Tag Archives: Aircraft carrier

Days of rest but also repairs for the aircraft carrier crew

The arrival of the world’s biggest aircraft carrier in Souda has put Crete firmly on the map. Photos and videos of the vast ship inching towards its berth at the Naval Base at Marathi have been appearing in the world’s press and making the name of Souda known to millions who most likely could not otherwise find it on the map.

According to local reports, the Gerald R. Ford arrived around 2.00 pm on Monday afternoon, some 24 hours later than originally predicted in the media. It had thus covered the 2,500 km from Gibraltar in almost exactly 3 days or 72 hours – an average speed of 35 km/h, only marginally in excess of the 18 knots predicted by The Telegraph‘s naval expert Tom Sharpe as being a comfortable pace for the ship’s destroyer escorts to keep up without stressing the vessels or crews. 

The aircraft carrier, seen from the stern, heads towards the shore.
Tugs manoeuvre the Gerald R. Ford towards its berth at the NATO base in Souda. 23rd February 2026.

The ship will now remain at Souda for several days, with the crew taking time off to visit the city of Chania, and as has happened on previous aircraft carrier visits, Ploumidaki Street, which runs between the Kypos and the Park of Peace of Friendship, has been closed to accommodate the numerous buses which will be required to ferry crew members to the city centre.

A question of waste 
If an army marches on its stomach as Napoleon said, the Achilles heel of the world’s most technologically advanced warship is proving to be its sewage system, and the few days at Souda should give repair teams the opportunity to carry out much-needed maintenance.

An article in the Wall Street Journal being widely quoted in the world’s media claims that the system is suffering from continuing malfunctions due to poor initial design, misuse by crew members and difficulties of maintenance, which are leading to 45-minute queues to use the toilet facilities. A recent YouTube video explains the problems as follows:
– There are too few toilets – a total of 650 were installed to accommodate the ship’s 4,000-plus crew and airmen, but many are out of operation at any one time.
– The toilets are divided into 10 blocks, and waste is removed by a fragile vacuum system in which a breakdown of one toilet can affect all the toilets in an entire block, causing them to lose suction. According to the Navy Times, quoted on Militarywatchmagazine.com, the supercarrier received an average of one “sewage-related maintenance call per day” during its 2025 deployment.
– Crew members have caused blockages by putting foreign objects, including tee-shirts and four-foot pieces of rope, down the toilets.
– Maintenance workers have been forced to work 19-hour shifts to keep up with the problem, while periodic flushes of the system to remove calcium build-up cost $400,000 each time, and cannot be performed while the ship is under way.
The negative effects on quality of life from the problem have compounded the crew stress caused by the ship’s abnormally long deployments.

Anti-war demonstrations in Chania
As mentioned in our previous post, the ship’s presence at Souda provoked demonstrations by anti-war groups on Tuesday 24th February. The demonstrators initially assembled in front of the Municipal Agora, where they were addressed by the head of the “Pancretan Committee Against the Bases”, Manolis Papadomanolakis. There followed a parade through the streets of the city in which various organisations and student groups took part.

“A massive fighting force, unseen since the Gulf War, has assembled at Souda, headed by the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford as well as other warships and planes, with the aim of slaughtering the area’s peoples. Our country is giving up ‘earth and water’* with the base at Souda,” Mr Papadomanolakis said, describing it as “the long hand of the US” in all the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. “It is shameful for the Greek government to be supporting the Americans’ plans for ‘bringing democracy to Iran’,” he said. “We will continue our struggle in the streets, demanding zero participation, zero involvement in imperialistic wars.”

A row of demonstrators, each holding up a single letter, spell out the message "NATO killers go home".
Protesters demonstrate against the presence of the aircraft carrier in front of the Agora in Chania. 24th February 2026. Photo: NeaTV/YouTube.

The president of the Union of Technical Employees, Andreas Triandaffylos, said: “We now see that Chania has become a place for servicing NATO murderers who come to spread terror in the Middle East, also involving our country, for which the government is greatly responsible. Closure of the base at Souda is a primary aim for us,”

In an announcement entitled “Are we ready for Crete to become a target?” Giannis Varoufakis’s party MeRA25 said that Souda has been transformed into “a base for war” and expressed its opposition to Greece being involved in the plans of “US-NATO-Israel”, calling for immediate disengagement and the closure of the bases.

Joining the flotilla
Following its stay in Chania, at the end of the week the aircraft carrier and its escorts will head to the Middle East, where they will join up with the Carrier Strike Strike Group of the USS Abraham Lincoln, currently patrolling the Arabian Sea. The US military already has 13 warships stationed in the Middle East, according to AFP, including the Abraham Lincoln, nine destroyers and three frigates. While the US President has kept open the option of an attack on Iran while talks between the two countries are still under way, Iran has warned of a forceful response if attacked, which could destabilise the Middle East.

Meanwhile there is a continuing build-up of US weaponry in the area. According to an AFP report dated 23rd February, “More than 100 fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s, F-15s and F-16s, left bases in the U.S. and Europe and were spotted heading toward the Middle East by the Military Air Tracking Alliance”. The Souda air base has seen an increase in the presence of US fighter jets and support systems, including the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter and the F-35 multi-role strike fighter. This is supported by photos and videos taken by airline passengers landing at Daskalogiannis airport and posted on social media. Also, a flight of 12 F-22s accompanied by four refuelling tankers is reported to have left RAF Lakenheath in the UK, bound for Israel, on Tuesday.

History shows that build-ups of military force on this scale seldom end in de-escalation, but it is to be hoped that this is an exceptional case in which diplomacy is allowed time to do its job.

*”yi kai ydor“, a phrase dating from ancient times signifying complete submission to the enemy.

Update: The Gerald R. Ford left the Souda Naval base shortly after 9.30 am on Thursday, i.e. a day earlier than scheduled. (Haniotika Nea, 27/02/26)

US aircraft carrier docks at Souda

Small groups of clean-cut young men and women were to be seen wandering along Tzanagaki Street in Chania on Friday, taking selfies and peering in the windows of souvenir shops. Even before they were betrayed by their accents, there were no prizes for guessing that they were crew members from the US aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush, which on Thursday had tied up at pier K14 at the US Naval Facility at Souda for a four-day visit. They were well behaved and inconspicuously dressed in anoraks and jeans, unlike the mythical US sailors of Hollywood movies who always descended on foreign ports en masse, wearing the traditional “service dress white” uniform and causing havoc amongst the local girls.

USS George HW Bush
The US aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush. U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class (SW) Nicholas Hall

While there is the occasional case of drunkenness on these visits, such events are rare, no doubt because naval discipline is stricter than it was, and because the US naval authorities make strenuous efforts to ensure that the visits pass off smoothly, organising sightseeing and cultural trips, and enlisting the crews in local community activities. The nuclear-powered 330m-long carrier has a total complement of about 6,000 people – roughly 3,500 ship’s company and 2,500 in the air wing – which must represent a considerable logistical problem when it comes to organising shore leave. According to local reports they are being released in batches on each day of the stay to visit the city of Chania.

A US Navy press release shows that the ship’s officers and crew are well aware of the need to foster good public opinion locally:

“Our Sailors know the importance of our responsibility to represent our families, cities, states, and shipmates as Ambassadors wherever we go, and we look forward to enjoying a well-deserved port visit with our friends in Souda Bay,” said Capt. Dave Pollard. “We value the importance of the relationships we have with our allies, and we look forward to reinforcing and building upon that foundation.”

The ship’s Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) team worked with local and regional partners to line up a variety of tours and daytrips for Sailors to experience the region. Trips include daylong hikes and trips to well-known historical and cultural sites.

In addition to MWR trips, Sailors will also have the opportunity to participate in clean-up events organized with and through local officials.

“It will be good to spend time in a beautiful country enjoying the local food, art, and history to recharge from being on the ship,” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) First Class Jose Mercado, George H.W. Bush’s Sailor of the Year. “But we know it’s also important to give back to the local community while we have these opportunities to enjoy the culture and learn about regional history.”