Inspired by “Is it possible to capsize an aircraft carrier?” what’s the absolute minimum number and skill set of crew needed to operate a modern aircraft carrier?
For the sake of argument, let’s say we enter a new age of privateering and Canada seizes one of ours. How many people will they need to sail the thing back to Halifax or wherever?
Do you want to just sail it there or do you want it to still be in good working order when it gets there? At a minimum you’re going to need the reactor techs, engine room crew and bridge crew including navigation.
Unsurprisingly there doesn’t seem to be a detailed crew manifest available for a Nimitz class carrier, presumably it’s classified. This forum claims that the reactor department alone is 400 people:
I think we do have some members on this board that served on a carrier, they’d have a better idea but seems to me the absolute minimum would be around 30-40 people, but that means no one doing maintenance, so shits going to start to break pretty quickly. To keep it in good condition and running well, you’d need a good chunk of the 3200 crew total, remember you need to feed them as well (thats excluding airwing crew). Dropping all the weapons crew would save 300 people according to the article above.
The new Ford class carriers apparently require from 500-700 less crew because of more automation. You would have to assume that with all the budget cuts the armed forces have at the moment that if they could reduce the size of the crew and still maintain operational effectiveness then they would do that to save on staff wages.
Do you care about operating and/or maintaining the air wing?
And I’ve heard that warships tend to have much more crew than normal operations would require, because they need all hands to deal with battle damage should it occur, and enough redundancy to absorb casualties. Much of the maintenance work on a warship doesn’t need to be performed as often as it is, and doesn’t need to be done by the crew while they’re underway, but serves mostly as busywork.
The best comparison I can come up with is that the largest supertankers have crews of 20-40. That’s not entirely a fair comparison, because the systems are different (diesel boilers instead of a nuclear reactor, for instance), and the weapons and flight systems do need at least some maintenance even if they’re not being used right this moment. But it should serve as a ballpark.
The closest approximation is likely to come from nuclear submarines. 1) They use nuclear reactors too 2) they don’t put as much emphasis on absorbing casualties and dealing with battle damage because, you know, they’re submarines 3) they do put an emphasis on minimizing the size of the crew.
Looking at Los Angeles and Seawolf class nuclear submarines, we’re looking at 130-140 crew, likely less because sonar and other forms of intel/EW aren’t as present in aircraft carriers.
If the crew makes significant use of stimulants and they only need to be at sea for days or weeks, you could have even fewer people.
Let me hijack this question for a moment (no pun intended). Let’s say you find a Nimitz class aircraft carrier completely unoccupied but otherwise ready to go. You want to take it for a joy-ride and know how to pilot it from the bridge. Could one or just a few people get it out to sea and cruise around the world?
This isn’t completely theoretical. There is a man, Max Hardberger, whose job is to steal back large ships and get them into international waters with only a small team. Obviously, aircraft carriers don’t get stolen but let’s ignore the hypothetical and assume one needed to be repossessed. Could just a couple of people hit the (nuclear) gas and make it go?
This is just a restatement of the OP but I think the answer is just one skilled person depending on the circumstances. You only need one pilot at the controls at a time at the nuclear reactor works on its own at least for a while. Is that correct?
Right. Like they’re going to leave the keys in it. :rolleyes:
I know that is a joke but large ships or even airliners do not have keys. As long as you know the procedures, you are good to go. A single person can certainly take over a 747 for example without any keys. Everything about aircraft carrier procedures is classified so it hard to know but I doubt there are any physical keys involved.
Assuming we just need to get it to Halifax, where we can find people ready to crew (Think “Barrett’s Privateers”), how many people do we need? Need answer fast…
Yeah, humor alert. I guess if you can’t even check the fuel levels without ten skilled ratings in the loop, anything like keys would be redundant.
But, you know, they do park these things in some pretty bad parts of town. 
I have a vague recollection of a member of the US Navy getting into big trouble for attempting to take control of an aircraft carrier by himself and without authorisation. I assume he just attempted to steer it or something along those lines.
But my google-fu is failing me, I’m fairly sure I didn’t just imagine it though. That would suggest that one person can at least get or keep it moving if nothing else.
“Taking control” could mean standing at the navigation station and sending engine and rudder commands down the chain. I don’t know how bridge commands are authorized or authenticated; if the captain or OOW “left the keys in,” then a really stupid junior could in theory send commands that would be interpreted as valid by the below-decks crew.
Pretty much an MWAG; any Naval types free to ring in.
The OP’s premise is that someone takes over the ship, so I’m sure during that process there are a lot of ways to disable it. But let’s suppose for no reason what-so-ever crew members start jumping overboard from the fully operating carrier at sea, how many qualified crew members have to stay on board for the ship to keep going for 24 hours?
Apparently it was a misremembered old SD thread, and seems to be an urban legend:
Oh well at least I wasn’t completely making things up.
“The controls” aren’t necessarily all in the same place. I can’t speak to aircraft carriers, but in many ships, the control room contains a wheel to control the rudder, but does not contain anything corresponding to a throttle. Instead, there’s what’s called an “engine telegraph”, which does absolutely nothing except move the needle on a corresponding device in the engine room. The engine-room crew then reads the needle, and adjusts the engines accordingly. So you’d need at absolute minimum two “drivers”, one to steer, and one to control engine power. Except that I’ve a hunch that controlling engine power can’t possibly be done by one person, either, which is the reason for the split controls arrangement in the first place.
I have no clue about min crew to minimally operate an existing carrier. I’d bet it’s a far smaller number for the newest Ford class commissioned this years vs. the oldest Nimitz class commissioned in 1975.
Ships *could *be designed for smaller crews. The Navy makes much of these vessels which carry far fewer crew and use lots more automation: Littoral combat ship - Wikipedia
It is a huge cultural change from the Olden Dayes of having 10 guys (times 3 shifts) in the engine room whose sole job was to watch one needle on one gauge each. And (more importantly) to be ready hands to deal with emergencies.
I’d bet the minimum number to get it going from pierside is much bigger than the minimum number to drive it across the ocean in decent weather.
Aside: I saw three USN carriers today. The decommissioned JFK CVN-67 slowly rotting at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in PA, and two others of unknown ID but presumably still in service that were/are tied up at the active piers of Norfolk Navy Base in VA. Pretty cool machines.
I need it to be in sufficiently good condition that the government will agree to purchase it. My prize agent can work out the details.
If there are aircraft, I’d like them to be usable on arrival. I don’t anticipate needing to fly them while we’re underway, though.
Well ok if you just want it to carry out a 3 day cruise you can skip all maintenance and the crew can live on MRE’s for 3 days, so the answer would be between 30-100. I would bet that the Nuclear reactors have a whole bunch of dead man switches where if a nuke tech doesn’t flip a lever or press a button every so often it sounds and alarm and then eventually does an emergency shutdown. Maybe not the Ford class but the Nimitz class are 1970’s tech and I believe the thinking of the Navy in those days was it was safer to have techs do things manually than automate everything.
Full & proper name is generally held to be engine order telegraph (EOT).
Thanks, and that Wiki page says that they’re still used on all nuclear-powered vessels. So it looks like we can definitively rule out a lone hijacker.
How about a very large tugboat, and tow the damn thing to Halifax?