Naval Gazing

A top-gun fantasy comes true.

By Bret Stephens
Friday, July 13, 2007 12:01 a.m.

ABOARD THE USS HARRY S. TRUMAN--An hour before dusk, the air crew of the USS Truman--several hundred men and women of every rank and job description--gathers at the front end of the deck to walk its 1,100-foot length, looking for tiny pieces of debris. A stray piece of metal sucked into the intake of a fighter jet could cause catastrophic damage to the plane and the pilot and terrible damage to the ship. "We don't think of this as a dangerous business," says Rear Adm. Bill Gortney, an F-18 pilot who also commands the Truman's battle group of cruisers, destroyers and submarines. "It's just a terribly unforgiving one."

On this particular evening, however, the rigors of Navy life seem briefly to melt away. From the foredeck I see a school of dolphins leaping from the water; off to starboard, whales are just breaking the surface. The deck is nearly clear except for a detachment of Seahawk helicopters that has returned from an anti-submarine warfare exercise. Activity will resume at a frenetic pace later tonight as the carrier undergoes qualification exercises. But for now the Truman seems remarkably serene and oddly small, a dot in the ocean tracing a southerly course 100 miles off the Virginia shore.

To spend some time on an aircraft carrier is to be disabused of more than a few "Top Gun"-inspired fantasies. The pilots are low-key and self-effacing. The women in their lives, so to speak, are often their fellow pilots or, in the case of F-18 squadron leader Sara Joyner, their commanding officer. The sleek but unwieldy F-14 Tomcat that Tom Cruise pretended to fly (and that was once the subject of my adolescent day-dreaming) has been scrapped, to the immense relief of the entire profession of naval aviators and mechanics.


I arrived here this afternoon from Norfolk Naval Station, courtesy of one of the ship's C-2 Greyhound transport planes. The Greyhound, which looks as if it sprang from the womb of Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose, is 50,000 pounds of flying metal that must set itself down on the pitching deck of a ship at 120 knots and come to a complete stop in two seconds and 200 or so feet. Our pilot made the "trap" on the first try. But tonight Adm. Gortney will watch from his seat on the bridge as freshly minted pilots ("nuggets," in Navy parlance) miss their traps and "bolter" off the deck to try again. As he does, he recalls his own "night in the barrel" as a young pilot, and his fighter jockey bravado softens perceptibly into fatherly concern for his men and women aloft in the darkness.

The view of the ship from the bridge is an inspiring one--as is just about every other sight on the carrier, above or below deck. From a weapons hold below the waterline, ordnance officer Stephen Folsom matter-of-factly explains the methods by which guided and bunker-busting bombs, each weighing 2,000 pounds, are maintained, assembled and moved as needed to the planes above. By my rough count, the hold contains about 150 bombs--and there are no fewer than 36 other such holds on the ship. I find myself entertaining the idea of offering the same tour to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It would serve him well as a lesson in humility.

But while jets and bombs make for terrific tourist attractions, by far the most impressive aspect of the ship is the system that recruits 5,000-plus volunteers--few of them older than 25--and teaches them to run the ship. It takes years to make a fighter pilot, and anywhere between seven to 18 months, sometimes longer, to train enlistees. "Continuity of culture" is the greatest challenge facing the Navy, says Herm Shelanski, the ship's captain. "Every year a quarter of the crew is brand-new. You don't just pick leadership and skills off a tree. You build it from the ground up."

Of the sailors I meet, some are here to make a better life; others, a different life. Paige Young, 20, joined the Navy mainly "to get out of my town" of Gillette, Wyo. What surprises her most about Navy life? "The diversity of people," she says. She now works flight ops from the bridge. David Andre, an enlisted man in his early 30s, holds a master's degree in international relations. He joined for a taste of military life and now wants to apply for the officers' course. Cynthia Trammel, 22, had wanted to join the Navy ever since her father took her to air shows of the Blue Angels. She's responsible for an inconspicuous Gatling gun at the ship's stern that can fire 20mm tungsten rounds at a rate of 4,500 a minute against incoming missiles. "I've nicknamed her 'Myrtle,' " Ms. Trammel tells me." She is demanding."


The Navy operates 11 carriers like the Truman. No other navy in the world comes close. The Chinese, who would love to have one or more carriers of their own, recently sent their top admiral for a tour of the Truman. Adm. Gortney recalls that the Chinese were mainly interested in two things. The first was the ship's arresting gear, the heavy cables that trap landing planes. The second was the way the Navy recruits, trains, organizes and motivates its sailors.

No doubt the Chinese will one day figure out the mechanics of landing planes at sea--and of catapulting them off the deck. I wonder if they'll ever get the human element right. The men and women of the Truman are here as a matter of their own free will in order to defend our collective right to live freely. That's more than a matter of mechanics. It's a matter of spirit: the true source of the Truman's awesome power, and of its beauty, too.