ASME Hawaii Members Tour the USS Ronald Reagan

On Saturday, January 22, 2005, the ASME Hawaii senior and University of Hawaii ASME student section members had a once in a life time opportunity to tour the Navy’s newest super air craft carrier – the USS Ronald Reagan.

Members of the senior section include Raymond Liu, Chairman; Sam Gillie, Secretary; Jim Grogan, Director; Alan Lloyd, retired engineer from Hawaiian Electric; and Richard Wang, Mechanical Engineer at Hawaiian Electric. The student members include David Katsuda, President; Blake Sato, Vice President; David Narahara, Treasurer; Mike Bicoy and Kevin Ohira.

This private tour was sponsored by Stanford Yuen, P.E., a past ASME Hawaii section chairman (1979-1980), and currently an Executive Assistant within the Intergovernmental Affairs Division for the Navy Region Hawaii.

On this bright sunny afternoon, the tour began at the pier entrance where visitors from other private tour groups gathered. The members of the other tour groups included such dignitaries as councilman Rod Tam, Charles Djou, Representative Mark Moses, other governmental and military officials, their families and friends. To make the tour more manageable, tour guides for the 90 minute tour included sailors assigned to 20 members within each group.

With Ensign Bannister assigned to the ASME Hawaii group, the tour began with the walk along the pier toward the awesome floating fortress. As we walked along the pier toward the stairs leading to the entrance of the hanger bay, everyone appeared to be in awe of the shear size of the gray fortress. Finally, after about a 10-minute travel from the pier entrance, we crossed the metal brow decking and set foot on the enormous hanger bay.

Ensign Bannister explained that the hanger bay is normally housed with aircraft and other supplies that are brought up to the flight deck thru the aircraft elevators. Instead, the hanger bay was filled with beautiful flags of various nations and two prominent flags along the wall – the American flag and a flag of the carrier with the number 76 for CVN 76.

The tour then proceeded to the flight deck directly above where everyone had an opportunity to take pictures with a jet aircraft and a helicopter. From the flight deck, we could see the USS Battleship Missouri and the Arizona Memorial to the south, and the Ford Island Bridge to the north. The flight deck, as explained by Ensign Bannister, is over 3 football fields long and covers about 4.5 acres. On a typical mission, the flight deck has a capacity to carry more than 80 combat aircraft.

After taking pictures and enjoying the view of Pearl Harbor, Ensign Bannister lead us to the landing area of the flight deck and explained how the jets land on the carrier and how they are able to stop the plane thru the use of the large diameter arresting cable. He shared with us the primary goal of the landing crew’s responsibility to ensure the safety of the pilot, to extinguish fires on the flight deck and to jettison a burning plane off the deck, if required. That’s when he showed us the equipment used to fight the fires on deck and the equipment used to ram a burning plane overboard. Fortunately, they haven’t had the need to use it yet.

As we headed toward the bow of the carrier, we passed the Island where the carrier is controlled. The Island is about 244 ft from the keel to the mast and towers over 20 stories above the waterline. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to go up to the top deck to see the view.

The most exciting part of the tour revolved around the catapult area. With a top speed of more than 30 knots (1 knot = 1.15 nautical miles), the catapult system is able to accelerate a jet from 0 to 160 mph in around 2 seconds. Now that is a lot of G forces on your body.

The final destination of the tour included a visit to the Reagan museum within the hanger bay area. The museum included video excerpts from history making events of the Reagan era such as his acceptance as the Republican candidate for President of the United States during his run for the 2^nd term; the destruction of the Berlin wall; the assassination attempt by John Hinkley in 1980; and explanation of the nation’s economic recovery thru “Reaganomics.”

The tour ended with everyone having a deeper appreciation of the military’s might and need for technologically advanced war ships to maintain peace throughout the world.

The ASME Hawaii section would like to thank Stanford Yuen, P.E. for this once in a lifetime tour of the USS Ronald Reagan. For more information on this latest super air craft carrier, please visit www.reagan.navy.mil.