Four ships from the Navy’s Third Fleet are visiting the LA harbor this week and I toured the USS Champion yesterday, a mine counter-measure ship and today I returned to tour the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of 5 aircraft carriers in the 3rd Fleet. The Third Fleet is one of seven numbered fleets in the U.S. Navy. The Third Fleet has 60,000 sailors, 5 carriers, 70+ surface combat ships, 30+ submarines and 400+ aircraft. The Third Fleet’s area of responsibility includes 50 million square miles of eastern and northern Pacific Ocean and will deploy to the Western Pacific/Indian Ocean for duty with the Seventh Fleet. The ships visiting this week were deployed out of San Diego.
After touring the USS Abraham Lincoln I drove up to some high ground in San Pedro so that I could get an overall shot of the carrier. The ship is 1,092 feet long and 275 feet wide with a flight deck surface of 4.5 acres.
Each anchor weighs some 35 tons.
The ship is protected from inbound missiles by radar guided Phalanx Gatling gun defense system capable of firing 4,500 20mm rounds a minute.
After climbing a flight of stairs you enter the ship on one of its lowered flight deck elevators. These are very large elevators that carry the aircraft from the interior bays up to the flight deck.
Here is the elevator up on the flight deck. Today its primary use was to take people who had finished the tour from the top of the flight deck back down where they would then exit. The ship has four flight deck elevators.
And here is that elevator between decks. It moves so quickly that visitors are warned to stand with their legs spread and slight bent at the knees. Even with the warning you would here slight screams form folks being startled at how quickly it moves. As someone said, it’s an “E-Ticket” ride.
The huge interior bay is where they store the aircraft. Most of the flight crew and the aircraft were removed and were down in San Diego. Four different types of aircraft were left on board on the flight deck above for viewing.
After walking through the interior bay to the other end another flight deck elevator zipped us up to the flight deck.
Aircraft attached to the steam catapult in a launching position.
View across the way of San Pedro from where I took the high elevation photo of the ship after the tour ended.
A Navy patrol boat was constantly on patrol next to the carrier.
While on the flight deck I was fortunate enough to see the USS Princeton, a guided missile cruiser, come into port. It will be participating in the tours tomorrow.
From the flight deck I was able to barely make out the Terminal Island Federal Prison. This is a low security prison. While taking a university criminal justice class in the early 70s we had a guest speaker come in to talk to us. He was a convicted bank robber serving his time at Terminal Island. He was in civilian attire and had no supervision….. Quite the prison eh? An ugly part of American history involves Terminal Island. Prior to WWII there were several hundred generation Japanese living on Terminal Island, mostly fisherman and cannery workers. The adults were taken by the FBI and placed in internment camps during the war. Their homes were destroyed.
After my tour ended, this was the size of the crowd waiting to get on busses to take them to the carrier. I was glad I got here early today because my wait in line was only 30 minutes or so and these people at the end of these snaking lines are looking at a 2-3 hour wait before they can board a bus.
Here’s a photo of the USS Champion, a mine sweeper that we toured yesterday. The hull of the ship is wood.
Bridge of the Champion
All your Chinese made goods come through the ports of LA and Long Beach which is next door.
