From Bahrain we flew in a US Navy C2 Greyhound Turbo Pro Plane to the USS Stennis. This plane is called a COD (Carrier on Delivery) Basically it is the pickup truck tender to the carrier, it's work horse if you will. Carries People, mail, small parts so on..

Clearly I didn't take this shot, but you get the gist. The kicker is that you get to land on the carrier by catching the hook. Ever seen top gun? Unreal, it is the closet I have every felt to getting into a car crash and I have been in more then three 100MPH+ crashes, this was right up there. When landed I asked if we could do it again, everyone else on the plane was just happy to be on two feet.

Again, I didn't take this shot. Welcome to the Big ass John C. Stennis (CVN-74). Ok, let me see if I can give you an idea of the size and sheer amazing depth of this thing. 1092' long, has around 3500 people on board to run the ship itself, has two F/A 18 Hornet Squadrons and a Heli Squad, if I remember right, that adds about 2000 more people. Around 5K people on board at one given time. Twin Nuclear Power plants run dual steam turbines allowing this thing to cruise at 30knots/34.6MPH (a crock of shit, this is all the GOV will tell you it can do, you can bet your ass they go faster). Each Anchor weighs 65,000lbs, each link in the chain is 250lbs. Has the ability to hold 80 or more aircraft at one given time, shit man, lets just say this thing is no joke. OK?

Da Bridge. It saddens me to say that while on this trip I had little time to take pictures. My primary reason for be on this trip was to assist my friend, AN-My, so I was not able to take all that many pictures. Take what you can get and shut up.

The ABC's.

You have the Ball.

Talk to me goose.

So, when these dudes land they need to catch the wire to stop the plane from running right back off the deck. There are 4 cables, each cable is replaced after it has been used 120 times. When the planes land, they go to full throttle incase they miss the wire or if it breaks, they can just run right back off the deck and hope they don't get wet (And blow $30Mill of the taxes I hate to pay). SO, that means the cable has to stop the inertia of the plane AND the power of two big ass jet engines, that is some serious shit.

Da Cable yo!

These blast protection barriers are in place to allow for planes to slid right in behind each other without talking the paint (and the skin of the face) off the plane and pilot behind another rig about to bolt off the deck. I talked to a dude that sleeps right under one of these things. Poor dude.

This is An-my Lê. She is a very establish large format photographer who was kind enough to bring a poor fool like me to assist her. Check out her gallery here and her book here.

This is why she needs an assistant. This is a Deardorff 5"x7" camera made in the 50's. When we were shooting on the flight deck we had a guy assigned to just standing behind her to hold her dark cloth so that it would not fly off and get sucked into a jet. Classic.

The fo'c's'le. A fancy name for the front area of the ship that is charged with pulling up and letting down the Anchors. The name comes from the dark ages of castles and motes and shit for the front of a castle or Forecastle. Here, don't make me explain it, educate yourself fool.

Not much out here but a big killing machine and a lot of little killing machines.

Target practice on the back of the ship. More killing machines.

Twice a day the whole Flight Deck Crew walks the length of the entire deck looking for objects on the flight deck. This is called a FOD walk or Foreign Object Detection Walk. They are tough as shit about this, there are five dudes walking backwards yelling at the guys saying shit like, "A you two assholes, look at all the space between you fucks, get closer or someone is going to die!" The object is to find parts of planes that have fallen off and put them in the trash so that thy will not get sucked up into the planes taking off and landing.

Sunset out in the middle of nowhere is something else.

This is where the ship runs it's protection programs. AKA, you mess with us, this is where well tell all the guns to shoot your ass out of the sky or the water.

Blow Deck storage. They park these things like I did with my hotwheels when I was 5.

After sleeping the night we got up to get some good light. I should mention that we were in cabins just below the flight deck. Throughout the night they were flying operations into Afganistan. You ever slept below a flight deck with planes taking off and landing all night? Lets do this, you ever tossed something heavy into a large dumpster that had nothing in it? Well, then you are getting close to what it sounds like. I got very little sleep but there will be no complaints from this shithead. Ohh, I should mention that the wedge on the left of this shot is the bit of the catapult that pushed the planes off the deck.

Did I mention the good light?

Yo Yo Yo, shout out to the 401 crew! Don't you feel like your being rude looking up that things ass like that?

Don't mess with the Eight Ballers.

Take off from the carrier is unreal. We pulled 4 G's in the plane while getting our brains mushed into our skulls. The catapult is 4 times the ride then any acceleration I have had in cars/planes/bikes. Sickness.

Tomorrow we are off to the Iraqi Oil Platforms

One more thing for all you photo heads out there. I hate Zoom lenses and only had the room to pack a crap ass 35MM, don't judge, I did what I could.