Former ordie gets into Minecraft shipbuilding

If shipyards were as prolific as former Aviation Ordnanceman Second Class Jason Gomez, there’s no question that the Navy could have a 600-ship fleet.

But Gomez isn’t building with steel, but rather blocks in Minecraft, a construction game that’s like Legos, but on a computer.

He has a few vessels under construction, but his latest, and most elaborate project is his old  ship, the carrier Enterprise. He served on there 19 years ago.

Watch the video (and be mindful of the occasionally salty language).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7SJ6O2xa7s&list=UUyXz-pPp0j7RtTO-2bcMsOg&index=3&feature=plcp[/youtube]

He’s been documenting his progress on all his ships on YouTube, where he goes by Jagthunder1. So far he’s around 60 hours into constructing CVN 65 and has around 60 more to go. He’s built the hull, the flight deck, the island, the elevators and the hangar.

It’s his most complex ship to date, he said.

“Every time I go to make a build I look for something more challenging,” he said.

Besides the Enterprise, he’s built a Typhoon class submarine he borrowed from “The Hunt for Red October” as well as a French battleship. They took around five days apiece. As those projects neared completion, he laid the keel for the Enterprise.

“I said I might as well go ahead and build a carrier,” he said.

He has around 300 pictures and schematics from model building websites that he’s using as references. It’s been nearly two decades since he was on the ship and it’s tough to do it all by memory, but he hopes to get a refresher when he visits the ship for its decommissioning ceremony in December, he said.