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So many amazing superlatives apply to the USS Harry S. Truman that it's hard to
remember them all. Perhaps its most obvious feature is its size. At left, the HST
dwarfs the "specks" that are the other ships in its strike group. Additional photo
links above depict the sheer magnitude. (On all site photos, you can click on the
image to access a larger view.)
At 100,000 tons, the Nimitz-class carrier (the HST is one of ten) is
the world's largest warship.
The flight deck is 1,092 feet long (almost as long as the Empire State
Building is tall) and 257 feet wide.
Two nuclear reactors drive the ship at 30+ knots (the actual speed
is classified). Despite their size, the Nimitz-class carriers are the fastest displacement-hull
vessels in the world.
They cost $4.5 billion each.
The nuclear reactors must be refueled every 20 to 25 years. The ship
can cruise more than 2 million miles between refuelings.
5,000 to 6,000 Navy personnel crew the ship, including the ship's company
and the air wing. Average age: only 19 years old. What a boatload of 19-year-olds
can do, and what the extraordinary Navy organization enables them to do, is simply
astonishing to this "seasoned" 52-year-old.
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