Carrier Bush made up of sum of its parts: the workers

NEWPORT NEWS

Once the Navy accepts an aircraft carrier, it becomes part of the fleet, sailing the seas to preserve U.S. interests.

But in the years leading up to acceptance, as the ship is methodically transformed from a billion parts and mountains of aluminum and unformed steel into a 90,000-ton warship, it belongs to the shipyard and, more specifically, to its workers.

"It's just like being a parent," said Kenneth Logan, an electrician who's worked on seven carriers at Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard. "It's part of you that's out there, and you want it to do well. It's a sense of pride you can't explain."

On Saturday, the latest object of that pride - the carrier George H.W. Bush - will host two presidents and a host of other dignitaries for a commissioning ceremony.

The Bush is the 10th and last of the Nimitz class of aircraft carriers. The class's namesake was commissioned in 1975 and is homeported in San Diego. All 10 have been built in Newport News.

As many as 10,000 workers will pass through a carrier during its construction, with as many as 4,600 working on it at any one time.

Building a carrier "exercises all the muscle groups," said Scott Stabler, who runs the Bush construction program for the shipyard. It involves work in engineering, contracts, supply, planning, manufacturing, piping, turning and installation.

And though each ship is similar, technological and operational advances over the decades have led to marked changes in construction.

Since the building of the Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1980s, for example, the shipyard has used modular construction, building large sections of the ship independently before setting them in place in the dry dock.

This same process continued with the Bush, which required a crane to make 161 such "superlifts" of up to 900 tons to set the upper and lower bow, the island and so on.

During the 1980s and early '90s, the Navy was ordering carriers back to back in what Stabler called "the days of wine and roses. As we launched one, we were on the verge of laying the keel for the next."

As a result, there were few design changes between the four carriers built in that era.

Production slowed after the delivery of the Harry S. Truman in 1998. The following carrier, the Ronald Reagan, wasn't delivered until five years later.

The Bush, which is due for delivery in March after its sea trials, will come almost six years after the Reagan.

The Gerald R. Ford, the namesake of the next carrier class, isn't due for delivery until 2015.

Because the shipyard isn't building carriers as often, Stabler said, there has been more effort to incorporate as much new technology as possible into each ship.

That's led to fewer steam-driven components and more electric ones. The Bush, for example, has 1.5 million more feet of electric cabling than the Reagan.

The Bush also features improvements in its sanitation, propellers, elevators, compressors and electric plant controls, among others. Many of these changes will be part of the Ford as well.

Beyond the building of the carrier lies the issue of where it will live. Both Norfolk and Mayport, Fla., are vying to homeport the ship once it becomes part of the fleet.

The Navy has said that spreading out the East Coast fleet would improve security. Virginia officials are concerned about the possible loss: $650 million in revenue and 11,000 jobs.

Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter said his office has made no decision, though the Navy is already looking for contractors to upgrade the Mayport base and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a letter that a decision to move a carrier to Florida has already been made. Sen. Jim Webb has vowed to fight a move.

From the workers' standpoint, carriers are different from other ships, and their construction is more personal.

Welder Michael Eaton has worked on liquefied natural gas tankers, supertankers and submarines.

"Carriers are trickier," he said.

There are many types of steel, he said, each requiring different procedures. He has to be especially careful about heat input, watching for warping.

"You've got to make sure nothing is less than the best," he said. "People's lives are hanging on the craftsmanship in our work."

Beyond the carrier's basic structure is the issue of its specialized equipment, such as the systems that allow it to grab airplanes out of the sky.

Arresting gear machinist John Reynolds knows this particular world from all sides. He spent 20 years in the Navy on board four carriers as an aviation boatswain's mate, tending the gear. He then moved to the shipyard to work on another four.

"I thought I knew a lot until I got here to do construction," he said. But he learned and now he's passing it on, advising Navy chiefs whom he trained as airmen years ago.

Rodney Cowan, Reynolds' supervisor, has worked on nine carriers in his 27 years at the shipyard. But he still marvels at what he and his workers are able to do.

"When we walk into the space, it's empty," he said. "When we leave, it's capable of catching aircraft."

Eaton, whose first carrier was the Dwight D. Eisenhower in the early 1970s, agreed.

"There's so much physics behind what makes a carrier a carrier," he said. "I'm still overwhelmed that it can do what it does and still float the way it does."

Stabler, who began his carrier career doing engineering work on the Roosevelt, said the ships stay with him long after they've left.

"It seems like there's always a carrier in the news somewhere, off the coast of someplace in trouble," he said. "I hear the stories, I hear the ship name. My first thought is what I remember of the ship being built, the people involved."

Reynolds said he gets similarly nostalgic.

"The first time I saw the Ronald Reagan on the news, I thought, 'That's part of me out there.' "

Most of these workers will be moving on to the Ford, for which the Navy awarded Northrop Grumman a $5.1 billion contract in September, and all said they look forward to the challenge.

But though the last of the Nimitz ships is about to sail away, this is not the time for goodbyes. The earlier ships in the class have already started coming back for their midlife refuelings and overhauls.

The Carl Vinson - third in the class - is in the yard now. The Roosevelt is due next.

"So we'll get to see all our babies again," Cowan said.

Matthew Jones, (757) 446-2949, matthew.jones@pilotonline.com