Aircraft carriers, floating fortresses of steel and power, have become synonymous with naval might. These behemoths of the sea, capable of projecting air power across vast distances, have played a pivotal role in shaping the course of history, particularly during the 20th century. From their humble beginnings to their evolution into the ultimate symbols of maritime dominance, aircraft carriers have left an indelible mark on the world.
The Dawn of Carrier Aviation
The concept of launching aircraft from ships was not entirely new. Early experiments with seaplanes and makeshift platforms on battleships paved the way for the development of dedicated aircraft carriers. The first true aircraft carrier, HMS *Hermes*, was commissioned by the Royal Navy in 1920. It marked a paradigm shift in naval warfare, ushering in the era of carrier aviation.
The United States Navy followed suit, commissioning its first carrier, USS *Langley*, in 1922. These early carriers were relatively small and carried a limited number of aircraft. However, they demonstrated the immense potential of air power at sea.
World War II: The Carrier’s Rise to Prominence
The outbreak of World War II transformed aircraft carriers from experimental vessels into strategic assets of paramount importance. The Battle of Midway, a pivotal clash in the Pacific theater, showcased the devastating power of carrier-based aircraft. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, while initially successful, was ultimately thwarted by the presence of American aircraft carriers.
Throughout the war, aircraft carriers played a decisive role in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. They provided air cover for convoys, launched attacks on enemy ships and installations, and supported ground operations. The development of powerful carrier-based fighter planes, such as the Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair, further enhanced their offensive capabilities.
The Nuclear Age and Beyond
The advent of nuclear weapons had a profound impact on naval warfare. The introduction of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, such as the USS *Enterprise*, marked a new era of maritime dominance. These carriers were larger, faster, and had greater endurance than their predecessors. They could operate for extended periods without refueling, projecting air power across the globe.
Today, aircraft carriers remain the cornerstone of modern navies. They are equipped with sophisticated radar systems, advanced weapons, and a wide array of aircraft, including fighter jets, bombers, and helicopters. They are capable of conducting a variety of missions, from humanitarian assistance to combat operations.The Future of Aircraft Carriers
The future of aircraft carriers is uncertain. Some experts argue that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other emerging technologies may eventually render traditional carriers obsolete.
The Dawn of Carrier Aviation
The concept of launching aircraft from ships was not entirely new. Early experiments with seaplanes and makeshift platforms on battleships paved the way for the development of dedicated aircraft carriers. The first true aircraft carrier, HMS *Hermes*, was commissioned by the Royal Navy in 1920. It marked a paradigm shift in naval warfare, ushering in the era of carrier aviation.
The United States Navy followed suit, commissioning its first carrier, USS *Langley*, in 1922. These early carriers were relatively small and carried a limited number of aircraft. However, they demonstrated the immense potential of air power at sea.
World War II: The Carrier’s Rise to Prominence
The outbreak of World War II transformed aircraft carriers from experimental vessels into strategic assets of paramount importance. The Battle of Midway, a pivotal clash in the Pacific theater, showcased the devastating power of carrier-based aircraft. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, while initially successful, was ultimately thwarted by the presence of American aircraft carriers.
Throughout the war, aircraft carriers played a decisive role in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. They provided air cover for convoys, launched attacks on enemy ships and installations, and supported ground operations. The development of powerful carrier-based fighter planes, such as the Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair, further enhanced their offensive capabilities.
The Nuclear Age and Beyond
The advent of nuclear weapons had a profound impact on naval warfare. The introduction of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, such as the USS *Enterprise*, marked a new era of maritime dominance. These carriers were larger, faster, and had greater endurance than their predecessors. They could operate for extended periods without refueling, projecting air power across the globe.
Today, aircraft carriers remain the cornerstone of modern navies. They are equipped with sophisticated radar systems, advanced weapons, and a wide array of aircraft, including fighter jets, bombers, and helicopters. They are capable of conducting a variety of missions, from humanitarian assistance to combat operations.The Future of Aircraft Carriers
The future of aircraft carriers is uncertain. Some experts argue that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other emerging technologies may eventually render traditional carriers obsolete.
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TechTranscript
00:00El Centro, California.
00:12Young naval pilots come here to learn how to drop bombs.
00:18The first couple of flights that you do, it's almost like a head explosion and there's so
00:23much going on.
00:26You're learning the dive-bombing pattern, which is what they would use in World War
00:30II and Korea.
00:35You roll 135 degrees inverted, roll out, and start screaming towards the target.
00:51You get wrapped up in this, oh my gosh, this thing can go so fast and is so cool to look
00:57at, but you're forgetting the reason why they were built and why they exist and why we're
01:05trained to fly them.
01:11This is the story of a weapon of war, naval aviation.
01:18Ever since World War II, aircraft launched from the sea have played an outsized role
01:24in America's wars.
01:27You are a part of a lineage of people that have been witness to the biggest events of
01:34the 20th and now 21st century.
01:38But this lineage has been precarious.
01:41As warfare evolved, the fortunes of naval aviation seesawed.
01:49More than once, it was written off as impractical, too dangerous, or simply obsolete.
02:02This is a story of repeated challenges in engineering, and human moral challenges as
02:09well.
02:10It won't be easy to think, oh, I'm just going to go out and drop a bomb, and if it kills
02:18somebody, okay.
02:23That took some time and definitely some reflection.
02:28And I'm ready.
02:34The human in the cockpit.
02:37But how long will he or she even be there?
02:45Should automation be allowed to replace these pilots?
02:49The last fighter pilot's been born, some might say that.
02:56Naval aviation, the machines and the people in them, a hundred-year story and an argument
03:04without end.
03:26In the teens and 20s, only a handful of daredevils and visionaries could imagine that flimsy
03:35biplanes and makeshift wooden decks would one day change the nature of war.
03:46Thousands of young aviators risked their lives to bring this technology to the fore.
04:04Within 20 years, they'd created a super wing.
04:14In World War II, carriers proved decisive in every major battle in the Pacific.
04:22Naval aviation ends World War II at the top of the warfare mountain.
04:26They've gone from nowhere to being the biggest and baddest weapon in the world, or so they
04:32think.
04:57The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki also destroyed established military doctrine.
05:06Soon after, the U.S. created a new independent Air Force and placed it front and center.
05:14The Air Force was assigned the mission for delivering atomic bombs.
05:18They were the only ones who had the capability, so that was the logical assignment.
05:29The Navy could see that if wars of the future were going to be atomic and the Navy didn't
05:35have a capability, we were going to be extinct.
05:41The Navy staked its future on a massive new carrier, the first since the war, a whole
05:47new design.
05:49Abruptly, the Secretary of Defense stopped construction.
05:56There's no reason for having a Navy, he declared.
05:59The Air Force can do anything the Navy can do.
06:02This was a blow to the heart, a dagger to the heart of naval aviation.
06:13The people who support the big bomb aboard the big bomber run by the Air Force think
06:20they've got it knocked.
06:21They think they've won the great bureaucratic war.
06:24They're going to be the dominant service.
06:27And then there is Korea.
06:37On June 25, 1950, communist North Korea invaded the Republic of Korea to the south.
06:49Korea came as a complete surprise to us.
06:52The bases that we had planned to use for the Air Force in South Korea were overrun and
06:59captured by the North Koreans almost immediately.
07:07But a sliver of land remained in South Korea's control.
07:10The U.S. military stared at its options.
07:14Now its nearest air bases were hundreds of miles away.
07:18And nuclear weapons, what use were they if North Korea's ally, the Soviet Union, also
07:24had the bomb?
07:26The situation in Korea is so critical that we in the Navy must give the Eighth Army the
07:33maximum practical support.
07:35I direct that the commander of the 7th Fleet, the commander of carrier division 15, be directed
07:42to provide the maximum possible air gunfire support.
07:46Make it move.
07:50In a striking reversal, the military brass dusted off four of its World War II carriers
07:56and rushed them to the Korean Peninsula.
08:00The carrier was back.
08:05The Navy starts building one supercarrier per year.
08:09Forrestal, Saratoga, Independence, Ranger, Kitty Hawk, Constellation, for the next decade
08:17we add eight more supercarriers to the fleet.
08:35The Korean War, fought mile by mile with conventional weapons, lasted 37 long months.
08:54The Navy and Marine Corps lost over 500 planes.
09:02I lost 22% of the guys in my squadron when I went to Korea, 22%, you never forget that.
09:12You come back from a tour, you've been the commanding officer, there's the single mother,
09:18the only thing she had in her life was her son, he was 23 years of age, he was entrusted
09:24to you, you were to get him ready, take him over there, bring him home, and you didn't.
09:30You got to go visit her, you got to sit on a park bench, you got to let her hold your hand,
09:36you just got to sit there and go through it.
09:49During Korea, a new aircraft was flying off carriers, the helicopter, ideal for rescue missions.
09:57In the winter of 1950, a helicopter would join the effort to save the life of a 24-year-old
10:03pilot named Jesse Brown.
10:07Jesse Brown had packed a lot into his 24 years.
10:11He'd had to, as the first combat aviator to breach the Navy's color line.
10:17Jesse grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
10:21His father was a sharecropper.
10:24He always wanted to be a naval aviator, but he gave up the idea because blacks were not
10:32accepted into aviation.
10:35He got a scholarship to Ohio State University, and a Navy lieutenant took a liking to Jesse
10:43and encouraged him to put in for it, which Jesse did, and he was accepted into the Navy's
10:49flight program.
10:52He arrives in Pensacola, Florida, which is very much a southern city.
11:03The entire Navy establishment, from the officer's club to standing in line for a meal, he was
11:11alone.
11:12There was no one like him.
11:14Yet when he's in the airplane, he generates a certain amount of freedom, only to have
11:21to land again and face the social inequalities that existed as part of America.
11:30In 1948, Jesse earned his wings and joined a squadron on the USS Leite.
11:36On the carrier, the atmosphere seemed different.
11:40There's a sense of acceptance amongst aviators who share a common goal and a common capability.
11:50It was in the tight quarters of the carrier that Jesse Brown got to know fellow aviator
11:55Thomas Hudner.
11:57Jesse was a very friendly person.
12:01They joked that he, by far, got more mail than anybody else on the ship, which was probably
12:06true, and he was just a person we all admired and loved.
12:13On December 4, 1950, Hudner and Brown were assigned a reconnaissance mission.
12:18By all appearances, routine.
12:24It was cold.
12:27We had six aircraft in our flight going up for armed reconnaissance.
12:37One of the pilots in the flight saw that there was some vapor coming out of Jesse's airplane,
12:43and shortly after that, Jesse called out that he was losing oil pressure.
12:47He couldn't stay airborne and was going to have to make a crash landing.
12:58He landed with such force that there was no question in the mind of any of us but that
13:02he had perished in that crash.
13:06We circled around there, and we saw that Jesse had opened the canopy and that he was waving
13:12to us.
13:13But for some reason, he didn't get out of the airplane.
13:18I felt that the chances were reasonably good to pull him out of the cockpit and save his
13:23life.
13:24So, I made the decision to make a crash landing, that's a wheels-up landing, close enough to
13:31him.
13:32When I got to Jesse's plane, I could see that the reason he didn't get out was the way the
13:40aircraft had buckled.
13:42His knee was caught in there, and he just couldn't move.
13:49He lapsed in and out of consciousness.
13:54I tried to reach in to do something, but there was about two feet of snow on the ground.
14:00I couldn't do anything without holding on with one hand and doing my best to keep my
14:06balance.
14:08When I heard the helicopter, it was like manna from heaven.
14:17But when he saw Jesse, his jaw dropped.
14:23Between the two of us, we couldn't get a firm footing on anything.
14:28Jesse was pinned in so badly that we couldn't move him.
14:34Now it was about 3.30 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
14:38Temperature was about 5 or 10 above zero, and with darkness coming, it was going to
14:44get a lot colder a lot faster.
14:49The pilot said that he couldn't fly that helicopter in that area after dark, it didn't have instruments.
14:57And he said, it was suicide for me to have stayed there.
15:03I've always felt bad about the decision, but there was really no choice.
15:09I like to think that he was not conscious at that time.
15:20When we left Jesse, it was a farewell, really, an unspoken farewell.
15:33There's a new magic in the air, it's called jets.
15:49And jets change the game for carriers as much as they do for land-based air power, maybe
15:55even more.
15:57Jets ushered in a futuristic world, where man traveled through the stratosphere at twice
16:02the speed of sound.
16:07But they were not built to land on a deck.
16:11The transition to jet aircraft almost killed aircraft carriers.
16:19Flying jets in the early days off of carriers was at best difficult, and at times near suicidal.
16:30The brunt of the transition would be borne by the pilots.
16:40It was hairy.
16:42We didn't have a lot of experience.
16:44I took command of a jet fighter squadron.
16:47I had one hour of jet time, one hour in a jet aircraft, when I took command of a squadron
16:55that was going to deploy.
16:57I had people reporting to me who had never been in one of those airplanes.
17:01They gave me a handbook and said, when you're ready, come down and I'll give you a plane.
17:07So I read the book, I got in the plane, I started it, and the guy gave me an up check
17:12and I took off.
17:15I was a jet pilot.
17:18The Navy was slow to recognize the new problems posed by jets.
17:23When a propeller plane comes aboard a carrier, the pilot takes away the power.
17:28The engine stops turning, so the plane settles on the deck.
17:33A jet comes in and it takes something like 35 seconds for the spindle to unwind.
17:43We're going faster.
17:44There was no radar, there was not enough room on the carrier.
17:48So he hits the deck and he bounces and he goes over the barricade.
17:52He goes over the barriers, landed on this pack of aircraft.
17:55I've seen seven or eight aircraft on fire.
18:00In September of 1951 on the USS Essex, a Banshee twin jet fighter missed its marks and drove
18:08into a pack of planes on the forward flight deck.
18:19Seven men were killed.
18:27Naval aviation during these early days of jets was actually worse in some ways than
18:33it was during the golden age of wooden airplanes and iron men in the 20s and 30s.
18:40A lot of people died.
18:45If pilots couldn't get jets aboard carriers and make them work well, that carrier part
18:51of naval aviation was gone.
18:56But what looked like impossible problems turned out to have elegant solutions.
19:04We see three great things come along which make jets practical on aircraft carriers.
19:10The first is the angled deck.
19:13The landing section of the deck is slightly canted.
19:16All of a sudden, you're not crashing into a deck load of airplanes in front of you.
19:21You get another chance.
19:23Another thing that they got, the first automated landing system.
19:27This is a stabilized system that would provide them an optical landing cue of when they were
19:33in the right flight path to come in on that angled deck.
19:37And then finally, the British came up with a steam catapult.
19:48By the mid-1950s, we're finally producing our first new aircraft carriers, the four
19:53ships of the Forrestal class.
19:56By the late 1950s, the fastest, highest flying, most heavily armed, most powerful airplanes
20:04in the world are amazingly fighter-bombers flying off of aircraft carriers.
20:12More than ever, the field was a magnet for the brightest, the cockiest.
20:17It was naval aviators in 1959 who crowded into America's new space program.
20:27Liftoff and the great white rocket with its human cargo.
20:32It's Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, later Neil Armstrong.
20:38They had all learned their craft as test pilots, developing the fighting capacity of jets.
20:45In the midst of the Cold War, these planes and their pilots were emblems of American
20:50swagger.
20:51Crisp, modern, and increasingly lethal.
20:56We were struggling with the problem of trying to get a nuclear weapons capability.
21:03Then we developed the capability with jets.
21:06We could take an aircraft that we'd specially designed, put that 2,000-pound package under
21:14it, launch it off the carrier.
21:21And that weapon had the explosive yield of a million tons of explosives.
21:31One million tons.
21:35The very nature of carrier aviation, its mobility, would make it for years the most feared element
21:42in the nuclear standoff.
21:45The important thing was it impressed the Soviets.
21:49I don't think we appreciate yet the concern that the Soviets had about those aircraft
21:56carriers.
21:58The Soviets knew precisely where our nuclear bombers were based.
22:04They knew precisely where all of our nuclear weapons in Europe were located.
22:09They knew where our intercontinental missiles in the United States were located.
22:13But they didn't know where the carrier was.
22:18They could be anyplace.
22:19They could be in the Indian Ocean.
22:20They could be in the North Atlantic.
22:21They could be in the Mediterranean, North Pacific, South Pacific, China Sea, wherever.
22:26And the Soviets couldn't keep track of them all.
22:30And so that became a threat to them.
22:34On the open sea, the Cold War played itself out as a string of cat and mouse games.
22:39Deadly serious, but with a touch of the absurd.
22:43The Soviets would play a game with you.
22:46They would come out and intercept the carrier to test the defenses.
22:52We the pilots used to like to go up and fly up next to the Bear airplane.
22:58And they had these big cockpits, and we're in the little, like, little cockpit.
23:02So I got up next to this guy, and he looked at me, and I looked at him.
23:05And we're probably 100 feet away, maybe, something like that.
23:12And the guy gave me the finger like that.
23:14And I gave him the finger back, and then I gave him two fingers, and then he gave me
23:19two fingers.
23:20And the next thing, we were kind of smiling at each other.
23:24And the next thing I knew, the guy, and it was a long ways away, but I could say he held
23:28up a Playboy, and there was a centerfold in there.
23:34So while the missions were dangerous, on a certain level, on a certain basic human level,
23:43sometimes I think, well, we're all kind of the same.
23:51Nuclear weapons were folded into the routines of carrier life.
23:54Day after day, the men followed their procedures, rehearsed for the unthinkable.
24:01Then on October 21st, 1962, the unthinkable became less remote.
24:07I get a call on a Sunday about noon, says, get down to your ship, get it underway, and
24:12head for the Caribbean.
24:13I said, all my sailors are in New York, you know, they're up there chasing girls around,
24:19which is what they're supposed to be doing, and I hope they're having a good time.
24:22They said, no, get underway right now.
24:25So we head for the Caribbean.
24:31I am carrying 100 nuclear weapons that are to be a backup support for an aircraft carrier
24:37that's there that has 100 nuclear weapons.
24:43We were pretty serious that we'd make a nuclear weapons attack against Cuba.
24:52In the dramatic days that followed, carriers would share the stage with another less celebrated
24:57branch of naval aviation.
25:02This is where we have our roots, and in the Cuban Missile Crisis, naval reconnaissance
25:08was incredibly important.
25:12Routine surveillance had produced strong evidence that the Soviets were building nuclear missile
25:16sites in Cuba.
25:18If operational, they could strike the United States within minutes.
25:25President Kennedy ordered a blockade of the island, but he also fixed his sights on a
25:30row of prefab buildings in Jacksonville, Florida, home to a naval unit whose jets were
25:36equipped with cameras, uniquely designed for low-flight, high-resolution photography.
25:44Commander William Ecker received his brief, and in the early morning of October 23rd,
25:49took off with his wingman.
25:51In minutes, they could see Cuba.
25:59They make their runs over the missile sites, and they see incredible things going on underneath
26:05them.
26:08People running in every direction, they see the missiles on trailers, they see the launch
26:13pads, they see the supporting equipment.
26:15You name it, they get pictures of it.
26:22As Ecker landed back at the base, a crew was waiting to rush the film to the lab.
26:41On October 25th, at the UN, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson pressed his Soviet counterpart.
26:47Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing medium and intermediate
26:54range missiles and sites in Cuba?
26:56Yes or no?
26:57You will have your answer when you call, sir.
27:03I'm prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that's your decision.
27:08The Soviet ambassador to the UN denied that they were placing ballistic missiles in Cuba.
27:15And here Adlai Stevenson motions, and in come a few people from the CIA with these boards.
27:29And Ecker, to his amazement, sees the photos that he and his men have been taking suddenly
27:37being presented to the world as the best evidence in the court of world opinion.
27:54Just three days after the showdown at the UN, the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles
27:59from Cuba.
28:01The Cold War equilibrium was restored, but it would not hold for long.
28:18A lot of bombs were dropped on targets that had already been destroyed many times over.
28:26The pilots were getting the heck shot out of them.
28:28And every now and then one of them would say, Skipper, what are we doing in this crazy
28:32war?
28:34It was a real, real time in the wilderness for everyone involved in that conflict, but
28:38certainly naval aviation.
28:41The Vietnam era, a time of turmoil and discontent, would be one of naval aviation's lowest points.
28:51For the pilots, the discontent came early.
28:56In 1965, they were tasked with a massive bombing campaign, but with important targets
29:02off limits.
29:04The bombing campaign in the north was called Rolling Thunder.
29:09The pilots referred to it as Rolling Blunder.
29:12They really hated it because the White House, in fact, the president himself, would mark
29:18up the targets.
29:19And we must only approach in this direction because if you come in this direction, you
29:23fly over a public school.
29:27President Johnson was waging war by proxy against the communists in Vietnam and indirectly
29:32the Soviets.
29:35He was treading gingerly to avoid a wider war.
29:40Haiphong was a port city in North Vietnam, and Haiphong had a four-mile circle around
29:46it that was a no-fly zone.
29:49And I could look down, and what did I see?
29:53Ships, Soviet ships, materials being unloaded and unloaded and unloaded.
30:02Could we get it?
30:06No.
30:07The answer is no.
30:08Is this the way to fight a war?
30:10Well, not when you're on the tip of the fracking spear and the lead's coming up at you.
30:29Are you going to survive or are you not going to survive?
30:32Are you going to survive or is that guy down there shooting at you going to survive?
30:38And it's black and white.
30:39There's no gray.
30:40There's no lawyers.
30:41There's no politicians.
30:42None of that bullshit.
30:46He dies or you die, and so you make your decision.
30:50And to me, that's war.
30:52It's nasty business.
30:53It's brutal business.
30:55It's why if we're going to go to war, you better get it right to start with.
31:01To make matters worse, the tools of war were still crude.
31:09It could take dozens of bombs to hit one target.
31:16The munitions used in those days were not GPS or laser guided.
31:23You're dropping iron bombs at that time.
31:29And there was a lot of collateral damage that went along with that kind of low tech that
31:38existed back in the Vietnam era.
31:43The U.S. would rain down more tonnage on the small nation of Vietnam than it had dropped
31:48in all of World War II.
31:56Back home, many Americans recoiled at what they saw.
32:22By the early 70s, anger about the war had merged with other deep-seated resentments.
32:34When the USS Kitty Hawk set sail for Vietnam in February of 1972, it carried on board
33:02all of America's racial divides.
33:07Naval aircraft carriers are a microcosm of America.
33:14There's a class society that exists on the ship.
33:16The captain is the king and the ruler, and the officer corps are the directors of things
33:22that go on.
33:23Enlisted men are the working class individuals, and that's where most of our African Americans
33:27existed.
33:31You would just end up being a mess cook for a while, or you clean compartments for a while.
33:37If you try to get out of mess cooking for over 90 days, or try to quit cleaning toilets,
33:46you might have had a long struggle.
33:53By October, the crew of the Kitty Hawk had been deployed for over 200 days, working around
34:00the clock, eight hours on, four hours off.
34:13On October 11th, the workload was lighter.
34:17More time for stories to spread about the brawls that had broken out between blacks
34:22and whites during a recent shore leave.
34:30Midday, Sailor Perry Pettus made his way to the deck with two other African Americans.
34:38As we three were walking across the flight deck, a couple of Marines approached us and
34:43said, you blacks, quote, you blacks, can't walking over twos.
34:54We're thinking, yeah, right, kept on walking.
35:00Made the comment again, police, I'm going to have two Marines tell me I can't walk with
35:08two other friends.
35:13First thing I know, my neck is under a nightstick with my body up on an A6 aircraft with a nightstick
35:25under me.
35:27What the heck?
35:32When Captain Marlon Townsend learned of the incident, he quickly overruled the Marines
35:37and apologized.
35:40It was too late.
35:43All hell broke loose.
35:50I hate to say it, but it was blacks against whites.
35:55It was an all out riot.
36:02People being beat up for no particular reason, just because you happen to be of a different
36:08color.
36:15That was an ugly night.
36:17That was an ugly night.
36:24It took 12 hours to end the fighting, and it would prove a turning point in naval history.
36:36It shook the entire guts of the entire Navy.
36:42I don't think the Navy had a choice.
36:46It was long past overdue to make some changes in equality, equal treatment, equal rights,
36:51equal access.
36:55After Vietnam, the number of blacks in the Navy, both enlisted men and officers, rose
37:00steadily.
37:02And more change was coming.
37:07If there are women who want to go to sea and to serve their country in that capacity, then
37:12we can find a way to make it possible for them to do so.
37:17Rosemary Mariner was one of the first women to enter Navy pilot training, and years later,
37:23to land a jet on a carrier deck.
37:26There were some who were adamantly opposed to this, including the head of Naval Air Training.
37:31He made it very clear to us that this was not his idea, and others were very supportive.
37:43One of the most important figures in my career was my first commanding officer, Captain Ray
37:48Lambert, who was one of a handful of black men who were naval aviators who had flown
37:53tactical aircraft.
37:55And when I first reported to the squadron, he sat me down in his office.
38:00He says, Rosemary, you're always going to have a tough time because you're short.
38:04He was a big man.
38:06And he said, I used my size to help me establish myself in naval aviation.
38:13You're going to have to figure some other way.
38:20You cannot out-guy the guys.
38:24So most women develop their own style.
38:26I happen to have attended Catholic girl schools, and I adopted the Mother Superior style, keeping
38:32a straight face most of the time and trying to not overreact.
38:39Mariner was 40 and a senior officer by the time the law that barred women from combat
38:44was repealed in 1993.
38:49By the turn of the century, it was no longer unusual to see women pilots in fighter jets.
38:58Even though in my day we had these overt restrictions on us, I often thought that black men were
39:05having a more difficult time than women were.
39:09It was still rare to see a black man get it all the way to the top.
39:15Naval aviation is the hardest circle to break into.
39:18The majority of African-Americans have been in patrol plane or helicopter aviation.
39:24And so when you go down to the jet training bases, you see very few African-Americans.
39:30We need to fix that.
39:48The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9-11 would usher in a new and difficult military
40:01mission as much about winning civilian hearts and minds as defeating an enemy.
40:09And that mission would be aided by a common tool, GPS, global positioning, which was transforming
40:16the craft of naval aviation and the expectations riding on its pilots.
40:26After the 9-11 attacks, carriers rushed to the Persian Gulf and have remained a constant
40:31presence since.
40:35Eric Doyle has flown many missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
40:40I wanted to be a pilot since I knew what flying was.
40:45Early on, it was just a pure thrill of flying.
40:50And it wasn't until flying the F-18 and training that those realities of actually going to
40:58war, dropping bombs on an enemy, started to become a reality.
41:05Doyle flew one of the first missions in the Iraq invasion of 2003.
41:12His memory of that night offers a window into the recent air wars of the Middle East.
41:20We had a pretty good idea that shock and awe was about to happen, and then at some point
41:23we did know.
41:26We were contemplating how many aircraft we thought we would lose, or if we'd lose any,
41:30how many would it be folks from our squadron, and it could be me.
41:37You take your person out of it, you take yourself and you use aircraft and pilot.
41:42You don't say, me, Eric, or you, Stan.
41:57On the second night, me and three other aircraft were going after a missile production facility
42:01carrying multiple GPS guided weapons.
42:08So we're pushing into Iraq.
42:10We have our target that's, you know, a number of miles out in front of us, and we're seeing
42:15all this fire coming our way.
42:23It looked like somebody spraying a water hose.
42:28Then we'd also see surface-to-air missiles being launched, and, you know, talk about
42:34some of them the size of telephone poles.
42:39It's just a very strange, you know, kind of out-of-body experience.
42:44You're so focused on what you're trying to hit that all the philosophical thoughts about
42:51what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, why are we here, that's honestly out the window.
42:56Do everything in your power to absolutely have pretty darn close to 100 percent certainty
43:01that bomb is going where it needs to go, or that piece of ordinance, and that's where
43:06I think we stay, you know, emotionally involved.
43:23I dropped four 2,000-pound weapons at once, and all four hit their intended targets.
43:46And now the reality that I've been airborne for five hours, I need to find my way back
43:52to an aircraft carrier and land on it.
43:54Now that whole threat starts to seep back into your brain.
43:59When you're flying in an airplane at night over the water, it's black, just to the point
44:05there are no visual references out there.
44:07It's like flying inside a basketball.
44:11It's 100 percent trust, not only to find the ship, but which way is up and which way is
44:16down because it's all unknown.
44:20My heart rate was probably as high as it was when I was in country.
44:30It's definitely still, regardless of what you're doing, one of the more, if not the
44:34most intense things you do, just trying to land that plane.
44:51It isn't until after you land back aboard the ship does the adrenaline slowly drain
44:56out of your system, and that's when you really start to look back on what happened, and I
45:01think you go through every emotion you can imagine.
45:11It isn't the jumping out of the jet, high-fiving everybody.
45:15It's sobering.
45:21You're the one hitting that button to send a 2,000-pound bomb into the air.
45:27It's a sobering experience, and it should be.
45:40No one knows how many civilians were killed from the air in Iraq and Afghanistan.
45:49It is far fewer than in the days of iron bombs, before laser guidance and GPS.
45:58Still, each was a human loss, and a propaganda loss, in the struggle to win over hearts and minds.
46:192011 marks the 10th year of war in the Middle East.
46:24Village to village, house by house.
46:28Once the conflicts shifted to the ground, carrier jets had to get used to a support
46:33role, much of it routine.
46:39You may fly your six- to nine-hour mission and never really communicate with the soldier-level
46:45guys.
46:46You may never drop a weapon.
46:48You may never do anything at all that is really a tangible act in support of them.
46:55I'm not going to lie to you, it's a drudgery.
47:06After two long, draining ground wars, the costs of naval aviation make it a likely target
47:12for cuts.
47:15Ahead in a revolution in technology, and its future seems, once again, wrapped in questions.
47:24It's very possible, within a matter of a decade or so, that naval aviators will fly strike
47:32missions and never leave the ship.
47:37UAV is Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
47:43Basically, it's a model airplane.
47:47The Air Force uses them for reconnaissance and strikes, which are controlled 5,000, 6,000
47:54miles away easily from Nevada.
48:01Right now, there's a functional limit of about 9 to 11 Gs that an airplane can pull.
48:06You take the human being out, and the need to keep his fingers, toes, and eyeballs still
48:11attached, and suddenly you can make airplanes that might take 15, 20, 30 Gs.
48:19And eventually, we won't have to have a pilot at all.
48:22You could have some really good video gamer who's 18, 19 years old at the controls.
48:40My recent experience in Afghanistan, there's unmanned UAVs out there flying around with
48:45us in the same area.
48:47And it always kind of seemed like something that, ah, it'll eventually be there.
48:53It's something from the movies.
49:01And then actually talking to the operators hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away
49:06is interesting.
49:07Surreal may be a better word.
49:15An experienced combat aviator is going to think twice before he or she pulls the trigger.
49:22And there is that possibility that when you remove the human from being on position over
49:31the target area, that decision to squeeze the trigger and release ordnance, you divorce
49:35yourself and your feelings away from what happens in combat.
49:53Kingsville, Texas, the naval training center where a new generation of pilots is being
49:58prepared for combat.
50:01They seem prepared also for the revolution coming their way.
50:05You can't hide the fact that unmanned aerial vehicles are definitely the future.
50:10The capabilities, the ability for them to stay, you know, aloft for hours and hours,
50:17they have better eyes than we do.
50:19They have longer legs.
50:20They don't have a bladder.
50:21If you take the emotion out of it, they're going to make, as a military, us a lot stronger.
50:27I think we're close.
50:28I think it's, ah, we've got the coolest plans we can make, and after this it's going to
50:33be, ah, the robots and nobody else.
50:39There's a sense that, you know, they're making the last cowboys here kind of, kind of feeling.
50:43And maybe we'll get to tell our grandkids that, you know, we went ripping around the
50:46sky back in the day in fighters, and that was, that was a lot of fun.
50:51I think it's a great chapter in American history, but manned flight might be coming towards,
50:57towards its end.
51:08I'm generally an optimist when it comes to naval aviation.
51:12Basing options for the United States are in decline worldwide, and the ability to operate
51:17from the sea is a capability that we're going to need more of, not less.
51:24But, if you're one of those young men and women who is getting ready to go into the
51:27Navy or the Marine Corps and wants those wings of gold, do you really want this job?
51:33Is it going to go away on you in the middle of your career?
51:38There has been jokes in the past, you know, hey, the last fighter pilot's been born.
51:43But the threat is always going to drive the show, and there is going to be a demand.
51:47You can't do everything with a robot or a computer.
51:53The pilot is held accountable for a decision that's made on scene.
51:59It's difficult to imagine when we can get to a point where we can hold a computer, a
52:06piece of software, accountable for a life and death decision.
52:11We are moral beings, and at least machines at this point in time are not.
52:18That's what I would miss the most if airplanes went the way of drones, that the opportunity
52:25for that kind of personal excellence and that sense of human excellence, as expressed in
52:29controlling technology, in a moral sense, will be lost.
52:35We're a part of a pretty rich history, and you guys are a part of that, and you're going
52:40to make history.
52:41I ask you to embrace that, feel proud of it, and do us proud.
52:49It's a hundred years since a foolhardy pilot set out to land a plane mid-ocean on an improvised
53:01wooden deck.
53:04The pilots with the gold wings inherit a history that's turbulent, and if the years ahead are
53:13the same, that can hardly come as a surprise.