A wild video shows wheeled vehicles weighing up to 80,000 lbs each being catapulted into a Virginia river from the flight deck of the US Navy’s new supercarrier USS John F. Kennedy to test the vessel’s aircraft launch system.
The heart-pounding footage, released by the shipbuilder Hunting Ingalls Industries last week, shows orange, car-like vehicles traveling more than 300 feet down the catapult track on the supercarrier’s bow at speeds topping 150 mph, before soaring into the air and landing with a huge splash in the James River.
The cars were then retrieved from the water and relaunched until the the test program wrapped up.
The heavy vehicles weighing as much as fighter jets were flung off the multibillion-dollar vessel as part of what is known in the industry as “dead-load” testing.
The process is designed to make sure that the supercarrier’s catapults are ready “for their primary intended purpose: to launch all carrier-based fixed wing aircraft flown by the US Navy,” the shipbuilder said in a statement.
US aircraft designed specifically for operations from aircraft carriers include the F/A-18 Super Hornet and the E-2 Hawkeye.
The first so-called “dead loads” used during the testing phase were covered in messages of congratulations and gratitude encouragement written by shipbuilders’ families.
“As we make sustained progress in the construction, testing and turnover of John F. Kennedy, reaching the dead load testing phase is a visual demonstration of how far we’ve come,” said Lucas Hicks, vice president of Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Hunting Ingalls Industries.
The Kennedy is the second Gerald R. Ford-class supercarrier under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding. It was launched and christened in 2019 after more than a decade of development and construction, and it carries the price tag of $11.3 billion.
Two other Ford-class carriers — the Enterprise and the Doris Miller — are under construction at Newport News.