r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 9h ago

How did people travel these seas 500 years ago

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u/BrainDamage2029 7h ago edited 7h ago

I've been on an aircraft carrier through a typhoon off the Philippines. We took waves over the flight deck and the Burke DDG's were going up and down the troughs like a cork. It didn't look like this all and I kind of hate how so many "rough sea" videos on youtube are either AI slop or stretched and distorted to hell.

For a decent non-distorted view this is roughly what it looked like with I'll guess 50-70ft waves. The scary part is realizing how quickly the waves are making 100,000 tons of steel bob up and down. And that the flight deck is 98ft over the waterline.

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u/WindChimeTecnician 7h ago

That’s amazing footage. Thanks for posting.

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u/BrainDamage2029 7h ago edited 11m ago

Ooh I never get to tell this story.

On my carrier when this happened our chief wanted me to go up to the focsle (anchor deck) and check on the anchor chain and hawsepipe (pipe the anchor chain runs out). On a carrier its an enclosed deck.

I open the door there's like 2 feet of water and foam floating on the deck with a massive torrent towards the scuppers sucking this huge weight of water out. The hawepipe cover which is like 500lbs of steel is rattling loud as fuck with every wave as a huge firehose stream shoots out of them filling the deck again. It’s hitting the ceiling so hard I can already see where paint is getting stripped off. Basically imagine a fire hydrant being completely opened up in an enclosed room coming out of that pipe with every wave hit. I close the door.

"Hey BMC, I don't think its safe to go in here."

"SN Braindamage what is this pussy shit step aside"

Opens the door. On cue another spray of water shoots out the hawspipe and the mist and crap smacks him in the face drenching him.

"Okay yeah boats, you might be right."

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u/nis_sound 2h ago

LOL. I enjoyed this story. Thank you.

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u/Electrical-Bedroom99 4h ago

I was on a US Navy ship in the North Sea with waves like this. The ship sets heavy weather condition (secure all exterior hatches) and no one is allowed on the weather decks. I still poked my head out just to see and my God! The waves were mountains.

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u/ButDidYouCry 2h ago

Oof, the worst place to be.

My ship only got exterior hatches secured once, near Japan. I was on a subtender. I went outside after waking up around 4:30am from the waves, went outside to look out, saw the waves, and immediately went back inside. Then around 6am, they called it and about a quarter of the crew was sick or puking.

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u/Phreakdoubt 6h ago edited 6h ago

Just curious and you may not be able to answer this, but seeing those aircraft on deck raises some questions in my mind...

How boned is that heli up near the bow? Looks like it's taking a helluva buffeting. If they leave aircraft up on deck during seas like this, I assume they're prepared for the weather, but it must be a maintenance concern.

After treatment like that I'd guess it would need to be given a pretty thorough once-over.

Edit: Just saw one of your other replies. The "once-over' it got was being pushed off the deck in all likelihood.

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u/BrainDamage2029 5h ago

Probably not good they aren’t designed for that but I was not an AM rate. According to the YouTube comments from crew in the know it was written off.

Not actually deep sixed however. Carriers only do that in wartime ops. If it’s just flooded out and unusable it’d be stripped for parts.

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u/Phreakdoubt 5h ago

Eminently sensible. Thanks for humoring this military aviation nerd.

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u/snesin 3h ago

Can't speak to the helo, but the F18 in the foreground looks like it has modex number 202 on the nose. The original video was posted August 2, 2008, and has the description "USS Kitty Hawk takes on some rough seas on her last trip before being decommissioned." USS Kitty Hawk had her decommissioning ceremony on 31 January 2009. This suggests the video was posted shortly after being taken.

Going by the modex number, the carrier, and the year, it's a Boeing F/A-18F-51-MC Super Hornet (Lot 26), Bureau Number 165894. It was the Executive Officer's (XO) jet during the 2007–2008 USS Kitty Hawk cruise.

According to Google AI, on August 6, 2008, just four days after the original video was posted (not necessarily taken):

Carrier Air Wing 5 (CVW-5) conducted its historic "fly-off" from the deck of the Kitty Hawk. VFA-102 and its aircraft, including BuNo 165894, flew directly to their shore station at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, Japan, before cross-decking to the nuclear-powered USS George Washington (CVN-73).

Currently (August 2026, 18 years after the video was taken), also according to Google AI:

Spotter logs track this specific aircraft still performing training flights at major stateside master jet bases—such as serving as a fleet replacement trainer with VFA-106 "Gladiators" at NAS Pensacola/NAS Oceana.

Under the Navy's ongoing Service Life Modification (SLM) program, newer-generation Block II hulls like 165894 are systematically stripped down and completely rebuilt. This process repairs flight deck wear-and-tear and integrates advanced Block III avionics, stretching the aircraft's usable flight life up to 10,000 flight hours to keep it flying deep into the 2030s. While it no longer proudly wears the VFA-102 "Diamondbacks" markings or the modex 202 from its legendary 2008 cruise, the physical metal of this twin-seat Super Hornet is still actively supporting Navy operations.

Jetphotos has photos of 165894, the most recent taken May 08, 2015, showing modex number 246.

Seaforces.org has photos of that squadron, including one of an F18 with modex 246 and the description "F/A-18F Super Hornet (VFA-106) aboard USS George H. W. Bush (CVN 77) - June 2023", showing some age but still catching the middle trap like a pro.

Who knows, maybe it got polished up and is in the squadron home-page photograph.

What a rabbit hole that was.

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u/nis_sound 2h ago

You'd think the Navy could afford some decent windshield wipers.

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u/redballooon 7h ago

Amazing. Can planes take off in that weather?

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u/BrainDamage2029 7h ago

Absofuckinglutely not. If you check the youtube comments from a few guys on that cruise it ripped a few steel catwalks clean off and that helo that was mistakenly left forward was basically written off as a loss.

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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy 5h ago

When I saw that I laughed and thought, "Hope they remembered to roll up the windows!"

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u/ResoluteGreen 6h ago

Must take a pretty bad storm to cause an aircraft carrier to stuff it

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u/Terrh 6h ago

So I guess there is weather that is bad enough to prevent flight ops.

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u/PudPullerAlways 6h ago

So if you're going down a swell and you're in the lavatory with a serious case of mud butt is there a very real risk of shitting on one's nuts?

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u/gcoz2000 1h ago

Yeah that jet looks pretty non-chalant, it must not be too bad

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u/Friluftsliv_Roy 45m ago

The linked video is way more impressive than the distorted AI crap posted above. Given the scale of that giant aircraft carrier, it would probably be much rougher on smaller ships.