Can a US Navy aircraft carrier conduct flight operations while in port?

[LSLGuy]

Thanks for the details. I love the fact we have real experts on everything here.

Makes sense that in normal ops the catapult load is barely a rounding error vs the ship’s main engine and turbogenerator set demands. Any given catapult shot is a short sharp spike but a steam accumulator can deal with the short spikes as long as you’ve got sufficient steam output for whatever the average consumption during sustained cat ops is.


I was more thinking of the rest of the OP’s in-port scenario. The ship’s half staffed and everybody still on board is doing equipment repair or resupply. Damn near everything that can be turned off is turned off. Shore power may be plugged in. If this had been an oil-fired WWII- / Korea-era ship most of the boilers would be dead cold, with one ticking over to provide heat & motive power for capstans, etc.; whatever needs steam as steam.

Now suddenly the enemy’s air armada is detected clearing the horizon coming your way at combat speed. You’re caught totally with your metaphoric pants around your metaphoric ankles. Dumb scenario I know, but I’m not the OP; take it up with them.

The good news is this isn’t an oil-fired carrier; it’s a nuke. The bridge / CIC is going to need a lot of electricity as quick as they can get stuff switched on and a lot more steam real soon to start launching jets. The only thing they don’t need to do is power the propellers; the ships staying docked, again for silly scenario reasons.

So how long / big / delicate a job is it for the reactor department to answer the sudden demand for energy? The fuel rods will do their neutron thing in microseconds once the control rods are more out of the way. But the rest of the machine is a LOT more than just that.

I’m WAGging that the reactor department is by far not the long pole in the total ship response time tent. Getting the jets, munitions, and crews ready to launch will be far, far slower. But I’m still curious whether it’s a matter of minutes, hours, or the best part of a day to fire that sucker up from however it’s usually configured in a peacetime port.

[ASL_v2.0]

@LSLGuy

So how long / big / delicate a job is it for the reactor department to answer the sudden demand for energy?

Depends on what condition the reactor is in. Just like any other steam plant, it could be anything from cold iron to operating everything but the engines.

[Machine_Elf]

@ASL_v2.0

That’s a very interesting video, thank you for linking to it. However, we should be careful not to confuse a ship’s speed with the headwind. Yes, the ship was barely moving, but then again it sounded (listening closely to the effect on the camera’s audio) that there was a fair amount of wind that day as well. The wind across the deck is going to be a factor of both ship’s speed and the ambient wind conditions. So while the ship was perhaps making bare steerage way–just going fast enough to be able to maintain a course–presumably it would have been using what speed it did have to keep its bow to the wind. If it was a windy day, it could easily have had 20-30 knots of wind at the right angle to launch aircraft fully loaded.

Full credit should go where it’s due: the video was originally shared by @WatchMe, not me.

And their comments refute what you’ve said above:

@WatchMe

…watch the steam from the catapult, it is standing still or even blowing forward a little bit. They’re definitely getting zero headwind whatsoever for those launches. She might as well be anchored or docked.

[rubberduckie]

No. It isn’t safe. Jets stay on board when in port unless they’re participating in an airshow or training with pilots from the country in which they’ve docked. In those instances, the jets fly into local airspace to land after being launched by the catapult from a safe distance while still at sea. Former wife of A/7 & F/A18 pilot.