In article ,
Andrew C. Toppan wrote:

I was wondering how alert a carrier is during a normal peacetime cruise

What kind of cruise? You mean deployment? Or training cruise? Or
Tiger Cruise? Or stateside going-from-here-to-there cruise? They
might not even have any aircraft aboard, depending on the
circumstance.


In Navy parlance (at least CV/CVN) a "cruise" means a 6 or 6+ month
deployment.


Training deployments are not called "cruises" (at least not by people in
the Navy); they are called "work-ups"...and there is ALWAYS at least
some aircraft aboard (minimum 2-3 helos) I don't think anybody
interprets a tiger cruise as a cruise, although they very often are at
the tale end of real cruises (in the Pac fleet, on return from a real
cruise and coming aboard at Hawaii).

To answer the original poster; Even in peace time, a carrier and it's
CVW can achieve war time footing very quickly even in peace time. All it
takes is moving the missiles, bombs, ammo, and torpedos up the weapons
elevators and getting them loaded.


In an HS example (which is all I can speak competently about), we're
talking maybe 2-3 hours to get the torps and depth charges up to the
flight deck and loaded and maybe 30-45 minutes to get the door guns up
and loaded.


--Mike