Carrier (2005) PBS

Carrier, Ep. 2: Controlled Chaos

Episode 2: "Controlled Chaos"

The men and women of the USS Nimitz live beneath the runway of a major airport. They sleep on the roof of a nuclear power plant. It’s a perilous environment. Their only bulwark against danger and chaos is to bond with their units on board the ship. The “Shooters,” who launch the jets, have a “Circle of Trust”; the Ordies (ordnance personnel) pride themselves on being a “mafia”; the F-18 squadrons — the Black Aces, the Hoboes and the Marine Red Devils — are tight fraternities.

Chapter 1: "A Dangerous Place" (12:35)

Don’t ever say the c-word here; making this place work is like trying to control chaos.

Chapter 2: "The Black Aces" (11:51)

Being a jet pilot on board the Nimitz is like joining a fraternity, but throughout the ship, the collective motto is work hard, play hard.

Chapter 3: "Noise & Vibration" (10:08)

Try sleeping below an airport with jets and a booming catapult that’s going 24 hours a day.

Chapter 4: "Call Signs" (9:47)

Much like a fraternity, each of the pilots has their own nickname or call sign.

Chapter 5: "Women Pilots" (13:32)

It’s an uphill struggle for women who join that fraternity of jet pilots; as one man said, it must be hard to be surrounded by that much testosterone.

CARRIER, a 10-part series filmed aboard the USS Nimitz, is a character-driven immersion in the high- stakes world of a nuclear aircraft carrier. The episodes follow a core group of characters as they navigate their jobs, families, faith, patriotism, love, the rites of passage and the war on terror. An Emmy Award-winning the television series is about a six-month deployment of a United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in 2005 from the United States to the Middle East and back.

Making the film CARRIER required 17 filmmakers to take a six-month journey aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz during its deployment to the Gulf in support of the Iraq War. They disembarked from Coronado, California on May 7, 2005 and returned there November 8, 2005 with stops at Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong, Guam, Kuala Lumpur, Bahrain and Perth, Australia.



The trip proved an evolution for the film crew who spent the early weeks trying to find their place while the 5,000 sailors and Marines around them were too busy to take notice. Eventually, the film crew discerned the ebb and flow of life on a carrier, and began to feel more at home on board. The ship’s crew not only accepted them but also took a vested interest in the project, making suggestions on the best places to film and providing access to missions that helped capture the full experience of the deployment.



Jammed into their own staterooms, the crew that once felt apart now felt kinship as they shared both trepidation and jubliation awaiting the safe return of the carrier’s jet fighters. When the huge emotional surge of seeing home hit in November, the filmmakers knew how the Nimitz crew must feel. But back on land, their own mission of editing and production continued for nearly three more years before the film CARRIER docked at PBS on April 27, 2008.