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ABOARD USS HARRY S. TRUMAN, EAST MEDITERANNEAN (BP)--It's Saturday morning and Keith Milo, an E4 from Bridgeport, Conn., and Elvin Rolon, an E3 from Orlando, Fla., nervously stand near their racks. Lt. Darren McFall, assistant supply officer for the aircraft carrier, is conducting an inspection of their berthing. It isn't going very well. "The deck looks good, but there's a lot of dust up here," says McFall, taking a finger and wiping it along the top rail of a rack, revealing a large amount of black dirt. The inspection of the "head," or restroom, doesn't go any better. "There's a...

ABOARD USS HARRY S. TRUMAN, EAST MEDITERANNEAN (BP)--They walk step by step, a hundred men and women, shoulder to shoulder, stretching the width and walking the length of the flight deck, just as the sun rises over the horizon of a pale blue sky. These sailors aboard the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) may look like they're marching in slow motion, their heads down, their voices silent, but they're actually looking for debris that could cause FOD -- foreign object damage -- if sucked into a jet engine, or accelerated by jet exhaust or helicopter rotor wash. The FOD...

EDITOR'S NOTE: The North American Mission Board, LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, Union University and Baptist Press have partnered to deploy a reporting team to the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) on station in the eastern Mediterranean. Writer Sara Horn and photographer Jim Veneman are documenting the intersection of faith and patriotism, profiling the life and work of Christians during this time of conflict, as well as highlighting how Southern Baptists touch the lives of these military personnel. In his personal note to Baptist Press, Jim Veneman summed up the richness of this project....

A photograph of an airborne EA-6B Prowler hangs prominently in Rear Admiral John Harvey's office. As he sits down with a group of embedded journalists, he cites the plane as key to every strike package -- it is the element that disables, or "blinds," as he says, the Iraqi forces on the ground and helps protect the fighter jets. Admiral Harvey, who commands the entire battle group called Cruiser-Destroyer Group Eight, spoke to us on Sunday, a day after the Theodore Roosevelt's first combat mission. Below are excerpts from the interview. How do you see the aircraft carrier's role developing?...

ABOARD THE TRUMAN -- Before dawn broke today, the Harry S. Truman's air wing launched its largest strike effort of the war, targeting mobile and fixed sites as well as suspected caches of chemical and biological weapons stored by the Iraqis. Doused by pounding rain, three waves of F-14 Tomcats, F/A-18 Hornets and surveillance and refueling aircraft blasted off the Norfolk-based carrier. The daylight missions started at 5 a.m. -- 10 p.m. Sunday Norfolk time. A total of 39 aircraft were expected to use Turkish airspace for the first time to cross Iraq's northern border. ``It's going to be a...

ABOARD THE USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SEA Fighter aircraft from this carrier destroyed a Republican Guard complex, including barracks, in Al-Falluja, just west of Baghdad, early Sunday. Later in the day, three ships accompanying it and the USS Harry Truman fired the first Tomahawk cruise missiles into Iraq from the eastern Mediterranean. The cruisers Anzio and Cape St. George and the destroyer Winston Churchill fired roughly 30 missiles into undisclosed targets. Sunday's strike mission on Al-Falluja was the carrier's second combat operation. "The anticipation is we are going to be flying a little bit more than we had in...

As coalition forces continue their push into Iraq, thoughts of the battle that awaits them in Baghdad weigh heavy. "It's an inferno that awaits them. Let them try their faltering luck and they shall meet what awaits them," warned a defiant Saddam Hussein. While the soldiers have trained exhaustively for this mission, have the backing of the most powerful military in the world and Iraqi soldiers are surrendering by the droves, war is war. And six of their own have already lost their lives in the line of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Cmdr. Doyle Dunn leads sailors, Marines in...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 03/19/03 Part 2 - GR7s over Iraq, Iraq Parliament, Amman, Aziz, Iran Prisoners, Kuwait, Desert Rats, USS Harry S. Truman, USS Theodore Roosevelt BREAKING: Royal Harrier GR7s over Iraq BREAKING: USS Harry S. Truman BREAKING: the USS Theodore Roosevelt BREAKING: Kuwait, Desert Rats BREAKING: Iraq Parliament - Almost Free at Last BREAKING: Amman - watches BREAKING: Tariq Aziz - With the Fishes or Defects? BREAKING: Iran - Prisoners and ?WMD exchange ========= Iraq ========= Views from a Royal Air Force Harrier jet over the oil fields of southern Iraq early in the...

PARIS, Feb 25, 2003 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- France's only aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle returned to the southern port of Toulon on Tuesday after three weeks of exercises in the eastern Mediterranean. The ship was to remain in dock for around a week before leaving for new exercises, a navy spokesman said. During its three-week exercises in the Mediterranean starting from Feb. 4, Charles-de-Gaulle had joint training with the American aircraft carrier Harry Truman, deployed ahead of a possible US-led strike on Baghdad. On Feb. 17, the French armies confirmed that Charles-de-Gaulle will not head for the Gulf region...