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: Newport News
Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford began testing the ship’s new electromagnetic aircraft launch system in Virginia’s James River on June 5, but before they can launch real aircraft, they have to practice. It’s not quite like a real, live flight deck, but it’s close. Gone are the cargo pants, brightly colored turtlenecks and helmets. Instead, a sailor in blueberries and a hard hat mimics the signals of a deck handler before the catapult launches a weight sled out over the river in a graceful swan dive. The slow motion impact with the water at the end is rather dramatic. EMALS testing began June 5, the latest step…
The executive officer of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt has narrated a new ship-produced video that has popped up on YouTube. The Navy’s probably happier with this video than some other recent ones. Narrated by the XO, Capt. Douglas Verissimo, and featuring his CO, Capt. William Hart, in a walk-on part, the video touts the carrier’s ongoing Refueling and Complex Overhaul at Newport News Shipbuilding. [HTML1] Verissimo supplies dramatic narration over images of sailors wielding welding torches and needle guns, all working “to prepare for another 25 years of vital missions to come.” “Join us as we prepare to return to…
Huntington Ingalls Industries must have made a Best Buy run before they set up their stall at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space Exposition. Exhibitors use all sorts of displays to show off their goodies, but HII’s came complete with video games and a huge 3-D television, which would make teenage boys everywhere incredibly jealous … at least if they came here. The video game ran on an X-Box but it wasn’t getting much attention, maybe because the objective was to fight fires on a flight deck. It’s just not quite the same as “Call of Duty.” Nearby was a…
The cheering probably hasn’t stopped in Everett, Wash. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus was the bearer of glad tidings and Christmas cheer Dec. 9 when he announced that the carrier Nimitz, for the past nine years based in San Diego, would be homeported at Everett Naval Station after 12 months of scheduled maintenance at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in nearby Bremerton. A Dec. 10 editorial in the Seattle Times noted that “Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Rick Larsen, Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson … were buoyed by the good news for the economy and the compliment…