The Assassin (Sha ren zhe Tang Zhan)

Today on "Impossible engineering,"

the world's largest warship.

The aircraft carrier is a moving city

with all of the capabilities of any airfield,

and it can be moved anywhere in the world.

4-1/2 acres of cutting-edge military muscle...

The Ford class has taken a 40-year leap

in the development of aircraft carrier technologies.

...And the pioneering historic innovations...

Man, I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning.

You know what I mean?

Let's go ahead and launch the second.

And you can see that those two flight paths

are naturally de-conflicted.

...That made the impossible

possible.

captions paid for by discovery communications

The United States is renowned for its naval might.

It has some of the fastest

and most heavily-armed ships on the planet.

But patrolling the 139 million square-miles of oceans

requires more.

Its airborne units are vital to the Navy's success.

And basing an air force at sea

presents a unique engineering challenge

for people like

chief petty officer Jeremy Stoecklein

and his colleagues.

Those waters need to be patrolled,

need to be protected for American interests.

The forefront of military might

has really become naval aviation,

and it's very, very important

to transfer that power anywhere in the world.

The U.S. Navy requires a new breed of ship

capable of transporting more planes than ever before.

As we move into the 21st century,

there becomes a new need...

A new need for technology,

a new way to combat the forces around the world,

and to help out with humanitarian efforts

around the world.

The United States Navy needs something

brand new in technology to help those aids.

The solution...

...the Ford-class aircraft carrier.

Ford-class carrier is the largest warship ever built.

It's about 1,100 feet long,

weights about 100,000 tons,

it's about 24 stories tall.

Its scale is unheard of.

It's 35-knot top speed makes it pound-for-pound

the fastest carrier ever built,

and it's on the brink of making history.

The first of the colossal class, the Gerald R. Ford,

has just been delivered to the U.S. Navy

and is undergoing vital sea trials

to find out what it's capable of.

This ship can carry aircraft and technologies

that are out today,

as well as that we haven't even dreamt of yet.

This is the most impressive ship I've ever served aboard.

In dry dock in Newport news, Virginia,

Geoff Hummel and a team of engineers

are building the second

of this 10-strong fleet of carriers...

The John F. Kennedy.

We've been working on it for about three years,

and we got about another year and a half in the dry dock,

and then after that, we'll spend about two years of testing it

before we deliver it.

Mike Butler heads up construction

of these trailblazing ships.

Well, an aircraft carrier has to satisfy two major roles...

One is a humanitarian role,

and one is a defensive or offensive military role.

This ship does both and does it very well.

The largest warship ever built,

the Ford-class carrier is almost as long

as the empire state building is tall.

35 aircraft are stored in a giant hangar.

Three super-sized elevators deliver the planes

to an 1,100-foot-long flight deck.

Equipped with an electromagnetic catapult system

capable of launching planes faster than ever before.

The amount of technology that's been infused into this ship

is gonna put the Navy in a position

to fight the wars of the 21st century.

It's gonna be the most capable ship out there in the fleet.

But creating the world's largest mobile air base

poses many challenges.

How do you power a 110,000 ton vessel

with 4,500 crew members?

What we do is, live everyday lives.

So, washing laundry,

serving 20,000 meals a day.

So, it's like powering, essentially, a small city.

How is it possible to get jets airborne

in just a fraction of a normal runway?

The greatest challenge is to be able to get the aircraft

to the speed that it needs in order to take off.

And how can you bring them home safely?

Landing on a carrier requires an external means

of stopping the aircraft.

But the engineers face an even bigger problem.

The Ford class holds more planes

than any carrier before it.

They must be able to launch and recover

an astonishing 200 missions a day.

So, how do you achieve that on a ship?

Engineer Marco Estrada is facing that challenge.

Typically, an aircraft carrier

of the Ford class will hold approximately 78, 79 aircraft.

The job of managing the flight deck

is an organized chaos.

We have launches, you got recoveries,

you got fueling,

you got weapons at the same time.

So, it's a very challenging operation.

To achieve their unprecedented mission rate,

some aircraft must be able to land

at the same time that others are taking off.

It's an impossible problem that was faced

by the innovators of the past.

U.S. Navy pilot lieutenant Leslie Garcia

is a fast jet specialist,

well aware of the huge problems

of launching and landing on an aircraft carrier.

It is not uncommon to have over 20 aircraft launch

right before 20 aircraft are recovering

during the same open-deck time.

To simulate the straight deck's limitations,

lieutenant Garcia is handing over the flying

to a model plane club.

So, right now, we're putting down the center line

of the straight deck carrier.

I didn't know I was gonna get a workout

while I was out here, too.

The historic straight-deck design

is ready for takeoff,

but how will it cope?

They're gonna go airborne, execute their mission,

and then look to come in and land.

As the mission gathers pace,

landing simultaneously is impossible.

Now we've got the next cycle of pilots

getting ready to take off while the first cycle

that we launched are still airborne

and waiting for the opportunity to come land.

So, as you can see,

they're, basically, fouling the whole flight deck.

It's a very inefficient process.

But in the 1950s,

aircraft-carrier design was turned on its head.

Now a floating museum in San Diego,

the U.S.S. Midway

was one of the first American carriers

to be fitted with a game-changing solution...

The angled deck.

It was the brainchild of British

royal Navy captain Dennis Cambell

and engineer Lewis Boddington.

They supplemented the traditional straight deck

with a second runway.

The plane's landing area was now separated at the ship's waist

while launch catapults were safely positioned

at the front of the ship.

When this was a straight deck,

you would, basically, just see one landing area

straight up and down the ship,

with taxiing and launching aircraft

towards the bow of the ship,

landing aircraft towards the back.

Really, the game was changed

when we went over to the angled flight deck.

It became so much more efficient,

and, more importantly, so much safer.

The midway's remarkable refit

allowed her planes to take off and land at the same time.

The landing aircraft are gonna be offset

so that if they need to take back off,

if they missed a wire,

they will have the angled deck

that is going to keep them away

from the launching aircraft that are launching straight ahead.

So, will adding an angled deck

bring some order to today's mission?

As you can see, we've got one taking off.

He's gonna come around and start executing touch-and-goes

while we launch the other aircraft.

As on the midway,

Cambell and Boddington's addition

transforms this airstrip into a well-oiled machine.

He's approaching on his landing.

Let's go ahead and launch the second.

And you can see that those two flight paths

are naturally deconflicted because of the angle

that landing aircraft is coming in on.

And we're basically getting two landing strips

for the price of one.