Deck Drawings
Whether it's a single letter or a 100-foot greeting, aircraft carrier crews stand ready to spell it out.
- By Roger Mola
- AirSpaceMag.com, May 27, 2011
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US Navy
On Memorial Day in 1958, the USS Bennington passes the wreck of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, spelling a tribute to crewmen lost in the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941. The outline of Arizona’s hull and the flow of oil still leaking from her fuel tanks can be seen in the shallow waters.
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Comments (5)
Regarding deck drawings -- USS Ranger CV-61. When was this photo taken? My son was assigned and did duty on this ship during Desert Storm - 1991 and returned to San Diego. He doesn't recall this event. Please advise and thank you in advance. JDL
Posted by John Lucas on June 10,2011 | 02:07 PM
The Navy archive says that the original photo by Navy PH2 Wimmer was dated December 1, 1988, but may have been taken about a year earlier.
Posted by Roger Mola on June 16,2011 | 10:45 AM
Maybe I missed it in your collection of Deck Drawings, but I didn't see one of my favorites: the crew of the Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) spelling out "Big Stick."
I am pretty sure that "Big Stick" is a perfect description of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Is that picture available?
Thanks.
Posted by Tim Colman on July 1,2011 | 03:48 PM
Thanks for your note. The "Big Stick" photo from September of 1999 is floating around the Internet and easy to find, and you're right, it's a great shot (especially since many schools no longer teach the cursive-style letters the crew used to spell it out). We collected dozens of images and it was tough to choose which to post. --Roger Mola, Researcher, Air & Space magazine
Posted by Roger Mola on July 7,2011 | 04:03 PM
There was a very famous article in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC in the Sixties profiling the Enterprise's around-the-world cruise. The "centerfold" was the aerial view of the ship with the sailors spelling out E=MC2 on the flight deck.
Posted by Stephen on February 25,2013 | 04:17 PM