薩拉託加號航空母艦的日常（1965）

Fasten your seatbelts and stand by to witness the world's mightiest display of jet-age fighting power. This is the striking force of just one ship, the 80,000 ton American aircraft carrier Saratoga. The abilities of schoolboy fiction seem to have come to life. These are the skills and tactics demanded by supersonic warfare. And it's not just a game when cardboard models are pushed around a table. They've got to be inch-perfect when expensive aircraft are moved around on a flight deck that's wide enough to sit two ocean-going liners side by side. Imagine, incredible though it may seem, a floating airfield of 100 aircraft and 4,000 men, and you have some impression of the immensity of Saratoga. Human beings seem almost an afterthought in this damn-dare world, until a selection of hand-painted cartoon characters reveal that even in this supersonic era, the fighter pilot hasn't lost that buccaneering sense of humour. The squadron briefing room, with its strange array of charts and trophies, is where battle instructions are revealed and discussed. Even on these peaceful exercises, when pilots are flying every day, they're not allowed to forget the reason for it all. Pilots are privileged men, and they get an escalator ride to the flight deck to save their sea legs. Even machinery gets a lift up from the hangar below. From the air-conditioned heart of this iron monster, you step onto a windswept deck where men can be blown overboard like feathers in a breeze. But danger is often forgotten by those who fly at twice the speed of sound, yet almost audaciously nickname their smallest fighters, Tinker Toys. The rescue helicopter lifts off, but how do you describe something as unconventional as this radar aircraft? To the nicknaming navy men, it's known affectionately as, Woolly Fud. Martin Rolfe scrambled close to these monster jets, to snatch these dramatic shots of catapult launchings. The captain's view, high up on the bridge is the safest place, when aircraft plunge forward from scratch to 100 miles an hour in seconds. This widescreen spectacle, with television relentlessly probing and filming an operation, makes no allowances for mistakes or misjudgments. And you run it like an efficient business organization, wrapping out the orders so that everyone knows exactly what course to take. Experience and youth, side by side at the helm of the world's most sophisticated fighting machine. Even more incredible is the tiny wheel, which steers this floating fortress. Full steam ahead, and the pressure's on down below. They've got everything here, from a battery of giant washing machines, to a shirt folder that almost works on its own by habit. Shirts, thousands of them to be washed and ironed every week, for a crew that's hungry enough to keep the bakery turning out a steady thousand loaves a day. And if that makes you gasp, then consider that a daily consumption of nearly 10,000 pounds of vegetables, and 5,000 pounds of red meat, is needed to keep everyone fighting fit. On top of that, there's got to be storage space for almost 3 million pounds of provisions, so you wouldn't think there's enough room for a barber shop. But there are in fact three of them, clipping a neat trade in mere baldness. All that parrot talk about the mighty Saratoga. Even at sea, you can't escape from a dentist's chair, and there are four of those as well. Man and machine, they all get the best treatment. Aircraft are stripped and rebuilt, in a two-acre hangar that employs all the engineering skills of a modern factory. Yet deep in the heart of this war machine, there is peace. For a moment, it's hard to visualize a quiet setting, here only a few yards away from a patrolling destroyer, that has come alongside to transfer a sick man to Saratoga's 80-bed hospital. That's a signal to practice an old Navy custom, and strike up the band. Whatever the illness, this isn't the recommended treatment. The brassy sound of anchors away, is something straight out of Uncle Sam's guidebook to Navy tradition. Others may prefer something a little more relaxing on TV. Yes, there's even a TV station in this floating city, transmitting programs and news bulletins every evening. It's a matey alternative to the film shows, which take place all over the ship each night. There's always that camera, which isn't turning for fun. It tracks aircraft recoveries, as the planes swoop down to the deck, at around 150 miles an hour. There are four arrestor wires to clutch each aircraft. It is not unusual for the hook to miss, and the aircraft to bounce off and come round again. Recovery complete, reassuring words for the men in the darkened depths of the control room, the complex brain center of it all. The flickering radar screens scan the ocean ahead, for a ship that plows 600 miles of sea a day. Dusk somewhere in the Mediterranean, and the thirsty monster sucks up life-giving fuel, from a patrolling supply ship. Now the comparative quietness seems almost an intrusion, aboard the most complicated and frightening vessel, ever designed for naval warfare.