USS Ronald Reagan drops anchor off coast

BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

With a rattling rumble that reverberates through the entire ship, the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier drops a 30-ton anchor about a mile off the coast of Santa Barbara.
Its hulking steel mass dominates the channel. With 3,300 sailors on board, the Nimitz-class carrier also marks the largest naval port call in Santa Barbara since President Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet visited a century ago.

Trying to put the immensity and complexity of the massive, 1,096-foot-long carrier into meaningful terms is no easy feat, but Commanding Officer Capt. Terry B. Kraft gives it a shot.
“I manage an airport with a nuclear reactor beneath it and 5,000 people squeezed in between,” he says, standing in the gaping hangar bay. “…If you stood us on end, we’re about as tall as the Empire State Building.”
Capt. Kraft says his sailors are in the process of training and preparing to deploy to the Persian Gulf this spring, and this port call is a special treat for all on board.
“We just can’t wait to get ashore,” he says. “…There is a real Ronald Reagan spirit in Santa Barbara.”
At any given time during the next two days, between 1,500 and 2,000 sailors will be ashore, enjoying a barbecue steak dinner, friendly sports competitions with local teams, a concert in Chase Palm Park with a Navy flyover, and dozens of other events.
Sailors will also offer their help in refurbishing several local schools and will join the police cleanup squad to spruce up a few parks.
“It’s a very positive attitude,” Radiation Health Officer James Speitel says. “There are a lot of smiles on this ship.”
The 26-year-old Ventura native joined the Navy at age 21 after earning a degree in nuclear physics from Cal Lutheran. Visiting Santa Barbara is a homecoming of sorts, with nearly his entire family traveling up to meet him.
Wes Martinez is also going to be treading familiar ground. He spent his childhood in northern Santa Barbara County before moving to Palm Springs. His uncle, who owns a ranch in the North County, is planning to pick him up for a day of bull riding.
Martinez joined up at 18 after he had a son with his high school sweetheart. He turned 19 in boot camp and is now 20 years old. He missed the birth of his son, 10-month-old Tristan.
“It’s not easy, being away from my family,” he says.
Martinez spends most of his time dealing with paperwork in an administrative branch of the supply department. With 16 months in the Navy under his belt, he still has 2 years and 10 months left on his service.
The USS Ronald Reagan is filled with people like Speitel and Martinez — thousands of moving parts that turn the carrier’s 47,000 tons of steel into a living, breathing creature.
Saul Mendo is one of those moving parts, perhaps one of its most vital. Mendo is a flight deck chief, responsible for maintaining order in the chaos of launching, landing, refueling and shuffling dozens of fighter jets at once.
He sits in front of his Ouija board, an exact-scale replica of the flight deck and hangar bay, complete with toy-sized aircraft. His moves on the board are choreographed with action on the deck, paralleled to the inch.
“It’s very busy in here,” Chief Mendo says. “This is like the brain of the whole operation.”
In constant contact with the air boss in the top bridge of the island — what most would call the control tower — he transfers planes between the deck and the hangar bay on four massive elevators. Currently empty, as the air wing is deployed to Nevada for training, the bay has the capability to hold more than 60 aircraft.
And although the flight deck covers 4.5 acres, it’s impossible to get one of those 60,000-pound fighter jets moving fast enough to take off without the ship’s steam-powered catapults, which launch aircraft from zero to 165 miles per hour in two seconds.
It’s also impossible to stop one of those jets as it hits the deck at 150 miles per hour without snagging its tail hook on one of three arresting wires, slamming the plane to a halt in just 320 feet.
Deep within the ship is another vital moving part, the CDC, or combat direction center. Lt. Cmdr. Michael Galli watches over a bank of radar and tracking screens, looking out for incoming targets and keeping an eye on the carrier’s location.
“This is the tactical nerve of the aircraft carrier,” he says.
Although supported by other naval vessels when underway, the USS Ronald Reagan packs a punch with its own self-defense system — NATO Sea Sparrow missiles, 14 .50 caliber gun stations, electronic scramblers and rolling airframe (RAM) missiles.
“We’re going to use our air wing first, for offense and defense,” Lt. Cmdr. Galli says. “…It’s kind of rare when you get to shoot a missile.”
Adopted by the Santa Barbara Navy League in 2000, the USS Ronald Reagan also features a few creature comforts that might not be expected in the stripped-down interior of a naval warship. With the help of more than $1 million in donations from the league, the ship now boasts a Ronald Reagan museum, a computer café with e-mail and Internet capabilities, and cameras that sailors use to tape messages for their families back home.
“Those small things are really important when you are so far from home, so far from your family,” says Ens. Tim Hawkins, assistant public affairs officer.
After their sojourn in Santa Barbara, the crew of the USS Ronald Reagan will return to their homeport in San Diego before leaving on a six-month deployment to the Middle East.
During final preparations for departure, the crew will undoubtedly spend countless hours combing over every inch of the aircraft carrier, making sure each moving part is functioning smoothly before hoisting that 30-ton anchor and getting underway.