TRAP THE NO. 3 WIRE!(Brief Article)

• Author: WIESNER, PAT

Be proud Americans! Your country is not only secure, but the young leaders for tomorrow are in good hands as they prepare for the new millennium.

"It'll cage your eyes momentarily; other than that it won't be much."

So said my host about the catapult shot I was about to experience from the USS Abraham Lincoln, the world's largest warship. In aviation lingo "cage" means to shut down. Naw, I said to myself, I'm not going to shut my eyes, and I'm going to count three seconds. (I had read that the 'Fat Cat' catapult would take the C2 COD, twin turboprop from zero to 135 mph in 3 seconds.) Bam! Off we went. Involuntarily my eyes shut, and I couldn't count because I thought we were going straight up. Just as quickly, it was over, and we were flying quite normally, thank you, away from the Lincoln, back to San Diego and the end of our adventure, some 100 miles away.

And so it ended. Our one day at sea, the opportunity of a lifetime! I was with a group of six visitors from Denver. Our host was Dan Pederson, retired U.S. Navy captain, retired commanding officer of the USS Ranger, first commanding officer of the Navy's Top Gun school and presently director of operations for Denver's Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. This landing that we made on the Lincoln was Dan's 1,000th trap (what you call catching the arresting wire on the carrier deck).

The warship itself is unbelievable. Costing some $10 billion 10 years ago, it displaces (weighs) 90,000 tons, and is powered by two nuclear power plants and four props of 11 tons each. There are more than 3,000 compartments on something like 16 decks. More than 5,500 officers and men work on board, and they eat more than 20,000 meals per day. Evaporators can distill more than 400,000 gallons of fresh water every day, and if you start to calculate the number of loaves of bread, eggs and haircuts per day, you'll go crazy.

The deck area covers 4.5 acres. It is three-plus football fields long and one wide. During our visit, there were about 60 aircraft aboard. Flight operations started about noon and...