Aircraft carriers remain one of the 20th century's great engineering wonders -- huge, floating cities of steel where more than 5,000 men and women live and work for six months at a time; they are the cornerstone of the U.S. Navy. The making of an aircraft carrier, from the signing of the construction contract to the behemoth's final delivery to the Navy, can take as long as eight years. At the Newport News Shipbuilding operation in Virginia, crews use a 900-ton crane (the largest in the world) to help put together the 800 large, modular pieces that make up a carrier. This film give viewers an inside look at the construction of a Nimitz-class, 200-million pound, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier equipped with 80 fighter planes and a flight deck nearly 1,450 feet long.
