THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 4, 1995 TAG: 9503030062
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
TAKE IT FROM the sailors who make their living on the crowded, noisy, windswept flight deck of a Norfolk-based aircraft carrier.
Working up there in tight quarters, where pilots and their warplanes are launched and later recovered, is even tougher than it appears in ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea.''
In the two-hour documentary, which premieres Sunday night at 9 on the Discovery Channel, the camera roams the flight deck of the Pacific-based Carl Vinson.
Five crewman from the George Washington, a carrier of the same class as the 95,000-ton Vinson, previewed the documentary and gave it high marks.
But this special from producer and director Jim Lipscomb, as gritty good as it is, does not fully capture the flight deck's dangers.
``It is even tougher and more stressful than you will see in this documentary,'' said Rick Davis, a 1st class petty officer who has been pushing planes around flight decks for years.
They don't tell you about the days when the wind chill on the flight deck is 40 below or other days when it's 115 degrees in the shade, if you can find some shade, said Davis.
And another thing, said Davis' shipmate Robert B. Wilson, who is a chief petty officer and another aviation boatswain mate working on the George Washington's flight deck: The documentary doesn't dwell on the number of people it takes to launch and recover the planes.
Wilson says there are 500 men on the flight deck at times. Men and machines. On the flight deck, it takes teamwork to get the job done.
Cmdr. Bob Snyder, the No. 2 man, or ``mini boss,'' in the George Washington's air department, has logged more than 600 landings on aircraft carriers. Watching ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea,'' you get the essence of what it is like to set down a 50,000-pound warplane on the 4.5-acre flight deck of a ship moving at 30 knots or so, he said.
``Landing on a carrier in the daylight is fun,'' Snyder said. ``Landing on a carrier at night is hard work.''
Producer-director Lipscomb makes that point several times in the documentary as he follows Lt. Tom Pickett on his first carrier deployment.
Lipscomb mounted cameras in and outside the F/A-18 Hornets, F-14 Tomcats and other planes seen in this special. The result is spectacular footage of launches and landings, in the opinion of the George Washington crewmen.
It was great that the producer-director left the flight deck for a while to focus on life below decks, said Leroy E. Beck, an aviation ordnanceman who is a chief petty officer. ``Now our families will see what we mean when we say a Navy ship isn't built for comfort,'' Beck said.
Ninety-nine men live in a space about the size of your living room.
``This documentary is a slice of life at sea,'' said Scott Hankinson, an air traffic controller who is a 1st class petty officer. The Navy as it really is. Life at sea includes griping and depression, both of which are dealt with by the Vinson's crew in the documentary. It is also a time of the maturing of young sailors.
While the George Washington crewmen had high praise for ``Carrier: Fortress at Sea'' - some said it was the best documentary about life at sea they'd seen - they had suggestions about how it might have been better. Not enough time was devoted to the training it takes to make a 5,800-man crew into a fighting machine, they said.
Beck said he would have liked to see more about the camaraderie that develops on a ship during a six-month cruise. MEMO: [For a related story, see page E1 for this date.]
by CNB