Sailors assigned to the air department on the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) held flight deck barricade drills, 7 July, to ensure the flight deck team is mission ready for combat.

Drills like these specifically allow the crash and salvage crew of V-1 division to put their knowledge and skills to the test.

“I like these drills,” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) 3rd Class Robert Reyes, a member of the crash and salvage crew. “My job is to do these kind of things, and actual things like full aircraft crashes don’t really happen, so doing these drills is a good way to make sure I’m ready.”

The purpose of conducting barricade drills is to simulate an aircraft coming in for a crash landing. The barricade is put in place to catch the aircraft. Once the aircraft is in the landing area, it will likely be on fire.

“It’s possible that an aircraft can’t land normal and have a normal arresting on the flight deck,” said Chief Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) Jerome Gaynor, a V-1 division chief. “The barricade is important to pull out to ensure that the aircraft lands safely on the flight deck.”

During the drill, crash and salvage crew members practiced how to initially approach an aircraft on fire, how to put out the fire, how to rescue the pilots, how to shut off the aircraft internally, and how to commence the overhaul and fire reflash watch.

“It keeps you refreshed so you’re always ready,” said Reyes. “If anything ever happens, you just react. You do it so many times, it’s just a reaction, you don’t even have to think about it, you just know what to do.”

Truman is currently underway conducting composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) with the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG).

COMPTUEX is an intensive, month-long exercise designed to fully integrate units of HSTCSG, while testing the strike group's ability as a whole to carry out sustained combat operations from the sea. Ships, squadrons and staffs will be tested across every core warfare area within their mission sets through a variety of simulated and live events, including air warfare, strait transits, and responses to surface and subsurface contacts and electronic attacks.

HSTCSG is scheduled to deploy later this year. Strike group elements participating in COMPTUEX include Truman and embarked Carrier Air Wing One; staffs from Carrier Strike Group 8 and Destroyer Squadron 28, the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60); and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Ramage (DDG 61), USS Lassen (DDG 82), USS Forrest Sherman (DDG 98) and USS Farragut (DDG 99).

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