NORTHERN VIRGINIA — It’s Sunday afternoon, and as I look out on
the soft rolling hills of Loudoun County, I can’t help contrasting
the quiet of the wide grassy acres outside my study window with the
highly choreographed hurricane of people and machinery I observed
on the four-acre deck of the USS Harry S. Truman on Friday
and Saturday. President Truman is remembered as “Give ‘em Hell”
Harry. If you want to give someone hell, you know how. If you want
to give an enemy of America hell, old Harry’s namesake is ready to
deliver.
Insurance people make their money by measuring risks. Lloyds of
London says that the deck of an aircraft carrier is the most
dangerous working environment in the world, and it’s not hard to
see why. On the deck of a Nimitz -class carrier, there is
constant motion among dozens of aircraft, fuel lines, catapults,
jet blast deflectors, and arresting wires. The cats launch aircraft
and the arresting wires catch landings in a rhythm that recovers
one aircraft and launches another in the space of about sixty
seconds.
In the middle of this controlled chaos swarms a horde of sailors
moving and fueling aircraft, recovering the arresting wires,
loading bombs and bullets, hooking the catapults to the aircraft,
and checking things over and over to make sure they’re good to go.
The average age of these people is about twenty. Would you trust
your life — and the safety of a multi-billion dollar ship — to a
bunch of teenagers? Before Friday, I never could have. Now, having
spent about 28 hours in Grootland, it seems the natural thing to
do.
PRESIDING OVER ALL THIS is a wiry guy who seems to have about as
much energy as the nuclear reactors that propel his ship. Captain
Mike Groothousen — “Groot” to his pals — smiles a lot. He has
good reason to. Carriers are graded in everything they do, and the
Navy awards a “battle ‘E’” for excellence every year, department by
department. How good are your pilots? The jet engine repair shop?
What about your safety record? Your galleys? Groothousen’s USS
Truman earned the “E” in every category. Everywhere you
look, you see why. It’s the people. From the youngest purple-jacket
hustling fuel to the commander of Carrier Air Wing 3, you see in
each and every one the same dedication and professionalism.
Cdr. David Onstott is the eye of the hurricane. He’s the ship’s
chief safety officer and, as you’d expect, his devils are in the
details. I walked the Truman’s deck with Onstott,
crouching between the wings of the aircraft being launched from
catapults 1 and 2 on the forward half of Truman. The crew
works in as safe an environment as can be devised because Onstott
and his people inspect, study, and teach methodology, and catch the
details of what could go wrong before it does. One of his biggest
worries is FOD — foreign object damage — to the jets. One loose
bolt or bootlace can cost you a jet engine. If it happens on
takeoff, you can lose lives and aircraft. That’s why long lines of
sailors walk the deck often, gathering up everything that doesn’t
belong there. I didn’t get the time to ask Onstott what he does to
relax. He probably juggles chain saws.
When it heads out to deploy, the Truman has a ship’s
compliment of about 6,000 people. Chief Warrant Officer John
Lukeivic feeds them. Lukeivic’s sixty galley guys and gals serve at
least 15,000 meals a day, not counting the fourth meal of the day,
“mid rats,” served late at night. When you come off the flight deck
at 11 p.m. and want a steak, Lukeivic’s people will ask how you
want it done. The food is damned good. I had breakfast in the
enlisted galley on Saturday. Omelets to order, cold and hot cereal,
almost anything you may desire is loaded on your plate for the
asking. They even have a cappuccino machine.
Lunch was being prepared by the time we left breakfast. One
young guy was stirring a huge cauldron of chili with a stainless
steel ladle that looked like a shovel. The chili smelled really
good. If I served on Truman, I’d have to spend a lot of
time in the gyms or I’d weigh as much as the ship. Lots of the folk
are there in off-duty hours. (One gal who runs the biggest exercise
room told me that working out is all the Marines on board seem to
want to do. She said, “They lift weights all night. And I mean
all night.”) That’s not all that goes on until the wee
hours of the morning.
ANOTHER COOL WIRY GUY is the CAG — Capt. Mark Vance — commander
of Carrier Air Wing 3. He smiles almost as much as Groothousen.
Vance’s people are as professional and intense as he is and —
sorry, CAG — the younger ones have a lot more hair. (Wearing a
helmet almost every day of your life is guaranteed to reduce your
top thatch. It’s a badge of honor the older guys share.) Vance runs
a whole air force on Truman, and watching them work is an
awesome pleasure. There ain’t no Tom Cruise-like reckless jerks
here. You see that on the LSO (landing signal officer)
platform.
Every time a pilot takes off or lands, some of his peers are
standing out on the deck observing and grading him while the big
bosses do the same from the bridge. On the training cruise I joined
briefly, they were practicing takeoffs and landings from noon to
past midnight. Standing on the platform, the landing officer
controls the final approach. In the olden days, there would be a
man with huge paddles waving to indicate if the aircraft wasn’t
level, was offline to the deck, or too low or too high. That’s now
done with a huge light display, and around the LSO stand the
off-duty pilots.
If someone makes a perfect landing - catching the third of four
arresting wires smoothly at the right speed, the guys nod. If he is
too high or low, he may be waved off. If he “bolters” — missing
the wires altogether — he gets to do it again and again until he
gets it right four or five times, and later catches a lot of stuff
from his peers. (About 80% of the landings I saw caught the three
wire. I saw only two “bolters” the whole time I was there.) These
guys are pros. In more ways than one.
THE XO — CAPT. Charles “Ladd” Wheeler — is, like Onstott, an
oasis of calm in the storm. He runs the ship with Groothousen and
— as Capt. Grootousen told me — is a real pro who could take over
any time. Groothousen and Wheeler are justly proud of the fact that
Truman’s crew, returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom —
both drank Portsmouth, England, dry of beer, and did it without any
“incidents” requiring intervention by the local constabulary.
Wheeler told me the secret. Apparently, the Brit sailors whose town
it is gathered up some of the, ah, over-indulging
Truman-ites and hauled them off to their own homes and
barracks until they were capable of walking back up the gangplank.
(Are the Brits great allies, or what?)
You can see all the nifty technology on board, see the air ops,
and come away with a lot of lessons learned. To me, the
Truman reflects the leadership of Captain (soon to be
admiral) Groothousen. Groot told me about a captain’s mast he held
a while ago. About seven crewmembers were caught smoking marijuana.
The problem lingers in our military, but not on
Truman.
The Boss assembled about 2,000 crewmen in the hangar bay, and
had the potheads marched out in front of them. He told the
offenders that they were not going to be part of the Navy, and that
by using drugs they were indirectly helping the terrorists who get
some of their money by selling drugs. Groot then had the ship’s
company do an about-face, and with their former crewmates’ backs to
them, the seven were marched off to the brig.
By doing that, Groothousen joined the crew in his values and his
decision. That is as good a demonstration of leadership as I’ve
encountered in a very long time. Captain Groothousen wasn’t able to
see us off for our flight back to Norfolk. He had climbed into an
F/A-18 and was up practicing takeoffs and landings with the
guys.
If your son or daughter is a member of the Truman’s
crew, you should be very proud. They’re doing a helluva job.
TAS Contributing Editor Jed Babbin is the author of the
forthcoming book, Inside the Asylum: How the UN and Old Europe
are Worse than You Think./B>
