https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EypzUduBqiQ It’s an event years in the making: No, not the new Star Wars movie. The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower is out of the yards! The ship officially emerged in late August, and as it prepares for its first deployment next summer after two years in a Norfolk dry-dock, the public affairs department released an anticipation-building video parody entitled, “Sea Wars: The Ike Awakens.” The video mirrors the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” trailer, with a very startled petty officer third class on the flight deck, a rolling mop bucket beeping like R2-D2 and an F/A-18 Hornet battling an…
Browsing: Naval aviation
Navy heroes are making another appearance on the silver screen, but unlike the characters portrayed in “Act of Valor” or even “Zero Dark Thirty,” they’re a little less … well … real. Two animated Super Hornets, Bravo and Echo, star in Disney’s “Planes”, a “Cars” spinoff hitting theaters Aug. 9 that tells the story of a single-propeller crop-duster — named, naturally, Dusty. When Dusty enters a flying contest that takes him around the world, he gets into some trouble over the Pacific and the two Navy jets come to his rescue, USA Today reported. The jets are voiced by “Top…
Dear VRC-40 “The Rawhides,” I’m just writing to apologize for getting airsick in your C-2A Greyhound. It was certainly unintentional. You handled the plane with steady hands as we flew from Naval Air Station Mayport, Fla., to the carrier Enterprise last week. We even had weather on our side, allowing for a particularly calm flight. If only my stomach was able to manage my breakfast as well as you flew the COD. Usually I handle flights pretty well, but the combination of the smell of aviation fuel, the lack of windows, the heat and the sheer grittiness of the Navy’s…
Hangar One, built in 1933 at Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif., is currently in a state of undress. That’s because the corrugated siding covering the massive hangar, deemed toxic to the environment, is being replaced. Just to note, it’s a Navy hangar, but NASA is footing the bill to take care of it. This project has been ongoing since May, but news broke on Friday that Google is offering to pay 100 percent of the costs, that’s $33 million, associated with renovating Hangar One. So what’s the catch? Google would like to use two-thirds of the hangar’s space to…
Nearly three years ago, the Navy and defense giant Northrop Grumman Corp. unveiled the X-47B unmanned air system in Palmdale, Calif., showing off the bat-wing-like tailless and pilotless autonomous bomber that is designed to take off and land on aircraft carriers. In February, the first air vehicle made history when it completed its first real flight, a half-hour mission over the California desert. On Nov. 22, the second air vehicle, known as AV-2, took off in the hazy blue skies at nearby Edwards Air Force Base and flew up to 5,000 feet as it cut some race patterns over a…
The carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower is underway in the Atlantic conducting carrier qualifications for naval aviators, but it’s the unglamorous and often tedious work below decks that keeps the fliers going. A zillion things can go wrong with an aircraft — especially aircraft that operate in a maritime environment and bounce onto aircraft carriers. That requires checking everything from the big stuff to internal leakage. All the work has to be tracked. Then there’s the support for the support — the ancillary work. These unsung efforts underpin what everyone is hoping for topside: safe flight operations.
The Tailhook Reunion and Symposium hosted a winging ceremony, a first for the annual meet-up. Two Navy and two Marine Corps officers received their wings. But before things were made official for Lt. j.g. Erik Michael Sink, 1st Lt. Jeffrey C. Monroe, Lt. j.g. Gregory Brett Maters and 1st Lt. Reid Savid, retired Adm. Tim Keating, formerly CO of Northern Command and Pacific Command, gave some advice that will help out any aviator headed to their first squadron. Don’t forget about mom and dad. Learn how to be a good wingman. “The best combat leaders I know … they were…
A lengthy post-availability at-sea period just ended for the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, which blitzed through sea trials, flight deck certification, carrier quals, and 3M (Maintenance Material Management) inspections following nine months of shipyard work that ended in mid-June. During that time, Ike’s primary lifelines to shore were the reliable Carrier On-Board Delivery planes that deliver mail to ship and shore and carry personnel and spare parts back and forth. Filling the bill for Ike was Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 40 out of Naval Station Norfolk’s Chambers Field. It goes without saying that CODs “deliver the mail.” According to VRC-40’s…
I remember a 1990-ish visit to a Japanese submarine base and being dumbfounded to see the subs flying the rising sun flag off their stern masts. Dumbfounded, because being, ahem, of a certain age, I associated the flag — a red disc with red and white “beams” extending outward — with the aggressive World War II-era regime that launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in an effort to exercise total dominance over the Pacific. Its use was banned in 1945 following the surrender to the United States and its allies, but many Americans don’t realize that it was re-adopted…
More than 40 sailors from the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower spent the morning of July 26 sprucing up a resource center for the homeless in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., during a three-day port call in Mayport that began July 25. The center, called Mission House, offers food and counseling services to the homeless in the Jacksonville area. Ike’s port call came in the midst of an underway period in the Atlantic following a nine-month maintenance availability at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. While at sea, the carrier successfully completed sea trials and has continued with additional training. Hopefully, these hard-working sailors received some…
