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The thump you hear crossing the cruiser’s wake is her: the Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk, the fleet’s shipboard helicopter, and the first rotor in Hornet Bay. She spools up on the guided-missile cruiser’s aft deck, flies a four-leg circuit of the group, and puts it back down on a deck that’s still making 15 knots — while two of her sisters shuttle the bay’s five new helipads. Her card:

1. Crew: three to four — pilot, co-pilot, and sensor/rescue crew in the back.
2. Powerplant: two GE T700-GE-401 turboshafts, about 1,700 shp each, turning a 53 ft 8 in main rotor.
3. Performance: 180 kt flat out, 146 kt cruise, with a service ceiling near 12,000 ft and about 450 nautical miles of legs.
4. Dimensions: 64 ft 10 in nose to tail — compact enough for a frigate’s deck, big enough to haul a torpedo and a winchman.
5. The kit, by variant: sonobuoys and a MAD bird on the SH-60B, dipping sonar on the SH-60F, Mk 46/50 torpedoes for the kill — plus plane guard, SAR and VERTREP, because somebody has to pick up what the fixed-wings drop.
6. In the bay: full rotor spool-up with the blur disc fading in past 62% rpm, a moving-deck approach that chases the ship’s own motion, and pad bookings on the shuttle routes — SFO, Oakland, Moffett, Alameda and the SF Heliport. Gallery page 13/14; spectate the circuit with J.