1st Class Petty Officer Matthew Esteves
U.S. Navy – Aviation Maintenance
U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard
FRCNW Fleet Readiness Center
U.S.S. Harry Truman – VFA 83
San Diego, Whidbey Island, Virginia Beach
December 2007 – June 2016
U.S. Navy – Aviation Maintenance
U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard
FRCNW Fleet Readiness Center
U.S.S. Harry Truman – VFA 83
San Diego, Whidbey Island, Virginia Beach
December 2007 – June 2016
Matthew Esteves was born in Tampa, Florida in 1989, the oldest of three children. Matt’s father was an aviation mechanic, and his work took the family to several different states. Matt lived in Florida, the Carolinas, New York, West Virginia and back to Florida for his last three years of high school.
Matt’s dad was an Army veteran, which influenced Matt to join the high school JROTC unit. He graduated from Ridgewood High School in 2007. “I had a few scholarships lined up for colleges, but I was a lazy senior. I didn't bother really following through on any of them.” Matt wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next, but he was sure he wanted to get out of New Port Ritchey and experience more of the world.
Matt thought the military might be a good alternative and spoke to recruiters from the Marines, the Navy and the Air Force. As in so many cases, the recruiter can be a big factor, either positive or negative, in a recruit’s decision process. The Air Force recruiter was very aloof, but the Marine and Navy recruiters were very personable and showed an interest in Matt. He thought it over and decided to enlist in the Navy. “The Navy guys broke everything down. They told me exactly what was going to happen…and low and behold, they were right every step of the way”.
Matt headed off to bootcamp at Naval Station Great Lakes located near Chicago. It is the Navy’s largest training facility and the sole location for bootcamp. Matt had been living in Florida for the past three years and had built up a resistance to the sweltering heat and humidity. That would be of no benefit when he arrived at the beginning of winter in December 2007. Matt had experienced Appalachia cold when he lived in West Virginia, but Chicago cold was in a league of its own.
Matt was able to handle the physical aspects of bootcamp camp without a problem, but the mental aspect was challenging for a 19-year-old kid away from home for the first time. “When I look back at it now, I was just a kid who just didn’t know anything and was put into a situation where you just gotta figure it out, and I did.” In February 2008, Matt graduated with the rank of Airman and headed to A School for his advanced training.
Matt attended Aviation Maintenance Administration School in Meridian, Mississippi from February to May 2008. Matt found Mississippi more like Florida. “Just heat and swamp.” In school the Navy taught him all the principals of tracking and maintaining aircraft maintenance and supply records. The Navy used NALCOMIS (Naval Aviation Logistic Command Management Information Systems) to manage its unwieldy inventory. It gave all users the ability to extract data to efficiently and economically manage the maintenance of the aircraft. When you consider the number of aircraft in use throughout the Navy, the number of parts that go into the production of an aircraft and the need to track each part this is an important job. It’s not a glamorous job but, nine out of ten military personnel don’t see combat and often toil in the background in little appreciated, but vital, roles.
After completing school Matt was assigned to the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) which was home ported in San Diego, California. It was an 800+ foot long amphibious assault ship designed to allow elements of the Marine Corps to conduct amphibious assault landings using helicopters, landing craft and amphibious vehicles. It is the second largest ship in the Navy behind aircraft carriers. “It is designed to get relatively close to shore, lower the aft of the ship using hydraulics, open a giant door and allow some water in. Marines would then load onto their amphibious vehicles and head for the shore”. “Most of the aircraft…are gonna be helicopters.” Matt believes there was a crew of approximately 2,000 plus another 1,500 in a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit). “Our job was to service any (aviation) squadrons that are on the ship when we are out to sea…”
Matt spent four years at this command and did one major deployment and two small deployments. The first small deployment was to the Pacific Ocean to participate in RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific). This is described as the world’s largest international maritime war games exercise. Australian, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom participate with the United States in a variety of naval exercises. The U.S. assets are based out of Hawaii for this month-long exercise. “Who doesn’t want to go to Hawaii? Expensive as all hell, but it is great.”
The ship returned to San Diego and a short while later got underway for the Persian Gulf. Their first port was Phuket, Thailand, where their orders were changed to report to the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen. The crew was unsure what operations were being carried out from their ship, but the sense was it was important. Their external communications level, known as River City, was placed at River City One. This was the most restrictive level with all external communications shutoff. The ship was in the Gulf of Aden for the next 135 days. “We were so far off of the coast that we couldn’t see it through the horizon. It’s just waking up every day and seeing the same thing.” The crew wasn’t sure what operations were being conducted but they knew their harriers were leaving the ship loaded with ordinance and returning without their ordinance.
After sailing in circles for almost 5 months and very little communication with anyone expect the crew members, the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard headed for home. On the way back they stopped in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where the crew was able to leave the ship and blow off some steam. “It was a great time, really great time. No one got in trouble as far as I know.” The crew was given liberty briefs before they left the ship to help them have an idea of what to expect in port and help them stay out of dangerous areas.
It was the summer of 2010 when the ship returned to San Diego. For the next 12 months the ship was in dry dock being serviced. “They’re just refurbishing the ship completely…so it’s like factory new. You don’t realize how big these things (ships) are until you’re standing underneath it.” At the conclusion of dry dock, the ship received orders to Sasebo, Japan for a hull swap.
A hull swap is when the crew from one ship replaces the crew of another ship. The hull swap is a large undertaking for the crew. They must take all of their possessions and whatever else they need to do their job off one ship and load it on to the other. The hull swap would take place between the fully refurbished Bonhomme Richard and the U.S.S. Essex (LHD 2) which was badly in need of a dry dock refurbishment. The crew was shocked by the conditions on the Essex, “It was bad. There was black mold in our bathrooms, and we had no choice but to deal with it”.
Matt recalled an uneventful and stress-free trip back to San Diego until the day before they were scheduled to dock. For a reason that still cannot be explained, the ship’s captain made the decision to take part in an UNREP (Underway Replenishment) exercise. An UNREP is a critical logistics operation that all crews must be capable of completing. It involves restocking supplies, fuel and ammunition from supply ships while at sea. It is a critical exercise but why conduct it one day out of port on a ship headed for dry dock? The exercise went as poorly as possible when the Essex lost steering and drifted into the supply ship during the exercise. Thankfully, there were no injuries or serious damage to the ship’s hull, but the aft starboard elevator was knocked 15-20 degrees off alignment, rendering it useless for operation. When the Essex arrived in port the following day there was a team of investigators waiting on the pier to determine the cause and failures that led to the collision. This delayed the crew from disembarking.
Matt’s four-year commitment was coming to a close and he needed to make a decision on whether to leave the Navy or re-enlist. His Chief Warrant Officer, who showed a keen interest in Matt’s career and someone he greatly respected, provided advice that helped Matt make his decision to re-enlist. His second tour of duty would be a shore duty assignment at Fleet Readiness Center Northwest (FRCNW) on Whitby Island in Washington state. “Shore duty is supposed to be your reward” for having done the work at sea. Matt had a 9-to-5 job and his tour at FRCNW was uneventful—peaceful even. After three years Matt cut his tour short and volunteered to go back to sea. The Navy was giving significant monetary incentives for going back to sea and Matt decided to go.
Matt left FRCNW with the rank of 1st Class Petty Officer and reported to VFA-83, an F-18 fighter squadron stationed in Virginia Beach. This was a new environment for Matt with an entire set of new responsibilities, and a new computer system. In his previous positions he was responsible for tracking parts and maintaining supply levels. At the squadron level, he would be responsible for the day-to-day maintenance and the running of the aircraft. They also had a repair facility that was staffed with aviation mechanics. “It’s more about the day to day. It’s much more about how do we get these birds in the air and get them back safely and take care of our pilots. It’s a whole different dynamic, whole different culture, whole different everything.”
Matt found himself struggling to meet the standards of his job. His command was expecting a much more seasoned, plug and play team member. The senior guys in the command came down hard on him. “Thankfully I had good chiefs who understood the situation.” The chiefs told Matt they would help him, but they needed him to be very aggressive in coming up to speed. It was decided Matt would be sent to a training detachment to accelerate his learning and understanding of squadron life and responsibilities. Matt spent the next month in Fallon, Nevada, learning the ins and outs of a VFA fighter squadron.
With the help of his chiefs, Matt came up to speed and deployed with the VFA squadron aboard the U.S.S. Harry Truman (CVN 75). There were at least four or five other squadrons on the ship. “We all had probably 15-ish aircraft” each. Matt primarily did his job inside on the carrier but an hour before flight operations were to begin, a large contingent, “hundreds of people”, of the ship’s crew would report to the flight deck to conduct a FOD (Foreign Object Debris) walkdown, which is where the flight deck is scanned and cleared of large and small debris for flight operations. “You want the flight deck as pristine as possible. You don’t want little screws or chunks of metal that can get thrown around. Those are hazardous to people’s health and God forbid they go into an intake vent on a jet. I’m talking three or four lines the width of the flight deck just making sure the flight deck is clear of debris.”
“When F-18’s go out every little thing that aircraft does is recorded. When pilots come back from those flights, they have to discharge (the recording) out of the cockpit, bring the recording back to us in Maintenance Control where I would download it on to our systems…and they are designed to breakdown what happened on that flight.” Frequently, pilots will get cockpit alerts that are not critical. The recording of the flight can be analyzed to identify the alert and trouble shoot what may have caused it. That data is sent to the mechanics for them to assess.
The recordings also capture the use of the ordinance and their results. Matt had a front row seat for some of the action in Syria under the Obama Administration. “I got to see pilots drop their bombs and missiles and see the damage done to suspected terrorist worksites.” Pilots will circle above targets until they receive confirmation that they have acquired the intended target “and then this car just explodes. I’ve seen a concrete plant that was making terrorists millions of dollars per week blown to smithereens.”
Matt left the deployment early because he decided not to extend his enlistment beyond eight years. His command very much wanted him to stay on and was impressed how he worked aggressively to build his knowledge base and become a vital member of the squadron. There were many factors that came into play in Matt’s decision. He was 26 years old and had been at sea for four and a half of his eight years in the Navy. He grew weary of the constant travel and distance from his family—as a lifelong east coast resident, the vast majority of his Naval career was spent on the Pacific coast, forcing him to see his family maybe once a year when he wasn’t deployed—there was a stretch where he went nearly three full years without seeing his family. In addition, he wanted to find someone to settle down with and didn’t want to do that while still enlisted with all of the deployments he would have to continue doing if he remained committed to the Navy—the lifestyle often leads to divorce.
Matt left the Navy in June 2016 and returned to Florida to live with his father. He wanted to save money and go to school on the GI Bill. He enrolled at Hillsborough Community College and began taking business classes but quite quickly realized business did not capture his attention. Matt changed his major to something more creative—choosing English, specifically, creative writing as his preferred major. He continued his studies at the University of South Florida (USF) and “that’s when everything sort of clicked for me.” Matt also found a non-paying job writing for a hockey blog. Matt loved hockey. He became the beat reporter for a blog called Raw Charge under the SBNation brand covering the Tampa Bay Lightning and for the following six years he went to every home game and practice. “I got to see two championships up close and personal—an experience that I’ll always cherish.” Matt graduated from USF in 2020.
Matt’s personal life was also looking up. He met his future wife, Courtney Pinto, a Nurse Practitioner, in 2019, and the couple engaged in 2021 and was married on March 3, 2023, which was also their dating anniversary. They welcomed their first child, Evelyn Rose, on August 28, 2025.
Matt graduated in the middle of the COVID crisis and found the job market tight. He took roofing jobs just to pay the bills. He eventually found a Public Relations job for a startup company but got caught up in the company’s internal reshuffling and was laid off. “That was really difficult. I had never dealt with failure that before.” Through a recruiter he found a position as a Marketing Communications Coordinator on a contract basis for the law firm Robinson & Cole in Stamford, CT. After one month they offered him a full-time position once his temporary contract expired.
Matt has mixed feelings about his time in the Navy, but he believes it was particularly good for him. “The people made it memorable, and the people made it fun…we got to do cool stuff.” “You’re in the suck together. There’s a certain level of bond there.”
What has Matt carried from the Navy into his current life? “Probably the biggest thing that’s carried over from my time in the Navy is probably the attention to detail. The meticulousness you have to have…especially what I was doing. If I don’t pay attention someone is dying.”
Matt, thank you for your sacrifice and service to our country so the rest didn’t have to. You are one of the many unseen and unsung people doing the jobs Hollywood doesn’t make movies about. But it’s those people that make it possible for our military operate at such a high level.
Matt’s dad was an Army veteran, which influenced Matt to join the high school JROTC unit. He graduated from Ridgewood High School in 2007. “I had a few scholarships lined up for colleges, but I was a lazy senior. I didn't bother really following through on any of them.” Matt wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next, but he was sure he wanted to get out of New Port Ritchey and experience more of the world.
Matt thought the military might be a good alternative and spoke to recruiters from the Marines, the Navy and the Air Force. As in so many cases, the recruiter can be a big factor, either positive or negative, in a recruit’s decision process. The Air Force recruiter was very aloof, but the Marine and Navy recruiters were very personable and showed an interest in Matt. He thought it over and decided to enlist in the Navy. “The Navy guys broke everything down. They told me exactly what was going to happen…and low and behold, they were right every step of the way”.
Matt headed off to bootcamp at Naval Station Great Lakes located near Chicago. It is the Navy’s largest training facility and the sole location for bootcamp. Matt had been living in Florida for the past three years and had built up a resistance to the sweltering heat and humidity. That would be of no benefit when he arrived at the beginning of winter in December 2007. Matt had experienced Appalachia cold when he lived in West Virginia, but Chicago cold was in a league of its own.
Matt was able to handle the physical aspects of bootcamp camp without a problem, but the mental aspect was challenging for a 19-year-old kid away from home for the first time. “When I look back at it now, I was just a kid who just didn’t know anything and was put into a situation where you just gotta figure it out, and I did.” In February 2008, Matt graduated with the rank of Airman and headed to A School for his advanced training.
Matt attended Aviation Maintenance Administration School in Meridian, Mississippi from February to May 2008. Matt found Mississippi more like Florida. “Just heat and swamp.” In school the Navy taught him all the principals of tracking and maintaining aircraft maintenance and supply records. The Navy used NALCOMIS (Naval Aviation Logistic Command Management Information Systems) to manage its unwieldy inventory. It gave all users the ability to extract data to efficiently and economically manage the maintenance of the aircraft. When you consider the number of aircraft in use throughout the Navy, the number of parts that go into the production of an aircraft and the need to track each part this is an important job. It’s not a glamorous job but, nine out of ten military personnel don’t see combat and often toil in the background in little appreciated, but vital, roles.
After completing school Matt was assigned to the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) which was home ported in San Diego, California. It was an 800+ foot long amphibious assault ship designed to allow elements of the Marine Corps to conduct amphibious assault landings using helicopters, landing craft and amphibious vehicles. It is the second largest ship in the Navy behind aircraft carriers. “It is designed to get relatively close to shore, lower the aft of the ship using hydraulics, open a giant door and allow some water in. Marines would then load onto their amphibious vehicles and head for the shore”. “Most of the aircraft…are gonna be helicopters.” Matt believes there was a crew of approximately 2,000 plus another 1,500 in a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit). “Our job was to service any (aviation) squadrons that are on the ship when we are out to sea…”
Matt spent four years at this command and did one major deployment and two small deployments. The first small deployment was to the Pacific Ocean to participate in RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific). This is described as the world’s largest international maritime war games exercise. Australian, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom participate with the United States in a variety of naval exercises. The U.S. assets are based out of Hawaii for this month-long exercise. “Who doesn’t want to go to Hawaii? Expensive as all hell, but it is great.”
The ship returned to San Diego and a short while later got underway for the Persian Gulf. Their first port was Phuket, Thailand, where their orders were changed to report to the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen. The crew was unsure what operations were being carried out from their ship, but the sense was it was important. Their external communications level, known as River City, was placed at River City One. This was the most restrictive level with all external communications shutoff. The ship was in the Gulf of Aden for the next 135 days. “We were so far off of the coast that we couldn’t see it through the horizon. It’s just waking up every day and seeing the same thing.” The crew wasn’t sure what operations were being conducted but they knew their harriers were leaving the ship loaded with ordinance and returning without their ordinance.
After sailing in circles for almost 5 months and very little communication with anyone expect the crew members, the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard headed for home. On the way back they stopped in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where the crew was able to leave the ship and blow off some steam. “It was a great time, really great time. No one got in trouble as far as I know.” The crew was given liberty briefs before they left the ship to help them have an idea of what to expect in port and help them stay out of dangerous areas.
It was the summer of 2010 when the ship returned to San Diego. For the next 12 months the ship was in dry dock being serviced. “They’re just refurbishing the ship completely…so it’s like factory new. You don’t realize how big these things (ships) are until you’re standing underneath it.” At the conclusion of dry dock, the ship received orders to Sasebo, Japan for a hull swap.
A hull swap is when the crew from one ship replaces the crew of another ship. The hull swap is a large undertaking for the crew. They must take all of their possessions and whatever else they need to do their job off one ship and load it on to the other. The hull swap would take place between the fully refurbished Bonhomme Richard and the U.S.S. Essex (LHD 2) which was badly in need of a dry dock refurbishment. The crew was shocked by the conditions on the Essex, “It was bad. There was black mold in our bathrooms, and we had no choice but to deal with it”.
Matt recalled an uneventful and stress-free trip back to San Diego until the day before they were scheduled to dock. For a reason that still cannot be explained, the ship’s captain made the decision to take part in an UNREP (Underway Replenishment) exercise. An UNREP is a critical logistics operation that all crews must be capable of completing. It involves restocking supplies, fuel and ammunition from supply ships while at sea. It is a critical exercise but why conduct it one day out of port on a ship headed for dry dock? The exercise went as poorly as possible when the Essex lost steering and drifted into the supply ship during the exercise. Thankfully, there were no injuries or serious damage to the ship’s hull, but the aft starboard elevator was knocked 15-20 degrees off alignment, rendering it useless for operation. When the Essex arrived in port the following day there was a team of investigators waiting on the pier to determine the cause and failures that led to the collision. This delayed the crew from disembarking.
Matt’s four-year commitment was coming to a close and he needed to make a decision on whether to leave the Navy or re-enlist. His Chief Warrant Officer, who showed a keen interest in Matt’s career and someone he greatly respected, provided advice that helped Matt make his decision to re-enlist. His second tour of duty would be a shore duty assignment at Fleet Readiness Center Northwest (FRCNW) on Whitby Island in Washington state. “Shore duty is supposed to be your reward” for having done the work at sea. Matt had a 9-to-5 job and his tour at FRCNW was uneventful—peaceful even. After three years Matt cut his tour short and volunteered to go back to sea. The Navy was giving significant monetary incentives for going back to sea and Matt decided to go.
Matt left FRCNW with the rank of 1st Class Petty Officer and reported to VFA-83, an F-18 fighter squadron stationed in Virginia Beach. This was a new environment for Matt with an entire set of new responsibilities, and a new computer system. In his previous positions he was responsible for tracking parts and maintaining supply levels. At the squadron level, he would be responsible for the day-to-day maintenance and the running of the aircraft. They also had a repair facility that was staffed with aviation mechanics. “It’s more about the day to day. It’s much more about how do we get these birds in the air and get them back safely and take care of our pilots. It’s a whole different dynamic, whole different culture, whole different everything.”
Matt found himself struggling to meet the standards of his job. His command was expecting a much more seasoned, plug and play team member. The senior guys in the command came down hard on him. “Thankfully I had good chiefs who understood the situation.” The chiefs told Matt they would help him, but they needed him to be very aggressive in coming up to speed. It was decided Matt would be sent to a training detachment to accelerate his learning and understanding of squadron life and responsibilities. Matt spent the next month in Fallon, Nevada, learning the ins and outs of a VFA fighter squadron.
With the help of his chiefs, Matt came up to speed and deployed with the VFA squadron aboard the U.S.S. Harry Truman (CVN 75). There were at least four or five other squadrons on the ship. “We all had probably 15-ish aircraft” each. Matt primarily did his job inside on the carrier but an hour before flight operations were to begin, a large contingent, “hundreds of people”, of the ship’s crew would report to the flight deck to conduct a FOD (Foreign Object Debris) walkdown, which is where the flight deck is scanned and cleared of large and small debris for flight operations. “You want the flight deck as pristine as possible. You don’t want little screws or chunks of metal that can get thrown around. Those are hazardous to people’s health and God forbid they go into an intake vent on a jet. I’m talking three or four lines the width of the flight deck just making sure the flight deck is clear of debris.”
“When F-18’s go out every little thing that aircraft does is recorded. When pilots come back from those flights, they have to discharge (the recording) out of the cockpit, bring the recording back to us in Maintenance Control where I would download it on to our systems…and they are designed to breakdown what happened on that flight.” Frequently, pilots will get cockpit alerts that are not critical. The recording of the flight can be analyzed to identify the alert and trouble shoot what may have caused it. That data is sent to the mechanics for them to assess.
The recordings also capture the use of the ordinance and their results. Matt had a front row seat for some of the action in Syria under the Obama Administration. “I got to see pilots drop their bombs and missiles and see the damage done to suspected terrorist worksites.” Pilots will circle above targets until they receive confirmation that they have acquired the intended target “and then this car just explodes. I’ve seen a concrete plant that was making terrorists millions of dollars per week blown to smithereens.”
Matt left the deployment early because he decided not to extend his enlistment beyond eight years. His command very much wanted him to stay on and was impressed how he worked aggressively to build his knowledge base and become a vital member of the squadron. There were many factors that came into play in Matt’s decision. He was 26 years old and had been at sea for four and a half of his eight years in the Navy. He grew weary of the constant travel and distance from his family—as a lifelong east coast resident, the vast majority of his Naval career was spent on the Pacific coast, forcing him to see his family maybe once a year when he wasn’t deployed—there was a stretch where he went nearly three full years without seeing his family. In addition, he wanted to find someone to settle down with and didn’t want to do that while still enlisted with all of the deployments he would have to continue doing if he remained committed to the Navy—the lifestyle often leads to divorce.
Matt left the Navy in June 2016 and returned to Florida to live with his father. He wanted to save money and go to school on the GI Bill. He enrolled at Hillsborough Community College and began taking business classes but quite quickly realized business did not capture his attention. Matt changed his major to something more creative—choosing English, specifically, creative writing as his preferred major. He continued his studies at the University of South Florida (USF) and “that’s when everything sort of clicked for me.” Matt also found a non-paying job writing for a hockey blog. Matt loved hockey. He became the beat reporter for a blog called Raw Charge under the SBNation brand covering the Tampa Bay Lightning and for the following six years he went to every home game and practice. “I got to see two championships up close and personal—an experience that I’ll always cherish.” Matt graduated from USF in 2020.
Matt’s personal life was also looking up. He met his future wife, Courtney Pinto, a Nurse Practitioner, in 2019, and the couple engaged in 2021 and was married on March 3, 2023, which was also their dating anniversary. They welcomed their first child, Evelyn Rose, on August 28, 2025.
Matt graduated in the middle of the COVID crisis and found the job market tight. He took roofing jobs just to pay the bills. He eventually found a Public Relations job for a startup company but got caught up in the company’s internal reshuffling and was laid off. “That was really difficult. I had never dealt with failure that before.” Through a recruiter he found a position as a Marketing Communications Coordinator on a contract basis for the law firm Robinson & Cole in Stamford, CT. After one month they offered him a full-time position once his temporary contract expired.
Matt has mixed feelings about his time in the Navy, but he believes it was particularly good for him. “The people made it memorable, and the people made it fun…we got to do cool stuff.” “You’re in the suck together. There’s a certain level of bond there.”
What has Matt carried from the Navy into his current life? “Probably the biggest thing that’s carried over from my time in the Navy is probably the attention to detail. The meticulousness you have to have…especially what I was doing. If I don’t pay attention someone is dying.”
Matt, thank you for your sacrifice and service to our country so the rest didn’t have to. You are one of the many unseen and unsung people doing the jobs Hollywood doesn’t make movies about. But it’s those people that make it possible for our military operate at such a high level.