Original subtitles

A new breed of super machine is evolving.

Bigger.

Faster.

Smarter. Built to tackle near impossible feats.

Among them, the world's most powerful aircraft carrier.

Continuously landing, continually launching. It'll be busy.

This mighty Leviathan works around the clock.

To launch and land its strike force of jets.

Boom. They shoot you right off the end.

For the best roller coaster ride of your life.

Today, she must qualify a squadron of pilots and prove she is ready for

If you're not scared, then you're crazy.

We'll blow this four and a half billion dollar monster apart.

To discover technological secrets that achieve the incredible.

From a hull designed to withstand torpedo attacks.

To high -pressure catapults that blast jets into the air.

And a landing system advanced enough to work in treacherous seas.

We'll reveal how this extraordinary aircraft carrier evolved to rise above.

all other machines.

In the port of San Diego, an elite crew of 4 ,400 men and women is

setting out into the Pacific Ocean.

Their mission, to train for naval warfare.

To do this, they need an extraordinary vessel.

Weighing 97 ,000 tons, powered with two nuclear reactors, and carrying a strike

force of over 40 jet fighters, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is

America's flagship.

It's a little city, you know, at over 1 ,000 feet long.

Captain Chris Bold.

is the man in charge we do everything on board we're self -sufficient we don't

need to stop for gas our nuclear power allows us to go for almost 25 years

without refueling the reactors

This mighty carrier can deliver American air power anywhere in the world.

She's a colossus, born and bred for battle.

Her steam -powered catapults launch aircraft into the sky at more than 160

miles per hour.

In her belly, four nuclear -powered steam turbines drive her through the

waves.

2 ,000 steel compartments make her nearly unthinkable.

Over a million parts joined together to make the Reagan

one of the fiercest fighters on the ocean.

The USS Ronald Reagan has just spent a

year in dock for maintenance.

This is the first time all her aircraft are back on board.

In the next 24 hours, Captain Bull must train his new crew for active service

and get America's flagship ready for action.

The plan for today is to qualify 40 pilots. So that's 40 air crews and

types of aircraft.

So that's what we're trying to accomplish today, and that'll be both

night.

To keep the Navy pilots battle ready, they must pass regular qualifying tests,

demonstrating their ability to land on a ship.

There's only a handful of countries that actually do what we do, and we do it

the best.

One of the pilots who must qualify today is Lieutenant John Lape. Call sign,

shipmate.

I've been flying in the United States Navy for the last three years. The last

year, year and a half, flying the F -18 Charlie, it's been the best time of my

life.

This is Shipmate's first time underway on board a carrier.

He will be judged on his landings, known in Navy slang as traps.

Today my mission is to go out and achieve carrier qualification.

And what that involves, I need to do two day traps and I also need two night

traps.

A lot hinges on these tests.

If Shipmate fails to qualify, he will be sent to shore to retrain and may not be

allowed to fly on carriers again.

It's 12 noon. The 24 -hour mission begins.

Commander Joel Becker, call

sign Vegas, is the air boss.

I'm almost like the maestro of an orchestra.

An experienced Navy pilot with over 600 carrier landings, Vegas will direct the

qualifying flights from primary flight control.

Everybody has to work together, and my main job is to make sure that they're

working together and then try to stay ahead of dangerous situations.

Before Vegas can get his fighter aircraft into the air, he needs Captain

push the carrier up to launch speed.

We are pretty fast. Each aircraft that takes off the land has a certain amount

of wind over the deck that's required.

So we need to be able to go fast enough to make our own wind all the time.

We have to be able to get above 30 knots, you know, almost 40 miles an hour

pretty quick whenever we want.

To reach this speed, the Reagan has four propellers that push her through the

ocean.

But the ship is so large, they need the help of a unique bow design,

borrowed from nature.

In the 1860s, the shape of a swan inspired a British engineer.

to build a ship with a bulbous bow.

It created less drag than traditional designs, which saved fuel and made ships

faster.

The Reagan stretches this bow design to the size of a house.

It pierces the waves ahead of the hull, so it can plow through water faster.

giving the ship the critical speed it needs to launch planes.

Depending on whether we have natural wind or if the ship is having to make

we generally want about 20 to 25 knots over the deck.

Today, the wind is only 5 knots.

To get the plane safely into the air, The carrier must make up the difference.

Captain Bolt turns the USS Ronald Reagan into the wind and cranks up the speed.

Approximately 10 hours to the speed, sir.

The Blue Blaster Squadron ready room, 90 minutes before takeoff.

All right, guys, welcome.

We're going to go ahead and get a quick CQ brief, get everybody's mind caged so

we can go out there and get a couple good bounces in.

An experienced officer briefs junior pilot shipmate.

on the dangers of his flight.

We'll go through emergencies and safety and anything out of the ordinary

that might happen.

If the launch goes wrong, shipmates life hinges on him ejecting before his plane

crashes into the sea.

He will have only a fraction of a second to react.

So it's essential he knows the eject drill backwards.

It's called the emergency catapult flyaway.

Once we get taxied up to the JVD, shipmate, what do I want you to be

Like all Navy pilots, you don't get near a $50 million jet without having the

right stuff.

1 p .m. The first pilots are set for takeoff.

To launch the aircraft, the Reagan's engines go into overdrive.

In the heart of the ship, steam from the nuclear reactors pushes the turbines to

the max.

They deliver the power of 60 freight trains to the massive 22

-foot -high propeller.

thrusting 97 ,000 tons of carrier to more than 30 miles an hour.

In the next three hours, the

Reagan's crew must launch 80 aircraft.

One small mistake could be fatal.

In the Pacific Ocean, America's flagship, the USS Ronald Reagan, is

for action.

This mighty aircraft carrier will shortly join the fleet of ships that

defends the United States.

To get her ready for combat, Captain Chris Bolt needs to qualify 40 pilots.

By the end of the day.

We're not going to take time out because we have so many pilots to get

qualified. We're just going to continue into the wind and let all the pilots

just keep going around and get some more.

When they run out of gas, we sideline them, fill them up with jet fuel, put it

in a fresh pilot, and then do it all over again.

Copy. 120 mile per hour. Thanks.

It's about to get very, very busy. This is kind of the quiet before the storm.

30 minutes before his launch, junior pilot shipmate hits up.

His life will depend on this equipment if the launch fails.

This right here is our parachute harness. So if we do have to eject, this

what we actually connect ourselves to the jet with.

And then within the vest, we've got our flashlight, we've got our radio, some

flares, some smoke, signaling devices, everything that we would need.

Shipmate mentally prepares as he heads to the deck for launch.

It's a procedure he's rehearsed in his head hundreds of times.

I'm going to jump in, get everything started up online, and then that's when

heart starts pounding. I'm getting ready to taxi out and go get a cat shot.

Taxiing to the runway through the chaos on the flight deck is no simple task.

There are moving jets everywhere, jets that have exhaust blowing. You've got

spinning props, spinning rotor blades, and then not to mention the multiple

personnel involved with moving everybody around.

So one thing you've got to make sure you do is watch your aircraft handler and

follow your taxi director around so that those yellow shirts are out there to

keep you from running into another jet causing huge catastrophic damage to that

other aircraft.

I'll reball if I get a status on two.

To take off, the F -18 would normally require

a runway at least 1 ,600 feet long.

But Shipmate only has 300 feet.

To reach his launch speed of 165 miles per hour, he relies on help from the

carrier.

Shuttle's going to come up. The shuttle's going to take the launch bar,

they're going to feed it in there properly, and then they're going to put

the tension.

That's when your heart really starts going.

So then they pass you off to the shooter. Shooter's going to tell you to

up. You come up on the power.

You want to make sure your flight control system is good to go. That way

you come off the end of the cat stroke, you're going to be able to fly away and

you're not going to have to eject.

Okay, there's my flight control set. My engine control set.

I'm going to salute the shooter. He's going to return the salute. At that

you're along for the ride.

To launch the jets off her deck, the Reagan uses an explosive invention.

First sketched by Leonardo da Vinci 500 years ago.

The steam cannon.

A fire at the back turned the barrel of this gun into a red -hot furnace.

Just a few drops of water would explode into steam, powering the

cannonball out of the gun.

The Reagan has two pistons hooked up to the jet.

They sit inside a pair of 300 -foot steel tubes.

Steam shoots the pistons down the tubes and catapults the jet to

165 miles per hour.

Your left hand's up holding the throttle.

Your other hand pulling the towel rack, and then boom, they shoot you right off

the end. You're the best roller coaster ride of your life.

The catapult fires shipmate into the sky with a g -force greater than the space

shuttle.

Onboard the Reagan.

The flight deck crew scrambles the rest of the aircraft.

It's a hazardous job.

35 sailors have died in flight deck incidents since 1980.

The deck of an aircraft carrier is one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

When things go wrong, it's a very unforgiving environment, and we've all

friends in this business.

A line on the deck, you know, on this side of the line, you're safe.

Six inches on the other side of the line, you know, the wing of an aircraft.

Then kill somebody.

Once pilots have landed at the back of the ship, they must make their way to

catapult from the bow to take off again.

Flight deck control.

Copy. Let's go ahead and set off on one.

Handler Al Guajardo is in charge of the flight deck.

He must guide the aircraft to the catapults so none of them collide.

With carrier qualifications, you've just got to have your head on the spool at

all times because they're just continuously landing, continuously

continuously landing, continuously launching.

It'll be busy, at least until 2300 tonight.

To qualify, Shipmate must now land his fighter on the deck at 150 miles per

hour.

There's no room for error.

If they are two feet off center line, they're going to start hitting my folks

the deck.

In the Pacific Ocean, Airbus Vegas needs 40

pilots to pass their qualifying tests by the end of the day to get the USS

Ronald Reagan ready.

for combat.

Examiners will assess how well the pilots perform the most dangerous of all

carrier operations.

Landing.

One hour into the operation, nine hours to go.

The second batch of pilots start to land.

Pilot John Late callsign Shipmate.

is ten minutes away from his first landing.

The Reagan's landing strip is ten times shorter than a normal runway.

To land planes, the ship catches them with special wires.

To catch a 38 ,000 -pound jet plane, the Reagan's wires must be strong.

and flexible.

They borrow a design honed through 300 million years of evolution.

The Darwin's bark spider makes the strongest biological material known to

Glands on its belly create tiny filaments that it spins into a single

Its twisted structure makes it strong and flexible.

Perfect for catching large prey.

Just like the spider's web, the arrestor wires on the Reagan are made of many

twisted strands.

Steel fibers are spun around a flexible plastic core to make a wire just one

and a half inches thick, but tough enough to stop a speeding jet.

We have three wires that are strung on the flight deck. The two wires, the hot

wire, that's the target wire for the aircraft. That's the wire that they are

trying to hit at all times.

But we have one and three there just in case they happen to miss.

LSE, shocks and change, spot seven. Black Knight LSE, shocks and change,

seven.

Pilots need incredible skill to catch a wire.

You're taking one of the most powerful pieces of equipment on Earth at about

miles an hour.

Their margin of error is two feet.

meaning if they are two feet off center line, they're going to start hitting my

folks on the deck or they're going to start hitting machinery.

So it's one of the most precise types of flying in the world.

Today, the qualifying pilots are flying two types of F -18, the lighter Hornets

and the heavier Rhinos.

The ship's landing equipment must bring both types of aircraft to a stop in

exactly the same distance.

To do that, the arrestor wire weaves over 1 ,000 feet through the carrier,

to the arrestor engine.

Here, it pulls a steel piston into a huge shock absorber, pushing

hydraulic fluid through a slowly closing valve.

The valve fully shuts when the arrestor wire has moved exactly 320 feet.

This brings the speeding jet to a complete stop in just two seconds.

In arrestor engine room three, petty officer Carissa Clark checks the

engine.

To catch a jet safely, the operator must set the engine with the aircraft's

weight in pounds.

What we're catching today are actually rhinos and hornets. So that's between 36

,000 for the hornet and 48 ,000 for the rhino. And once that's set, all of this

will go green, and we're ready to catch aircraft.

If it's set wrong, a heavy plane could snap the wire.

Once we've actually caught an aircraft, we

need to retract the cable.

Sometimes within 30 seconds to a minute, we have to be able to get that engine

ready to catch the next aircraft.

To qualify, junior pilot Shipmate

must make two landings in daylight and two at night.

He is just two minutes away from his first landing.

Three arrestor cables stretch across the deck.

All pilots aim to catch the center wire.

It's not easy.

This Navy footage from 1997 shows what can happen if a landing goes wrong.

Shipmate lines up his F -18 behind the carrier.

If you're not scared operating behind the back of the ship, then you're crazy.

Everybody is scared when they're doing this. Everybody has their nervous

tension.

This is his first attempt to land.

It's unlike anything you've ever experienced.

You're coming in, your heart's racing, you're sweating. All you want to do, you

just want to land.

That last little bit's a blur.

Everything comes so fast. The deck comes right up on you, and then the hook

catches the wire.

Just this jerky motion that throws you forward is unlike anything you've ever

experienced before. It's like a car wreck on sterile.

Shipmate just catches the last wire on the deck. He's safely down.

If he had missed all three wires, he would have had to fly off the deck for

another attempt.

One daylight landing down, one to go.

Right away, they're going to pull you back. You're going to go right out and

it again.

He taxis to the catapult for his second launch.

But at the back of the ship, there's a problem.

One of the arrestor cables is wearing out.

We inspect the cable every day when we man up. So if we have three broken wires

on that entire cable, we have to change that cable.

If the cable snaps for whatever reason and the aircraft keeps going off the

that's a lost pilot.

If they don't change the cable in time, Shipmate won't be able to qualify.

Stand clear of spot seven.

Lifting Black Knight, stand well clear.

The USS Ronald Reagan is on a mission to qualify 40 pilots for carrier

operations.

Junior pilot Shipmate takes off to make his second qualifying landing.

But there's a problem.

An arrestor cable that catches planes is worn.

The flight deck crew raced to replace it.

They're changing the cable. It's on the flight deck.

It should be a two -minute swap.

Should be if we're on our game.

Shipmate is waiting to land.

If they don't change the cable in time, he will have to fly round again.

As soon as they're done, it's going to cut right back in. No break, no pause at

all.

The crew fixed the cable just in time for shipmate second landing.

This time, he makes a perfect touchdown.

All right, what do we got?

Rhino. Rhino, right? Except for the rhino.

With his daytime landings complete, Chipmate is halfway to qualifying for

carrier operation.

I did pretty well.

My first pass, I caught three wire.

And then coming around again for my second pass, I had a little better pass

caught the two wire.

Definitely an improving trend.

It's one thing to conduct a training exercise in peaceful conditions, but the

USS Ronald Reagan must be able to launch and land planes in the thick of battle.

To test his crew, Captain Bolt is about to put the ship under simulated attack.

We're a warship, so we train to go to war.

We simulate being under attack from multiple sources, air attack, submarine

attack.

And how do we stop, fix it, get going fast again, continue with flight ops?

The

attack

exercise begins.

All sailors must head to their designated battle stations and fight to

the ship.

Chief Petty Officer Tom Carr assesses how well the crew performed.

Right now we're in a general quarters drill.

These guys don't know, but this space is going to also get blown up. I think

it's part of the plan, and then we'll see how it goes. It's hard enough now,

it would be even harder if your enemy were trying to kill you for real.

they must be prepared for a torpedo ripping a hole in the hull.

If a

torpedo causes the ship to spring a leak for real,

her giant belly could fill with over 100 million gallons of water.

To keep herself afloat, the Reagan uses ancient technology.

For centuries, junks were the engines of the Chinese economy.

But a single hole in their hull could end in disaster.

So boat builders fitted them with watertight wooden walls called

This way, a leak could only flood a small part of the ship, so it would stay

afloat.

The Reagan takes this idea to the extreme.

In her belly, steel bulkheads the size of a house form gigantic watertight

compartments.

Together with the other bulkheads on the ship, they hold back crushing waters

and ferocious fires so the Reagan stays afloat in the heat of battle.

To protect the ship from flooding, the crew must seal all the ship's 2 ,000

watertight compartments in less than 12 minutes.

These are watertight airtight hatches. They're absolutely paramount for the

survival of this area.

You wouldn't be able to open that unless you had permission.

There could be a fire on that side of flooding or anything, and just cracking

a little bit could let those elements in.

There isn't an armor system invented that's actually going to prevent a

from entering your ship. The fun part is, if it enters a ship, it only floods

that one space that it goes into.

The crew have sealed all the hatches with time to spare.

Mission accomplished.

Exercise over, the crew return to normal duties.

We're loaded.

4 p .m.

The 40 pilots have almost finished their daylight qualification flights.

But an aircraft carrier must be able to fly planes round the clock.

We'll go for the next several hours until the sun sets, and then we're going

go right into night flight ops, and we'll go almost till midnight and see if

can get all 40 of our pilots qualified.

All revolts look for status on two. It's a big ask.

The whole crew will have to be on top form.

To qualify, shipmate must prove that he can land at night.

The most dangerous part of the operation is about to begin.

To wage war, the USS Ronald Reagan...

must be able to launch fighter aircraft both day and night.

All 40 pilots have successfully completed their daylight flights.

But to qualify for carrier operations, they must now do it all again, only this

time in the dark.

Junior pilot Shipmate needs to make two nighttime landings.

We're the only service that'll go out and fly at night around ship.

That's where it's really scary, especially if you don't have the moon.

have any illumination.

The Reagan must be able to operate in near total darkness to prevent enemies

detecting her at night.

Shipmate takes off.

He's about to make his first night landing.

It's probably the most difficult maneuver any pilot has to make.

This Navy footage from 1996 shows that the room for error is very

small.

This time...

The pilot ejected and survived.

Surrounded by an ocean of darkness, Shipmate relies on the Reagan's air

controllers to guide him back to the vessel.

Pretty much we are the pilot's eyes in the skies during bad weather, lightning

storms, thunderstorms, hail.

When they are coming back from their mission, sometimes the pilot may be

fatigued, setting in, and we're basically telling them exactly what they

be doing to ensure that they're safe in the air.

Each pilot has an aircraft number.

Shipmates is 205.

The plane

appears on the radar display.

The little dot right here is the aircraft. The carrier is right here.

the edge of the flight deck.

So right now the aircraft is correcting to make sure he is directly aligned with

the landing area of the carrier.

Battle Bank 313.

Roger.

Right now he's directly on glide path.

The glide path is the aircraft's line of descent to land.

The final control beam telling him he's on glide path, on course.

2 -0 -5 on glide path, on course.

At that point right here, he'll tell me he's at a mile.

Let's probably know he's about to land.

2 -0 -5, one mile on glide path, on course.

He's good to go, and now he is directly aligned with the ship to land.

At three -quarters of a mile, he's going to tell the pilot, three -quarters of a

mile, call the ball.

The ball

refers to the meatball, an ingenious landing light.

Shown from the side of the runway, it will guide shipmate down to the deck.

At the heart of this landing system for pilot...

is an invention originally designed to save sailors' lives.

In the 19th century, lighthouse beams were broad and couldn't reach very far.

So a French engineer built a new type of lens with concentric glass rings.

This Fresnel lens focused the light into a bright, narrow beam that sailors

could see from 20 miles away.

The Reagan's landing system uses 12 lighthouse lenses to create a stack of

narrow yellow beams.

The pilot sees one of these beams at a time, the meatball. When he's on course,

the meatball lines up with the horizontal green light.

If it appears above them, he's flying too high.

If it's below, he's too low.

The meatball must line up perfectly, or the pilot is in trouble.

He's good to go.

That's where the LSO will take over.

And essentially right now, the LSO and the pilot are the only ones that are

going to be talking until he lands on the flight deck.

On the back of the ship, the landing signals officers, the LSOs, will once

grade shipmates landing.

Roger. Roger.

That's where it starts getting really scary because everything you see is

except for the runway lights themselves.

It's going a little high.

Roger.

Well, you're on a glide slope.

Shipmate makes a perfect landing.

Came in for my first pass.

I cut the two -wire.

He's bang on target.

He has done well so far.

Shipmate hooks up to the catapult for his second and final launch.

He needs to catch one last wire to qualify.

He comes in to touchdown.

He's missed the wires.

Shipmate has failed to land.

On his last attempt to land his F -18, junior pilot Shipney missed all three

wires on the USS Ronald Reagan.

In Navy slang, he did a bolter.

Once you get a bolter, you're just like, oh, no, what happened? You play that

pass back in your mind. Whether you added a little too much power in, you

getting a little anxious.

And so from there, you're able to analyze, okay, let's make this pass a

better.

Shipmate must go around and make another attempt to land.

The pressure is on.

In flight deck control, the handler keeps a record of every bolter.

The rookie pilot is what we call Nugget, and if I see a B up there on a regular

basis, that normally means that he's a rookie pilot. A B means that he

means he missed the wire.

For Shipmate, it's now serious.

If he continues to miss the wires, he may fail to qualify.

What makes landing on an aircraft carrier so difficult is that the deck of

ship moves up and down with the heaving ocean.

To touch down safely, Shipmate relies on the landing light's extra layer of

technology.

If the landing lights were simply fixed to the ship, they would pitch up and

down with it, making the beams of light move and the system useless.

So on the Reagan, the lights have stabilizers.

Small motors swivel the lenses against any motion of the ship, so the lights

always point in the same direction.

This allows planes to land safely, however rough the sea.

The ship rocks slightly, even in tonight's calm conditions.

The gyro -stabilized landing lights should help Shipmate touch down.

After his bolter, Shipmate approaches

for another attempt.

This time, he touches down safely.

It's a huge relief.

Definitely glad to get back onto the ship.

Night flying is nothing that anybody wants to go out and do.

I just got a little low coming into glide slope, and then added a little too

much power, and went right back around for another try. But that happens to

everybody. 205, I'm glad that's on course.

205.

Shipmate's final landing qualifies him for carrier operations.

I'm qualified to go out now and operate safely around the ship.

The crew of the USS Ronald Reagan has accomplished its mission.

All 40 pilots are now qualified for operations on board.

We definitely knocked off some rust. It's been a little while since the

Reagan has conducted some flight operations, but we knocked off the rust

we're starting to get to where we...

Looked like a fine, finely tuned machine.

They've been very efficient, my compliments.

We count it as a win if we can just have several hundred takeoffs and landings

and nobody gets hurt, nothing that touches something that it wasn't

touch. That's pretty impressive all by itself.

The USS Ronald Reagan is now ready for action.

On call to deliver its strike force of jets anywhere they're needed.

We don't know where we're going to be needed in the world, and most soldiers

the ground love to hear the sound of strike fighter engines zooming overhead.

It makes them feel good.

Steaming at 34 miles per hour.

Launching and landing aircraft around the clock.

To qualify as Navy pilots for combat anywhere in the world.

The USS Ronald Reagan is a formidable engineering giant.

It's all thanks to a bulbous bow that speeds her through the waves.

High -pressure steam catapults that launch supersonic jets.

Nuclear -powered steam turbines that thrust her across oceans.

advanced gyro -stabilized landing lights, and steel wires strong enough to

fighter planes.

It's these technological marvels that have helped this aircraft carrier evolve

to rise above all other machines.