any piece that normally comes through,

Somebody said can you just take little bit off,

Just like let's say a hair?

To my memory I think a hair is 0.003 of an inch.

That's pretty small.

And in our world, 003,

That could make a major difference in the piece.

Zdenek: The engineering team

Doesn't just make new parts here.

They can repair any part on board,

Including aircraft,

Which can account for up to 30,000 repair jobs a year.

Together with the ship's 25 year supply of nuclear energy,

This versatile maintenance crew make the uss carl vinson

The most self sufficient warship afloat,

Able to operate in the most remote corners of the world.

Like the arctic circle.

In 1986, the carl vinson was deployed in the bering sea.

Just 60 miles from the soviet union.

Conditions here are some of the harshest in the world.

Ice, fog, rolling seas,

Make maintaining open supply lines almost impossible.

And landing a plane treacherous.

No aircraft carrier had deployed here

Since world war ii.

Until the carl vinson.

Tracking the movements of soviet submarines

Right on the russians' doorstep.

The carl vinson proved the nimitz carriers

Were the most independent warships in the world.

And that, now, nowhere was out of reach

Of american airpower.

♪♪

Take offs and landings have been continuing

Throughout the night.

(groans)

5:30.

I never want to sleep under a flight deck again.

I've seen and heard the extraordinary engineering

Involved in launching a plane.

But that's only half the job of an aircraft carrier.

It's one thing to launch an aircraft off of a carrier,

But its just as important

To make sure it lands back safely in just three seconds.

To do that we use some wire rope, hydraulics,

And some pretty neat engineering.

In the early days, engineers used a cable

Connected to sand bags on pulleys

To slow the plane and stop it.

Most of the time.

The set up is basically the same today.

Four two inch wires run across the landing deck.

They're called arresting cables,

And are designed to snag the plane's tail hook

And bring it to a hard stop in just two seconds.

But to stop a modern 30 ton jet

You need a lot more than sandbags.

Engineers that designed the nimitz came up with a solution.

Like the catapult's shuttle,

The cables are just the visible part

Of a much larger system.

It all happens just under the flight deck,

In the arresting gear room.

So one of things I've noticed is the flight deck,

They get all the glory up there, right?

The planes coming in,

The tail hook could grab the arresting wire,

And smoke everywhere.

For me as an engineer

This is the heart of how it really happens.

Lara: Yes, it is.

Zdenek: This is amazing down here.

Lara: The engine operator is always monitoring to ensure

That the proper temperatures pressures

And the actual machinery is working properly.

Zdenek: Wow.

Lara: There's a lot of work that's involved

Down below decks,

And its very important that we do that job the right way,

'cause you never know what's gonna happen,

And the pilots have to come home.

Zdenek: Yeah, yeah.

At its heart of the arresting system

Is another giant accumulator.

Unlike on the elevator, it's not designed for speed.

Instead, this accumulator is engineered

To slow down a plane by creating resistance.

The huge cylinder is filled with 300 gallons

Of hydraulic fluid and connected to a giant piston.

Let me show you.

You can see under here is the piston.

Most pistons might be half an inch, one inch,

Maybe a two inch piston on heavy machinery.

This piston is 18 inches in diameter.

When the plane's tail hook grabs the cable on the deck,

It drives the piston forward,

Forcing all the hydraulic fluid through a small hole

Inside the cylinder.

That hole is only half an inch wide.

The back up of fluid creates enormous resistance.

Enough to absorb 47 million foot pounds of torque,

And stop a plane.

It works a little bit like this.

Imagine this syringe system is your engine

And your accumulator.

As a tail hook grabs a cable on the flight deck,

Its going to go through a series of pulleys

And begin to push that hydraulic fluid

Through the piston in to the accumulator.

When it does that its going through a control valve,

Or in this case a nozzle.

This creates all the resistance you need

To stop a plane from 150 miles an hour to zero

In just few seconds.

And amazingly enough this engineering feat

Is able to recycle itself

And do the exact same process in 90 seconds

Catching plane after plane after plane.

It sounds simple in principle.

In practice, it's a precise, high speed,

High risk operation.

For the trainee pilots,

There are three critical stages as they prepare to land.

On their first approach,

The pilot will bring the f18 towards the flight deck

But will then do a pass over the carrier.

This is to help them get a visual

Of what it's like to approach a carrier at sea.

Scroggs: The first time I saw the carrier from the air,

Everyone says it looks small in a big ocean,

And they are right.

I saw it and was like, oh, I have to land

On that tiny little rectangle.

Zdenek: On the second approach, the pilot hits the deck

At 150 miles per hour,

But doesn't attempt to engage the tail hook.

Instead, the aircraft goes to full throttle

On touching the deck and takes off again.

This maneuver is called a touch and go.

It trains pilots to abort a landing

And quickly re-launch

If they miss all four arresting cables.

After the touch-and go, it's time for the trainee pilot

To earn their stripes by tackling a landing.

Lanham: Landing on an aircraft on an aircraft carrier

Is one of the most difficult things to do in aviation.

The first time you see it from the air

It just looks like a tiny little boat down there.

And then you descend and you get down close to it,

And it's massive,

And it's intimidating

To know you're about to go land on this thing.

Zdenek: As the crew prepares on deck,

I'll be watching from below

As the arresting system hopefully catches

The speeding f18s.

He misses.

The pilot goes to full throttle to re-launch,

And goes around for another attempt.

Lara: So the tail hook hit the wire but it missed it.

I'd didn't pull it out.

It happens, so right now you'll hear our topside guy,

You can hear the footsteps,

They go out and check that wire,

Make sure it's not broken,

And then run back out.

♪♪

Zdenek: Again, the pilot misses the cables.

We're gettin' unlucky a lot tonight.

Lanham: When you come in for a landing

And we miss all the cables, we call that a bolter.

At first it's frustrating,

But you have to quickly put that away,

Compartmentalize, realize you're flying an aircraft,

Come back and land again.

♪♪

Zdenek: The crosshairs on this monitor

Show the ideal approach position for an aircraft.

And this pilot is spot on.

We caught one.

Soon, the trainees are nailing it every time.

Wow.

That's a lot louder when it's in your engine room.

Lara: It is very loud.

Lanham: So if the catapult shot

Is the coolest ride in the world,

The stopping on the boat is kind of the opposite.

People compare it to a car crash.

Taking a heavy aircraft and going about 150 miles an hour,

And bringing it to a dead stop

In the span of a football field or so.

♪♪

Zdenek: I think I need to get a richter scale in here.

This room shakes so much.

I'm from la so I feel earthquakes a lot.

I'm gonna guess it's about a 4.0, 4.5.

It's incredible to see the simple hydraulic principle

I demonstrated operating at such scale and speed.

By transferring the plane's energy

From the arresting cable into the hydraulic fluid,

The plane is brought to a complete stop.

How do you handle it when it's a bigger plane

Versus a smaller plane?

Lara: It means we have to adjust that valve

To a different opening.

So the heavier the aircraft,

The smaller the opening.

The lighter the aircraft the bigger the opening.

Zdenek: Got it.

Got it.

It's engineering genius in action.

Systems like these have to work the first time, every time.

Verrisimo: So the catapults and arresting gear

Are some very intricate but powerful pieces of gear.

They have to operate with the timing of a fine swiss watch,

They have to be exactly the same every time,

So that we can launch those 70,000 pound aircraft

Consistently and safely every time.

That extraordinary engineering

Was put to the toughest test yet in 1996.

When the united states once again

Took on iraqi dictator, saddam hussain.

America wanted to use airpower to hammer iraq

From the persian gulf.

The perfect task for the uss carl vinson.

It deployed as part of operation desert strike.

From offshore, its jets penetrated iraqi air space.

Over one 90-day deployment,

The carl vinson launched and landed over 8,000 flights,

Pounding iraqi military targets with laser guided bombs.

Only a nimitz class aircraft carrier could have done it.

And it would have been impossible

Without the extraordinary engineering

Behind the carl vinson's launch and landing systems.

Operations like that are what this crew is training for.

The pilots have one more day of evaluations to complete.

And I have one final engineering innovation to uncover.

♪♪

A seemingly simple innovation that's right under my feet.

It's my final day onboard the uss carl vinson.

The aircraft carrier flight deck

Has a reputation as the most dangerous work place on earth.

With planes, aviation fuel, ammunition,

And dozens of crew,

There's a lot that can go wrong.

And terrible consequences when it does.

1967.

On board the uss forrestal,

The first of the forrestal class

And a predecessor to the nimitz,

One of the worst tragedies in carrier history takes place.

Archive: Somehow a zuni rocket has been triggered

Roaring across the flight deck and hitting an a4 skyhawk.

Zdenek: The skyhawk's missiles detonated.

With planes packed closely together,

The fire quickly spread, trapping pilots,

And detonating more ammunition and fuel.

Crew battled the blaze,

And pushed aircraft overboard,

Rather than risk more explosions.

Meanwhile, burning fuel flooded onto the lower decks.

The disaster claimed the lives of 134 men.

The most common accidents happen during take off and landing

On decks crowded with planes.

Where crew have been killed or injured.

Lanham: The flight deck is a extremely busy place,

With up to 40 aircraft operating

And about 1,000 people running around,

So everybody has to look at what they're doin',

Keep their head on a swivel as we say,

And trust that everybody's doing their job.

Fletcher: It can be deadly.

There's a lot of things can happen

In a very short period of time,

If you're standing in the wrong place,

It can be a bad day.

If you're on the flight deck, keep your head on swivel,

You're constantly looking around,

Just making sure you're in a safe place.

Zdenek: The nimitz designers wanted to make its flight deck

Safer than its predecessors.

But they also wanted more planes.

And to launch and land them faster.

What they needed to achieve both was more space.

For years, carriers operated with a single flight deck.

This is an overhead plan of the essex class.

The us navy's main carrier used during world war ii.

This meant that planes could take off and land,

But not at the same time.

This made operations slow, difficult and dangerous.

This problem was first addressed by naval engineers

In the 1950's,

When they made a fundamental change to carrier design.

The solution was an angled flight deck.

By angling the landing area to one side,

Incoming aircraft could have a clear approach.

That reduced the risk of plane crashes

During landing operations,

But it was the nimitz that took the angled flight deck

To whole new level.

At the front of the nimitz class carl vinson

Is the launch track, with two catapults.

Next to it, and at an angle, is the landing strip.

It's offset by 14 degrees.

Three times more than previous carriers.

That allows launches and landings

To happen simultaneously.

Up to one every 30 seconds,

Making the flight deck busier than an international airport.

Made of steel and coated with an anti-skid material,

It's truly immense.

Over 1,000 feet long, and 250 feet wide.

That's more than 4 and a half acres.

Offering huge space for planes to land,

Take off and maneuver more safely than ever before.

But doing that still requires complicated choreography.

That's managed by the flight deck handler.

Stroud: This will let me know exactly how

I set the flight deck up.

We will also coordinate with navigation,

So navigation will talk with reactor department

And engineering, if they have any high speed runs,

Any turns, rudder swing checks,

So that I'll know how to strategically place my aircraft.

Zdenek: You give 'em a window,

You tell them when they can come in,

You gotta coordinate with that flight plan that you got.

Stroud: Every day its different.

Nothing's ever the same, chad.

This is super easy.

Zdenek: How long you been doing it?

Stroud: 26 years.

Zdenek: 26 years?

Stroud: Yeah.

Zdenek: Wow.

Experience like that

Has been earned over decades of service

In some of the most significant conflicts

In american history.

In October 2001

The carl vinson began the hunt for osama bin laden.

The ship's aircraft were part of the first air strikes

Against al qaeda in afghanistan.

There were over 8,000 take offs and landings.

Nearly 11,000 flight hours.

More than two million pounds of ordnance dropped on targets.

All delivered from the deck of the carl vinson by air

To the enemy's doorstep.

Precisely what an aircraft carrier was designed to do.

10 years later, when osama bin laden

Was finally located in pakistan by navy seals.

Obama: They killed osama bin laden

And took custody of his body.

Zdenek: His body was delivered to the carl vinson

For burial at sea.

That was done from this hangar bay.

Allowing the uss carl vinson to finish the job it started.

It's the last day of evaluations for these pilots.

As they make their final take offs and landings,

It gives me one more chance to get below decks

And see the arresting cable in action again.

It's almost like waiting to catch fish.

You don't know if it's going to hit your line

Or another one.

Not surprisingly, arresting cables

Take a real beating from the planes' tail hooks.

Now, cable three has worn out.

Crews train to kick into action

And replace it with a completely new cable.

The challenge to do it before this plane lands.

♪♪

With just seconds to spare,

The cable is replaced and the f18 can make its landing.

(cheering)

Lanham: When you complete your qualifications,

The lso or landing signal officer,

The ones grading us,

They'll come up over the radio

And say congrats man, you're a quall.

So the training on the aircraft carrier

Is really the culmination

Of about two to two-and- a-half years of training.

Zdenek: The engineering on this ship may be 40 years old,

But the constant maintenance it receives

Means it still runs like clockwork,

Time after time.

Believe it or not that was catch number 105,527,

And just about everything you need

To stop an f18 in a couple hundred feet

Is right here in this room.

American made, and built to last.

The uss carl vinson

Has played a critical role

In exercising american air power from the sea.

It is just one of ten nimitz class aircraft carriers,

The last of which will serve until 2060.

But already, the us navy has designed

And built the first of a replacement fleet.

The ford class.

The first entered service in 2017.

Nine more of these new vessels are planned

To create america's next 40 billion dollar

Super carrier fleet.

The ford class is just the next step.

Building on the successful design

Of its remarkable predecessors, like the uss carl vinson.

This iconic, battle proven super carrier

Has shaped four decades of global history.

It's a legacy made possible by extraordinary engineering.

♪♪