THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 4, 1995 TAG: 9503030060
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Long : 155 lines
IN ``CARRIER: Fortress at Sea,'' a two-hour documentary premiering on the Discovery Channel at 9 Sunday night, you will see the officers and men of the Carl Vinson take part in a beautiful but dangerous ballet - the launch and recovery of swift, heavily armed jets.
Swoosh!
They take off with a roar and land with a thud, day and night, on the flight deck of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, including several based in Norfolk. The flight deck pictured in all its noisy, steamy, scary wonder in ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea,'' is a familiar place to many of the Navy's officers and enlisted men who call Hampton Roads home.
Sending muscle-bound jets that weigh 50,000 pounds apiece off the flight deck, and bringing them back in one piece, is carefully choreographed by men in bright-colored shirts on the flight decks. In ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea,'' you'll see the faces of plane captain Airman Lance Jorgenson, landing signal officer Lt. Rick LaBranche and others close up aboard the Carl Vinson, which is based in California.
The Discovery Channel in the week to come beams out three ``Anchors Aweigh'' specials about aircraft carriers. There is one message in all three: If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time on the flight deck of a modern aircraft carrier, it could cost you your life.
``There are many ways to die on a flight deck,'' writes author and editor Geoffrey Norman, who was commissioned by the Discovery Channel to write about the Navy's 12 carriers in the channel's monthly magazine, Destination. Norman's story in the March issue - he sailed aboard the Enterprise from Norfolk to get the feel of the big ships - is a splendid companion piece to the TV documentary.
In ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea,'' narrator Martin Sheen might have been reading from Norman's notes when he said, ``Landing on an aircraft carrier is a life-or-death test of skill. Unlike normal landings at airports, the Navy pilots do not cut power as they approach the carrier. They maintain power to be prepared to take off again if they miss the arresting cables.''
Those cables, writes Norman, are replaced after 100 landings. Even with the constant checking and changing, the cables can break, whipping across the deck and cutting men down. The author points out other ways to die on a flight deck, such as being blown overboard by jet blasts, sucked into turbines, run over by trucks, consumed in a fire or crushed by heavy things such as fuel tanks, rockets and bombs.
Accidents are few, however.
There are plenty of enlisted men and officers living in Hampton Roads who know the dangers of bringing in the heavy, haze-gray aircraft at 150 mph on a ship that is also moving at a fast clip. They are the ones who serve aboard three locally based carriers of the same 95,000-ton class as the Vinson.
They are the Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Washington. The Discovery Channel features the Roosevelt and its 4.5-acre flight deck in ``Fly Navy'' on Tuesday at 10 p.m.
If you still crave more insight into what author-editor Norman calls the ``ballet of steel and fire,'' the Discovery Channel obliges Thursday night at 10 with ``Flight Deck.''
The flight-deck ballet is for the young and strong.
``They're only kids,'' said ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea'' producer-director Jim Lipscomb of the men on the flight deck. The average age of the Vinson's crew is 21. It's a crew that turns over by one-third every time the carrier sets out on a six-month cruise.
``It's incredible, fantastic, that the ship runs so well after such a turnover,'' said Lipscomb, who said he set out to do an authentic, even gritty, documentary about life at sea with a carrier battle group.
``This is no puff piece,'' said the producer-director.
Hardly.
There are segments in ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea'' that will never appear in a Navy recruiting video. Lipscomb turns his camera on sailors who say they hate sea duty, hate the Navy.
A sailor swabbing the head says the biggest mistake of his life was joining the Navy 18 months ago. Mistake No. 2 was getting a tattoo on his bicep. Lipscomb's cameras also focus on a Vinson crewman, depressed by the 45,000-mile, six-month voyage, who leaps over the side in a suicide attempt.
Not a puff piece, the producer-director said.
No, indeed.
There is a moment in ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea'' when we see an F-14B Tomcat lose power in its right engine, burn and crash into the sea after reaching a speed of 635 knots. The Navy won't be too happy with scenes of 27-year old Lt. Richard Lucas and his radar intercept officer, Lt. Jeff Strobel, parachuting into the Pacific after they set out to shatter the sound barrier.
Their lives where saved when Lucas and Strobel ejected from the F-14. ``Once is enough for that experience,'' said Strobel. ``I never before experienced anything so violent.''
In the part about the fly-by and explosion of the F-14 piloted by Lucas, the documentary falls off track a bit. Until then, it's a solid, well-crafted piece of work. But as the F-14 flames out, the viewer is left hanging.
What has happened? Lipscomb leaves it to the audience to figure it out. At that moment, ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea'' begs for narrator Sheen or someone else to step in and clear things up.
Beyond that, Lipscomb's documentary is fine work, the best I've seen about life at sea in the modern Navy since ``Submarines: Sharks of Steel,'' a 1993 documentary that the Discovery Channel will rerun Monday at 9 p.m. It repeats at midnight. ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea'' also has a repeat showing Sunday at midnight and again March 11 at 1 p.m. and March 19 at noon.
The Discovery Channel's ``Anchors Aweigh'' week should please viewers in this Navy capital no end. On Friday at 10 p.m., Discovery beams out a documentary about the Iowa-class battleships. It's timely because the Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and New Jersey are about to be struck from the Navy's roll of ships.
That's a sad turn of events for battleship sailors. Also on Friday at midnight, Discovery retells the story of the carrier Franklin, which lost more than 2,000 crewman in a World War II battle that left the ship badly crippled.
Other ``Anchors Aweigh'' features on Discovery in the days to come include ``Cat Over Korea,'' the story of the F-9F Navy Panther jet fighter on Wednesday at 10 p.m. and ``Destroyer'' on Friday night at 10:30.
``I was striving to make a historical document,'' Lipscomb said of his Vinson project. As a bonus, the producer-director gives viewers a little primer on how their tax dollars are spent.
It takes $2 million each to train the pilots that fly the $35 million F/A-18 Hornets off the deck of a carrier, which cost $1.3 billion to build and $440 million a year to operate. While watching flight operations high up in the carrier's island superstructure, the Vinson's commanding officer, Capt. John Payne, says he has the best seat in the house.
And the most expensive one. MEMO: INSIDE LOCAL REACTION: Those who know say documentary is good but
doesn't fully capture the reality. PAGE E3.
ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
"Carrier: Fortress at Sea," which focuses on the Carl Vinson,
premieres Sunday on Discovery.
SCHEDULE OF SPECIALS ABOUT THE NAVY
The Discovery Channel's ``Anchors Aweigh'' presentations:
``Carrier: Fortress at Sea,'' premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. and
repeats at midnight. It will also be seen March 11 at 1 p.m., March
18 at 8 and 11 p.m. and March 19 at noon.
``Submarines: Sharks of Steel,'' Monday at 9 p.m. and midnight,
repeating March 12 at noon.
``Fly Navy,'' also a premiere showing on the Discovery Channel,
is more about carrier operations with the focus on life aboard the
Norfolk-based Theodore Roosevelt. It's on Tuesday at 10 p.m. and
Wednesday at 1 a.m., and repeats March 11 at 3 p.m.
``Cat Over Korea,'' the story of the Navy's F-9F Panther, which
dueled the Soviet-built MiG 15 in the Korean War, Wednesday at 10
p.m. and Thursday at 1 a.m., repeating March 11 at 4 p.m.
``Flight Deck.'' Still more carrier ops. First showing is
Thursday at 10 p.m. and Friday at 1 a.m., repeating March 11 at 5
p.m.
``Battleship-Destroyer Hour.'' Looks like the Navy is about to
close the books on the four Iowa-class battleships. ``Battleship''
shows the ships in all their glory, with 16-inch guns blazing. It
debuts Friday at 10 p.m. and March 11 at 1 a.m. and repeats March 11
at 6 p.m. At 10:30 p.m. Friday and 1:30 a.m. March 11, the Discovery
Channel has scheduled ``Destroyer,'' a special on Navy destroyers,
the wonderful old ``tin cans.'' It repeats March 11 at 6:30 p.m.
by CNB