The safe arrival of this Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber over the ramp of a Second World War U.S. Navy carrier.
Postcards helped keep the wartime propaganda mill grinding.
“During work-ups and refresher quals I was on the flight deck when a good friend’s career came to an end. Bhudda and his RIO (Radar Intercept Officer backseater), Boog, were out on a refresher night qual during work-ups for a cruise when he pulled off a little too much power for a little too long. The F-14 has a slow ‘spool-up’ time for the engines, and it was too little too late. He hit the round-down with the tail and the hook of the airplane. He continued down the deck and once again became airborne as I saw a large piece of the nettings steel support rattle by. The back of the plane was engulfed in flame and he was instructed to eject. Luckily, they both got out and were uninjured. They were picked up by the helo within minutes. Bhudda never made it back. He was given all the help he needed, but could never get past the fear of night traps and, eventually, quit the Navy. He had excelled for two years of arduous training, was one of the best in all phases of flight, and yet, due to one mistake, he never made it to the fleet.
“Tom ‘Boog’ Powell became my best friend during my time in the Navy. Initially, we didn’t get along well on the cruise while sharing the junior officers’ bunk room. Personalities sometimes clash when nine guys share a small room. Later, though, we did most everything together. We rode bikes, played golf, and went skiing every January while on shore. We even took our bikes on the boat, to ride while on port calls. Boog was a RIO. He had stayed in the Navy Reserves and continued to fly the F-14. He was flying a training mission and his pilot lost control of the plane. The pilot was unable to regain control and they were forced to eject. This was the second time Boog had had to eject, and he was killed when he hit the canopy on the way out. The pilot was uninjured. Carrier aviation is so unforgiving. I miss him.
“Instrument flying is the key to carrier operations, and carrier pilots are the best instrument pilots in the world by necessity. There are no lights in the middle of the ocean, and when the skies are overcast or there is no moon, there is no horizon. More than one pilot has flown into the water at 300 knots, never realizing that he was disoriented. Due to the nature of their operations, Navy pilots must learn to handle vertigo and trust their instruments implicitly. Their lives depend on it.
“Better dead than look bad at the boat. A common phrase among naval aviators. Landing on the boat is what counts. It is a specific skill related to, but not dependent on, a pilot’s abilities in other phases of flight. We had one F-14 pilot who would not take his plane in the vertical during air combat maneuvering Obviously, his ‘fighting’ skills were preferable to those of a pilot who could outmaneuver the best fighter pilot, but who had trouble getting aboard the boat. Operating on the boat is what it’s all about. Hardly anyone sees you shoot down your opponent, hit the bullseye, or fly perfect formation, but they all see you land on the boat. The pilot’s, and more importantly, the squadron’s reputation is always on the line. There is a camera system that shows a live TV view of the flight deck from several angles, including a camera mounted in the flight deck on the centerline. There are TVs in all of the ready rooms and throughout the ship for anyone to monitor. There is also a requirement for a squadron representative to be with the Air Boss during day ops, and in PriFly at night, to answer any question that may be raised about a squadron mate’s performance. Most of the questions are rhetorical and the red-faced squadron rep makes a logbook entry about which the pilot / guilty party must respond to later.
The hook found a wire, and the trap now led to another under-appreciated challenge: taxing on the flight deck. The interval between landings was typically about forty-five seconds, so it was essential to clean up and get out of the way quickly. Once your aircraft stopped, the cable pulled it back a few feet and released your hook, allowing it to be raised. At the same time, you are retracting the flaps, sweeping the wings, and looking for the signals of the taxi director yellow shirt. Taxiing on the flight deck can sometimes be uncomfortable if the deck has become slippery from oil, fuel, salt spray, etc. Combine a slippery deck with heavy seas and at times your airplane would slide. Usually there was the need to swing the nose out over the side of the deck in order to squeeze all of the aircraft onto the deck. Sitting seventy feet above the water as the deck pitches down, and feeling the wheels bump the scupper, made for a very uneasy feeling. Once out of the airplane, I usually sought the quickest route to the 03 level, just below the flight deck and out of harm’s way. The flight deck is a very unsafe place to work. More than one unsuspecting sailor has walked directly into a whirling propeller or been sucked down the intake of a jet. The noise level is so high that you often can’t tell where the threat lies.”
Alan Leahy, former Royal Navy fighter pilot: “On 10 September 1952, while embarked in HMS Glory in the Mediterranean, I was briefed to carry out a take-off using Rocket Assisted Take-Off Gear (RATOG). The brief required the pilot to carry out a full-power take-off firing the RATOG at a specific point in the take-off run. The brief then said that if the RATOG did not fire, there would be room to throttle back and brake to a stop before reaching the bow. The brief should have said, there would be nearly room …
“When I pressed the button to fire the RATOG, it didn’t. I throttled back and tried to brake to a stop. I did not stop and instead went over the bow at a walking pace.
“Eyes shut, eyes open just as quickly, to find the cockpit full of water and bubbles just the way it was in the USN ‘Dilbert Dunker’ ditching trainer eight years before. Unstrapping my seat harness and parachute harness, I tried to stand up and clear the cockpit. As I stood up, two spigots in the cockpit canopy, designed to slot into holes on the windscreen, caught the back of my Mae West and I was unable to clear the cockpit because of the water pressure caused by the rate of sink of the aircraft. I had to get back into the cockpit and turn round so that I could get out by covering the spigots with my hands and force myself clear. Once clear I saw the aircraft turn onto its back as it continued to sink on down, but there was no sign of the ship or its propellers, which frightened me somewhat. My first idea was to stay down until the ship passed over me, but then I realized that if I stayed any longer where I was, I would probably drown.
“I was then confused as to which way was up, but that was cleared by inflating my Mae West. I tried to swim up and away from where I thought the side of the ship was. I surfaced about ten yards clear of the ship’s side, abeam of the starboard propeller. I immediately took a deep breath and choked as I still had my oxygen mask on and the oxygen tube was under water.
“After unclipping my mask I noticed that my dinghy was still clipped to my backside. It was a work of moments to unclip the dinghy, inflate it, and clamber in. After that, all I had to do was sit there in relative comfort and wait for the seaboat from the plane guard destroyer to come and rescue me.”
The following incident occurred on the USS Constellation (CVA-64). An F/A-18 pilot, call sign “Oyster,” was launched from Cat 1 and fodded (foreign object damage) both of his engines. Most people witnessing the launch thought that the pilot had ejected, but quickly realized that he was still in the plane. Somehow, he managed to get the Hornet level at about eighty feet and then gradually milk it up to 150 feet. It was 8:45 pm and there were scattered clouds with a ceiling between 1,000 and 1,500 feet. It was quite dark.
One of the Hornet’s engines had failed completely, while the other was having massive compressor stalls which were obvious to personnel on the carrier, even at a distance of six miles. The pilot was maintaining his minimal altitude through the use of full afterburner on the one remaining engine, with his landing gear up. He jettisoned his weapons stores and dumped his fuel down to a level of 4.0 in order to maintain level flight. He was unable to climb to 3,000 feet in order to do a wave-off/approach capability check. However, the flight deck was ready to recover him, and the ship decided to let him attempt a normal pass. He b
egan to line up for it, and immediately decided that he could not make it successfully. He came up along the starboard side of the ship, and again, it appeared that he was going to eject. An incredible amount of debris was coming out of the right engine of the Hornet, and by this time the pilot had run his remaining fuel down to near zero. It seemed that he would be able to adequately slow his rate of descent once he began to approach to the carrier, but he clearly would have no bolter capability, and it was decided to erect the net straps barricade to stop his aircraft if necessary. The barricade was rigged quickly, and the LSO platform was cleared except for the landing signal officer and his back-up.
The F/A-18 was high in the approach and, by the time it had begun to correct down, the pilot was getting too far out of the parameters and the LSOs had to “pickle” him (signal a red-light wave-off). The Hornet staggered past the ship, its one engine making a sickening whine and pop as it emitted a salvo of flare-like matter from the tail cone. Clearing the top of the barricade by less than fifteen feet, the plane was now down to .8 on fuel. The pilot was able to climb to just 600 feet for his last approach and the LSO talked to him continuously as he intercepted the glide path at one mile out from the ship. The LSO told the pilot to go ahead and sacrifice a few knots of air speed if necessary, to keep the airplane on the glide slope, as the ship had plenty of natural wind over the deck.
The pilot was having trouble keeping the Hornet aligned in the approach, and drifted left a bit, and then was a little low, but, as the plane neared the ramp, the LSO felt that the pilot was going to clear the round-down, and gave him the cut to land. The plane slammed onto the deck about twenty feet beyond the round-down and went on to engage the barricade on centerline. It was an emotional moment on the LSO platform and around the carrier, with great cheers erupting on the flight deck as Oyster popped the Hornet canopy and emerged safely. His airmanship, guts, and determination in saving his airplane had been heroic.
“The small group of pilots who make up the LSO team must be in constant sync with each other to be certain that the controlling LSO is kept aware of the condition of the flight deck, clear or fouled. Safety is always the primary consideration in all flight deck operations.
The ingenuity on the boat was at times entertaining. We had an F-14 that lost its snubber pressure. That is a nitrogen pre-charge that puts down pressure on the hook to prevent it from bouncing back up after it hits the deck. ‘Mullet,’ the pilot, made several passes and on each attempt, the hook skipped over the wires (a bolter). Then a chief appeared with several rolls of toilet paper which he positioned under the number three wire to raise it higher off the deck. On the next pass, Mullet was aboard.”
—Frank Furbish, former U.S. Navy fighter pilot
A U.S. Navy LSO grading the trap of a fellow pilot.
A Royal Navy Sea Harrier arriving back aboard the carrier, HMS Illustrious.
NAM
An LTV A-7 Corsair II about to be launched from the flight deck of the USS Lexington.
REAR ADMIRAL PAUL GILLCRIST, U.S. NAVY (Retired), was Commander Gillcrist in the spring of 1968 when he was flying F-8 Crusaders from the USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31) with VF-53: “How could I ever forget him? He did a very courageous thing … putting himself in great jeopardy … and for me … and he did it with such casual grace that, contemplating it now, all these years later, still makes my throat constrict.
“It was a rather pleasant spring day … sunny skies, balmy breeze, blue sea and a bluer cloudless heaven. What more could a carrier pilot ask? Then, of course, there were those God-damned sea snakes. As I walked forward on the flight deck towards my airplane, I looked over the starboard catwalk at the surface of the Tonkin Gulf. It almost made me sick. As far as the eye could see there were hundreds of thousands of sea snakes sinuating through the water in clusters of a dozen or so. They ranged in size from about two feet to five feet. Of a yellowish-green color, they swam just below the surface of the water with only their heads sticking out. Our intelligence officer had briefed us on them before we arrived in the Gulf for the first time and told us they were the most poisonous reptiles on the planet. The thought of parachuting into the water filled with thouse hideous things made my stomach turn.
“Our flight headed in-bound to a highly-defended target in the Hanoi area of North Vietnam. The mission was photographic reconnaissance to assess the damage that had been done by a strike just thirty minutes earlier. Since it was such a highly-defended target, I made the decision to go in as photo escort armed with four vice-two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Our normal load-out was two of the deadly missiles, one each mounted on a single pylon on either side of the airplane’s fuselage just aft of the cockpit. The reason for this was aircraft weight. Our tired old F-8E Crusaders had grown in weight over the years from structural beef-ups to the addition of electronic warfare equipment and deceptive electronic-countermeasures devices. The weight had become a problem, since each additional pound of gear meant one pound of fuel less with which we were allowed to land back aboard ship.
“At first it didn’t seem to matter much … nothing more than a minor operational restriction with which we had to abide. But gradually, as the airplane’s empty weight increased, we began to realize that our number of landing opportunities was decreasing by one for every 200 pounds increase in empty. At night a landing used up three times as much fuel. So, for every 600 pounds increase in the empty weight of the airplane, one less attempt to land was imposed.
“Back in the Pentagon in 1974, I did a study for my own personal interest. Using the A-4, F-8, F-4, and A-7 as examples, I found that, on average, a Navy tactical carrier airplane grew in empty weight at the rate of one pound per day of operational life. The accuracy of that rule of thumb was startling.
“So it was with careful consideration that I opted for the four-missile configuration because, after all, we were going into MiG country. Who knows? I might need the extra two Sidewinders. As was the standard practice, the photo pilot, flying an RF-8, took the flight lead. I was his escort and his protection should the North Vietnamese decide to send out their MiGs after him. We ‘coasted in’ about twenty miles south of Haiphong, going at ‘the speed of heat’ as usual, and I found that, because of the drag associated with the extra missiles, I was using a lot more afterburner than the photo plane.
A McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom
“The target, which was a railroad bridge between Haiphong and the capital city of Hanoi, was heavily defended … we already knew that. Nevertheless, the quantity of flak was startling as it always is. They were waiting for us, knowing that it was U.S. policy to get bomb damage assessment after each major raid. I was flying a loose wing on the photo plane, scanning the area for MiGs, of course, but also for flak because I knew that Ed would soon have to bury his head in his photo display shroud for the final few seconds of the run to be sure that the bridge span was properly framed in the camera’s field of view. Neither he nor I wanted to mess this run up and have to come back another time. That would be too much. During the actual picture-taking part of the run, when the photo pilot was too occupied to observe flak, I made it a habit to be in a strafing run at the most likely source of flak in the vicinity of the target. It always made me feel better, since just sitting there being shot at is always unpleasant and unnerving.
“Just as Ed settled down for the photo portion of the mission, which took an eternity of about five seconds, I heard a low SAM (surface-to-air missile) warble (radar lock-on), followed immediately by a high warble (SAM launch) and my heartbeat tripled in an instant. I was on Ed’s left flank and saw the SAM lift off at about four o’clock and only maybe ten miles away. There was a huge cloud of dust around the base of the missile as it lifted off and levelled almost immediately as it accelerated towards us. There was nothing I could do but call it out knowing that Ed would have to break off his run at the very last minute. I think the North Vietnamese knew precisely what they were doing. There was no way Ed could stay in his run because the
missile was accelerating towards his tail at a startling rate. My mouth was dry as I keyed the microphone.
“ ‘One from Two. SAM lift-off at four o’clock, ten miles. Break hard right, now!’ Ed broke and I did the same, feeling the instant onset of at least nine g’s squeezing the g-suit bladders on my legs and abdomen. The SAM roared on by us just as another high warble came on in my headset. This one I didn’t see and that really bothered me. ‘No joy on the second one,’ I shouted into the mike. ‘Keep it coming right, Two.’ Then I saw it and it scared me badly since it was now off my left wing and coming at us fast. ‘Reverse it left and down,’ I shouted hoarsely over the radio. Watching it pass to our left and explode about 200 yards away, I saw that we were skimming the treetops and called out to Ed: ‘Two, let’s get out of here!’ I heard two distinct clicks of a microphone and knew that Ed agreed with me. The water was only a few miles away by this time and we were headed straight towards it. The two Crusaders thundered across the beach at perhaps 100 feet in full afterburner and doing in excess of 600 knots.
“About ten miles off the beach, when we knew we were outside the SAM and flak envelopes, we came out of burner and commenced a climb. Ed’s voice came over the radio sounding apologetic and sheepish. ‘Two from One. I missed it.’ We both felt badly. Bomb damage assessment of the bridge from the previous strike (half an hour earlier) was important and we both knew it. Another strike would be launched within the hour to go after it if the bridge span was still standing. As we passed to the seaward side of the northern SAR destroyer, I suggested that we report in to the ship’s strike operation center and ask them what they wanted us to do—although I was already fairly sure what the answer would be. We orbited at 15,000 feet over the Gulf as Ed checked in and reported failure, and asked for directions since the strike seemed important to them. Panther Strike told us to wait while they checked with Task Force 77 for further directions. As suspected, after waiting for what seemed like an eternity, they told us to go back and try again. After the photo run had been completed we were directed to return to the ship as fast as we could so that the results could be analyzed and another strike launched if necessary. At my urging, Ed requested that an airborne tanker be made available for us upon our going feet wet. And they were waiting for us.
The Bird Farm Page 17