Almost all episodes of the series feature scenes filmed aboard real United States Navy ships. The ship most widely used was the USS Forrestal (CV-59)Template:WP Ships USS instances, commissioned by the U.S. Navy as a training carrier at the time. Most of the Nimitz class carriers also appear in one or several episodes. The USS Saratoga (CV 60)Template:WP Ships USS instances, USS Enterprise (CVN 65)Template:WP Ships USS instances and USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67)Template:WP Ships USS instances were also used in the series.
USS Enterprise was used as the fictional USS Seahawk in many episodes. USS Forrestal and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69)Template:WP Ships USS instances were also used as the fictional Seahawk, both in Season Four and for one episode each. For scenes filmed aboard Enterprise, the whole crew wore caps reading USS Seahawk - CVN 65 so they matched the ship’s real pennant number.
USS Forrestal was featured in many episodes, most prominently two in which she portrayed the fictional USS Reprisal. In these episodes, all crew members wore caps with the CV 35 pennant number. This number was totally out of sequence with the pennant numbers of active USN carriers at the time the series was filmed, but was intentional. In fact CV 35 would have been the real pennant number of an Essex class carrier actually called Reprisal, which was canceled during construction in 1945 when WW2 ended and broken up in 1949 after consideration had been given to completing her to a revised design roughly similar to that of USS Oriskany (CV-34)Template:WP Ships USS instances.
Only six USN ships featured in the series were called by their real name : USS Hornet (CV-12)Template:WP Ships USS instances, USS Coral Sea (CV-43)Template:WP Ships USS instances, USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63)Template:WP Ships USS instances, USS America (CV 66)Template:WP Ships USS instances USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71)Template:WP Ships USS instances, and USS Belknap (CG-26)Template:WP Ships USS instances.
The Kitty Hawk is mentioned in one of the Season Three episodes, but never seen on screen. The America is the murder scene in one of the Season Three episode, but shots supposedly depicting here are in fact shots of the Forrestal (the ship most widely used in the series, as she was at the time used as the Navy’s training carrier based in Pensacola, and therefore more easily available for filming). Real shots of the Roosevelt in harbor are used in one episode of Season One.
Season Three opener Ghost ship was filmed entirely aboard the Hornet while she was laid up at Alameda Naval Air Station before being preserved as a museum ship. Part of the storyline in Ghost Ship deals with the final fate of Hornet. It implies (though not explicitly stating it) that she was eventually scrapped due to severe fire damage sustained during the course of the episode, contrary to her real-life fate as a National Landmark. The sub-plot in Ghost Ship indicating that the ship’s double hull had to be cut open from the inside to repair torpedo damage during WWII is apocryphal (though it does serve the main plot well).
Hornet never suffered any torpedo damage during her active service with the USN. The only carriers that did were USS Lexington (CV-2)Template:WP Ships USS instances, USS Yorktown (CV-5)Template:WP Ships USS instances, USS Wasp (CV-7)Template:WP Ships USS instances and USS Saratoga (CV-3)Template:WP Ships USS instances. Lexington, Wasp and Yorktown were sunk by the torpedo hits (plus bomb hits in the two first cases). Saratoga was the only one to survive torpedo hits, but her hull structure was totally different from the Essex class carriers, including bulges and not a double hull. So the kind of procedure described in the episode never actually happened, though it would have been technically feasible on an Essex class carrier.
Coral Sea is also featured on one Season Three episode and Season Four episode Angels 30. But she had already been scrapped by the time the episodes supposedly taking place aboard her were filmed. So part of the Season Three episode uses archive footage of the Coral Sea dating back from the early 90’s just before her decommissioning, and other parts use shots of the Forrestal. The majority of the exterior scenes from Angels 30 were filmed aboard Forrestal and a few aboard Enterprise.
Belknap is mentioned is Season Four episode Going after Francesca as the Sixth Fleet flagship, a role she actually never fulfilled in real life. Actually Belknap had already been decommissioned and was laid up in the USA awaiting scrapping when the episode was filmed. But (unlike Coral Sea) all exterior shots are actual shots of Belknap before her decommissioning.
The series also includes appearances by Tarawa class amphibious assault ships,Ticonderoga class cruisers, Arleigh Burke class destroyers and Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates. In one of the episodes, the Spanish frigate SPS Santa María (F81) is used to depict a fictional USN Perry class ship (denoted by her NATO pennant number “F 81″ painted under the bridge, instead of the US practice of having a “number only” ID painted on the bow).
