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Live From...
Tour of USS Abraham Lincoln
Aired May 05, 2003 - 14:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: They're still coming home. Crew members on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier that's been at sea now for nearly 10 months. CNN's Frank Buckley is along for the final leg of their journey to Everett, Washington. Hello, Frank.
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Miles. And I can tell you the sailors are looking forward to being out of these close quarters. Yes, an aircraft carrier is a very large ship, nearly 1,100 feet long and four and a half acres on the flight deck. But with 5,000 people aboard, all that equipment, you have very close, close-in spaces like this.
You find situations like this, you find an exercise machine that's stuck into an available corner here. Not that you need an exercise machine to get plenty of exercise on a warship like this.
What we're going to do is take you through and show you how we're in the island, which is essentially an 18-story building. There are 10 decks above the hangar bay, eight decks below. And this is how you navigate. You take ladders like this one. We'll take you down this ladder that we navigate quite frequently.
You have to watch your head. You can grab this handle if you're going down. And then you come down. We're now one deck above the hangar bay, and everything is navigated via the hangar bay. So that the hangar bay is considered to be the main level, the ground floor, if you will. And everything below it would be level two below it, level three below it. And everything above it is 01, 02, 03, and so on.
So we're at the hangar bay level now. And we'll actually take you into the hangar bay here.
Normally, as you know, the hangar bay is full of strike aircraft jets. But Friday, the rest of the air wing took off. So now the hangar bay, instead of being full of jets, is full of guys playing basketball. They've set up a basketball court in here. They've got a rock climbing wall. They've got volleyball courts. And they're essentially just enjoying their last day at sea before they get home to their home port of Everett, Washington.
Obviously, everyone has special memories of very long carrier deployment, a nearly 10-month. The longest carrier deployment since the Vietnam era. When we talked to Kendall Card yesterday -- he's the CO, or commanding officer of the ship, and asked him for his special memories, and he said that the one thing he will always remember is the first day of strikes into Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAPT. KENDALL CARD, U.S. NAVY: The tension that was in the air, and the special feeling when we got everybody off. And at the end of the day, after 15 hours of flight ops, in particular, that recovery that night, and getting the final person on board. Everybody's safe after some very challenging missions over the beach. And I felt really terrific about our accomplishments that day and that everybody was back home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BUCKLEY: And as we look outside, live right now onto the flight deck, you can see no flight operations going on there. Just a cleaning operation. They're cleaning off the flight deck. It's still pretty wet out there. The ship being prepared for the big homecoming that takes place tomorrow morning -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Talk about the ultimate deck swabbing, four and a half acres. Frank, over your right shoulder there, there's just a boat just sitting there. Gives you an idea of the size of the vessel you're on. What's that used for?
BUCKLEY: This is used for the -- if the admiral needs to go ashore, or if they need to do some sort of a boarding where they need to leave the ship. I've actually never seen it dropped into the water, but it is something that they have. They also have these things called ribbed boats that they can use if they have to quickly go off, and for example, if someone falls overboard.
So in addition to this gigantic ship that we're on, they have these other smaller vessels as well.
O'BRIEN: All right. Aircraft and boat carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln. Frank Buckley aboard. Thank you very much. We'll be checking in with you all the way into home port of Everett, Washington. Some happy and excited sailors on board there right now.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired May 5, 2003 - 14:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: They're still coming home. Crew members on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier that's been at sea now for nearly 10 months. CNN's Frank Buckley is along for the final leg of their journey to Everett, Washington. Hello, Frank.
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Miles. And I can tell you the sailors are looking forward to being out of these close quarters. Yes, an aircraft carrier is a very large ship, nearly 1,100 feet long and four and a half acres on the flight deck. But with 5,000 people aboard, all that equipment, you have very close, close-in spaces like this.
You find situations like this, you find an exercise machine that's stuck into an available corner here. Not that you need an exercise machine to get plenty of exercise on a warship like this.
What we're going to do is take you through and show you how we're in the island, which is essentially an 18-story building. There are 10 decks above the hangar bay, eight decks below. And this is how you navigate. You take ladders like this one. We'll take you down this ladder that we navigate quite frequently.
You have to watch your head. You can grab this handle if you're going down. And then you come down. We're now one deck above the hangar bay, and everything is navigated via the hangar bay. So that the hangar bay is considered to be the main level, the ground floor, if you will. And everything below it would be level two below it, level three below it. And everything above it is 01, 02, 03, and so on.
So we're at the hangar bay level now. And we'll actually take you into the hangar bay here.
Normally, as you know, the hangar bay is full of strike aircraft jets. But Friday, the rest of the air wing took off. So now the hangar bay, instead of being full of jets, is full of guys playing basketball. They've set up a basketball court in here. They've got a rock climbing wall. They've got volleyball courts. And they're essentially just enjoying their last day at sea before they get home to their home port of Everett, Washington.
Obviously, everyone has special memories of very long carrier deployment, a nearly 10-month. The longest carrier deployment since the Vietnam era. When we talked to Kendall Card yesterday -- he's the CO, or commanding officer of the ship, and asked him for his special memories, and he said that the one thing he will always remember is the first day of strikes into Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAPT. KENDALL CARD, U.S. NAVY: The tension that was in the air, and the special feeling when we got everybody off. And at the end of the day, after 15 hours of flight ops, in particular, that recovery that night, and getting the final person on board. Everybody's safe after some very challenging missions over the beach. And I felt really terrific about our accomplishments that day and that everybody was back home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BUCKLEY: And as we look outside, live right now onto the flight deck, you can see no flight operations going on there. Just a cleaning operation. They're cleaning off the flight deck. It's still pretty wet out there. The ship being prepared for the big homecoming that takes place tomorrow morning -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Talk about the ultimate deck swabbing, four and a half acres. Frank, over your right shoulder there, there's just a boat just sitting there. Gives you an idea of the size of the vessel you're on. What's that used for?
BUCKLEY: This is used for the -- if the admiral needs to go ashore, or if they need to do some sort of a boarding where they need to leave the ship. I've actually never seen it dropped into the water, but it is something that they have. They also have these things called ribbed boats that they can use if they have to quickly go off, and for example, if someone falls overboard.
So in addition to this gigantic ship that we're on, they have these other smaller vessels as well.
O'BRIEN: All right. Aircraft and boat carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln. Frank Buckley aboard. Thank you very much. We'll be checking in with you all the way into home port of Everett, Washington. Some happy and excited sailors on board there right now.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
