Posted on 04/16/2013 3:10:28 PM PDT by Smartisan
Huntington Ingalls Industries announced Monday a milestone in the construction of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) with the addition of the ship’s upper bow section at Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) in Virginia.
The upper bow completes the ship’s flight deck and extends the overall length of the carrier to its full size, which measures 1,106 feet.
“Placement of the upper bow gives our entire shipbuilding team a great sense of accomplishment,” said Rolf Bartschi, NNS’ vice president, CVN 78 carrier construction. “We have now structurally erected the flight deck to its full length.”
The 787 metric ton upper bow, which is made up of 19 steel sections, was lifted into place on April 9th using NNS’s 1,050-metric ton gantry crane, one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere. Here’s some video of the lift:
(Excerpt) Read more at gcaptain.com ...
Great pics in link. I’ve posted a couple of times about progress on the new UK RN carrier but the size of the GRF class is of another magnitude indeed.
Mightily impressive.
Looking at the Ford, the new position of the island just looks odd..though it must make a lot of sense.
What concerns me is that the ship is designed to operate with 800 LESS crew..those bodies will, I fear, be greatly missed on Damage Control parties if the ship is ever hit
A beautiful ship. Man, the island is almost aft of the #1 wire. Electromagnetic catapults and ordnance elevators . . . what a wonder of engineering.
Look at the size and shape of the bow bulb, that is pretty extraordinary too. I haven’t seen one reach that far forward nor as big even on supertankers.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2997081/posts
Link to the CVF posts. Follow links to UK MoD for info and pics.
Not knowing much about ship design (other than aesthetics) I’ll defer to everyone greater knowledge here. Interesting stuff though, thanks for the info guys.
Thanks kindly..
In the movie Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987), Eddie Murphy and his two white cop friends were in a strip club, and Murphy pranked the older cop by letting it slip to a waitress that the older cop was former president Gerald Ford.
The gossip quickly spread around the club, and when the three of them got up to leave, all the action stopped and everybody gave the older cop a standing ovation, thrilled that their club had been so honored.
I’m sure somebody must have told Gerald Ford about this movie scene, and I will long wonder if he found it as funny as did everyone else.
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