36 Incredible Hours On The Aircraft Carrier USS Eisenhower [PHOTOS]

The U.S. currently has 11 aircraft carriers that hold about 5,600 sailors and aviators apiece. While not all of them are deployed at the same time, the ones at home are training, undergoing maintenance, and still filling their crews' days with inordinate demands.

Aircraft carriers have three acres of flattop and are 1,000 feet long. It's common to hear them referred to as floating cities, but they're more than that.

Click here to see life on the Ike >

The carriers projecting America's military power abroad are more exposed than most any other U.S. command in the world. Aside from working and sailing into dicey locations, these big ships are dangerous and the flight deck alone requires just one wrong move to bring an end to the distracted.

There's no room to be anything less than focused, almost all the time and the jobs on board are just as varied as the people who fill them.

From pilots, to navigators, to recruits that wash the deck, everyone works together and supports the overall mission. No bitterness or condescension that I saw, and that would be a tough environment to hide it.

Sixty-one thousand men and women, doing things most people have no idea, in places most others can't imagine. It's like someone took the entire Ohio University student body, and a chunk of the faculty, and sent them off to parts unknown. 61,000 people is a lot, and that's just serving on carriers.

When we went to the Persian Gulf in September we spent about 36 hours on the USS EISENHOWER — or the "Ike" as her crew calls her. There's no way to show everything that goes on, but the following pictures should offer a feeling for what the mad paced, ear crushing scene is really like.


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The Bleachers

36 Incredible Hours On The Aircraft Carrier USS Eisenhower [PHOTOS]

Dangerous, exhausting, and inspiring.