CHAPTER THREE

While our adversaries can do little to stop one of America’s largest nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, a microscopic, wormlike bacteria in the James River can. Unbeknownst to the aviators aboard the Bush, while we slept off our reverie, the worms entered the intake valves, expanded, and clogged up the reactor. As the nuclear engineers aboard started the reactors to depart on deployment, they uncovered the issue and spent the early-morning hours cleaning out slimy, stringy parasites by hand so we could depart at the next high tide. Thus, we delayed until the afternoon and set sail on Valentine’s Day, 2014.

Once we were free of our pier tie-downs, our deployment technically began, but before Mother could start her journey across the Atlantic, a few items of business remained. First off, the carrier cannot leave the harbor loaded with aircraft, so we pulled out with an empty flight deck. Once we got out to sea, the entire air wing—helicopters, E-2s, C-2s, and all the jets—would have to land onboard the ship and all the aviators had to carrier-qualify, or CQ, before we could leave the coast.

We all had previously carrier-qualified in our training, and for some, in previous deployments, but landing on the boat is so dangerous and such a perishable skill that every single time you go back out to sea, you have to requalify. There is a three-page eye chart that dictates how many landings aviators must acquire if they’ve gone more than seven or fourteen days since their last boat landing. Since it had been more than sixty days for us, each aviator had to do four day landings and two night landings to requalify before we could depart US waters. This may sound simple, but it’s a fairly high hurdle since it required more than 145 aviators to cycle through fifty-three fixed-wing aircraft. With so little space on the flight deck, during qualifications, planes would fly back to Virginia Beach to gas up and wait for sunset to night qualify on the boat. Each time aviators went ashore, they loaded up on junk food—Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A—all offerings for their hungry counterparts aboard the ship. In no time, I’d consumed so much junk food that I felt like I’d been given a blood transfusion of pure hydrogenated fat and preservatives. Whenever a plane returned from the beach, I looked to the sky and prayed for salad.

In addition to the carrier qualifications, the strike group experienced an airborne change of command, meaning the admiral who commanded our air wing and twelve warships during our most recent training would turn over the reins (in midair) to a new admiral for deployment. A change of command at sea is rare, but rarer still is one conducted between two admirals who flew the jets themselves. A special, but somewhat melancholy event, the departing admiral, who we’ll call Lung, was beloved. He’d trained and led us over the past year, fine-tuning our team so that we were ready to face any adversary. Lung was an incredible leader, and a downright good guy, with a well-known affinity for late-night tequila shots at the Officers’ Club. All of us felt a little heartbroken when the call came for him to move on to his next tour. We hadn’t yet met the new admiral (who I’ll call Bullet, because he was small but his personality packed a punch), but we’d heard good things.

Instead of the standard pomp and circumstance of a shore-based change of command ceremony, where salutes and handshakes usher out the old and welcome in the new, in an airborne change of command, the admirals symbolically exchanged power through the maneuvering of jets. Well, not just any jets—F/A-18 Super Hornets.

Approaching the ship, the men flew their Super Hornets in tight formation, low and fast, like they were ingressing a target area in combat, Lung leading and Bullet following close behind. Nearing the stern, Lung passed the reins via hand signal and Bullet pulled ahead in a clear lead change. As they tore past the flight deck, Lung ripped back on his stick, sending his jet’s nose straight up. Bullet continued the course straight ahead by himself, and Lung shot into the atmosphere so fast and so high that he disappeared from sight. Flying alone, Bullet circled back to land on the carrier. As tradition dictates, once the torch was passed, out of respect for the new leader, Lung was not spoken of again.

On the flight deck, we cheered and welcomed Bullet as our new Strike Group commander. If a command change of that level had happened back in Virginia Beach, it would have drawn crowds, hundreds if not thousands. Spouses and VIPs and all their followers would have gathered for the spectacle, but on the boat, the airborne change of command was reserved just for those who had access to the flight deck. Intimate and exclusive, it felt a bit like we accidentally were invited to a celebrity wedding. Meanwhile, the rest of the four thousand people onboard, scurrying somewhere below like mice in a maze of steel, only learned of the shift in command by the tolling bells and an announcement over the 1MC loudspeaker when Bullet’s jet landed.

With a new leader in charge and the entire air wing carrier-qual’ed, we finally set sail for the open sea.