Bogeys and Bandits

by Gandt, Robert

  Pearly checked his equipment. He tried out his radio handset. He checked the “pickle”—the black handle at the end of a long cable with two switches: one for the red wave off lights on the sides of the ball, and one for the “cut” light. He flashed the wave off lights, and then triggered the “cut” light by which, in an emergency landing, he would signal the pilot to “cut” —chop the throttle on his jet—as he crossed the ramp. Pearly then adjusted the intensity of the ball, the yellow blob of light on the Fresnel lens that delivered glide slope information to the pilots.

  The Fresnel lens was an offshoot of the British-invented mirror landing system. Originally, a mirror was mounted at the port edge of the deck. A high-intensity light was shone against the mirror and reflected upward at the precise angle of the glide slope. A set of green reference lights was rigged midway up the mirror, serving as a datum—an “on glide-slope” reference. A pilot making his approach would see the reflected light on the mirror as a “ball,” and its position above or below the datum lights would tell him he was high or low on the glide slope.

  The Fresnel lens, developed in the 1960s, took the mirror idea a step further. It still looked like a ball on a mirror, but instead of a real mirror, the lens was actually a vertical row of five glass boxes. The green datum lights were extended outwards from the middle, or third, box. Each box projected a beam of light at a different angle, so that the pilot, seeing the light—the “ball”—from one of the boxes, could know his relative position, high or low, on the glide slope.

  The beam of light narrowed as the aircraft flew closer to the ship. As the jet passed over the fantail of the carrier, the beam from the middle lens—the “centered ball”—was only two feet high.

  That was the target: a window two feet high. The pilot landing his jet aboard the carrier had to fly through that tiny aperture in order to clear the ramp and to catch a wire with his tailhook. He had to fly through it in all conditions—day, night, and when the deck was heaving up and down like a rowboat in a rapids.

  It was the most demanding feat in aviation. And it was a feat that every carrier-based naval aviator had to perform again and again. Without fail.

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  The nuggets wore the standard gray-green flight suits, wandering the passageways of the great ship, knocking heads on the low overheads, banging shins on the step-over “kneeknockers” that you passed at every bulkhead along a passageway. Everyone got lost.

  There was a smell to an aircraft carrier. It was a redolence you only noticed when you first walked down from the sprawling, open-aired flight deck to the labyrinthine interior of the great ship. It was not unpleasant—an olfactory blend of machine oil, paint, jet fuel, sweat. Every aircraft carrier was different. Each had its unique below-deck atmosphere.

  The Nimitz was enormous. Ninety-five-thousand tons—a statistic that exceeded the average aviator’s computational power. It was like a floating city. How could anything that heavy float? How could it move, for that matter?

  But move it did, at something in excess of thirty-five miles per hour, faster than most frigates and destroyers. The Nimitz knifed through the oceans of the world on the energy of two Westinghouse nuclear reactors, powering her four steam turbines and propellers.

  The Nimitz was a super-carrier, first of the Navy’s fastest and most powerful group of carriers called the Nimitz class. Her normal sea-going complement included a crew of 5,550 men and women. When the Nimitz went on overseas deployment, she took on board a nine-squadron air wing, numbering from eighty to ninety aircraft. The air wing had two F-14 Tomcat squadrons, shore-based at Miramar, California, and two F/A-18 Hornet squadrons from Naval Air Station Lemoore, California. Included in the air wing was a squadron of A-6 Intruder attack jets; a unit of four EA-6B Prowlers, which were tactical electronic warfare versions of the A-6; a squadron of S-3B Viking anti-submarine warfare jets; a detachment of at least two E-2C turbo-prop Hawkeyes, which were early warning and strike control aircraft; and a detachment of SH 60F Seahawk anti-submarine helicopters.

  With her nuclear power plant, the Nimitz possessed nearly unlimited mobility. Already she had gone more than eighteen years without refueling. Consumables, like food and jet fuel, could be replenished underway by supply ships and sea-going tankers.

  Being aboard a mighty warship like the Nimitz, marveling at the modern American technology, it was hard to believe that the most critical technology on the aircraft carrier was not American. Modern aircraft carriers would not be possible except for two major developments since World War II: the angled landing deck that made safe arrestment of jet airplanes possible, and the steam catapult that permitted the launching of high performance jets from flight decks.

  Neither were invented in America.

  That these developments came from Britain, of course, always caused glee among visiting Royal Navy pilots. When a Brit deigned to come aboard an American carrier, it was always with just the. . . slightest trace of superiority. He would glance at the modern equipment and smile. “Hmm, it looks like you yanks may be finally getting the hang of it. . .”

  It was the steam catapult that made ships like the Nimitz possible. Without the catapult, supersonic fighters like the Hornet and the Tomcat could not fly from the tiny parcel of real estate available on a carrier’s flight deck. Thin, swept wings, heavy weapons and fuel loads—such aeronautical luxuries required a vast amount of energy to reach flying speed.

  Nor could the jets return to the flight deck without another British invention—the angled deck. In the old days, before supersonic jets and steam catapults, all aircraft carriers had a single fore-to-aft flight deck. Airplanes landed on the aft portion—and stopped. There were no “bolters”—touch and go landings—because other airplanes and equipment were parked on the forward half of the deck. The straight-deck ships had as many as thirteen arresting wires and a huge nylon barricade to prevent airplanes from hurtling onto the forward deck.

  But then the British designed a carrier deck with the landing runway aligned about eleven degrees to the left of the ship’s centerline, thus permitting airplanes to touch down and then take off again from the side of the deck. The new V-shaped carrier deck had, in effect, two runways: the aft, off-center (angled) deck for touch and go landings, and the forward, straight deck used exclusively for launching.

  The four “wires” stretched across the Nimitz’s landing deck were actually 1.375 inch thick steel cables, suspended five-and-a-half inches above the deck. Each of the cables ran below deck to its respective “engine”—a giant hydraulic cylinder that worked like a shock absorber. When a jet’s tailhook snagged one of the cables, the cable pulled a piston in its hydraulic cylinder, absorbing the energy of the arriving jet and braking the jet to a metered stop up on the flight deck.

  For each aircraft that approached the carrier, a signal was sent down to all four arresting engine rooms to adjust the pressure for the weight of that particular aircraft. A heavy Tomcat fighter would require a different setting than a much smaller, lightly-loaded Hornet. Each arresting cable was able to bring a 54,000 pound jet, moving at 140 miles per hour, to a stop on the flight deck in two seconds, within 340 feet.

  After a jet rolled to a stop and pulled the power back on its engines, the cable slackened and dropped from the hook, back onto the deck. The hydraulic engine below deck then retracted the wire back to its taut position across the deck, ready to trap the next jet.

  It was not a foolproof system. Accidents happened. Death sometimes struck with numbing suddenness on a carrier deck. Everyone who had gone to sea for extended cruises aboard aircraft carriers had seen it happen: A cable would be snagged by the tailhook of a landing jet. The cable would pay out just like it was supposed to, while the hydraulic arresting engine down below absorbed the kinetic energy of the landing airplane. The cable would strain against the pull of the twenty-ton jet. . .

  And then it would break.

  It didn’t happen often. The cables were regularly checked for fraying, and the
total number of “hits”—arrestments—on each cable was carefully logged. After a hundred hits, a cable was retired and replaced with a fresh one.

  But still, it happened. One night on the Saratoga, an A-3 caught the number three wire. As the wire paid out, slowing the big jet—the cable snapped. With its engines already at full power, the A-3 floundered off the end of the deck and managed to fly again. The crewmen in the jet escaped.

  The crewmen on the deck did not. The separated number three arresting cable lashed across the surface of the flight deck like a scythe. It mowed down everything in a seventy-foot arc—maintenance equipment, antennas, tugs—and half a dozen deck crewmen, severing their legs like a laser gun.

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  There was no such luxury in naval aviation as idle time. You were supposed to be either flying or doing your collateral ground job. If you were doing neither, then they scheduled you for a briefing.

  And so it was aboard the U. S. S. Nimitz for the nuggets of Class 2-95. This one was the pre-night qualifications briefing. It was Pearly Gates’s chance to play Vince Lombardi.

  It was already well known in the squadron that Pearly took his briefings very seriously. And he expected everyone else to take them just as seriously. Any poor fool who ignored the red “Briefing In Progress” light over the ready room door and blundered into one of Pearly’s briefings would get his head snapped off at the shoulders.

  This was the occasion for a Pearly Gates bravura performance. For six weeks now he had been working with his young charges, coaching, critiquing, praising, encouraging. He had nursed them through the first awkward FCLP periods, the inky-black night sessions at Whitehouse, through the trauma of losing a classmate, through the adrenaline-surging, catapult-firing, first-trap exposure to the Nimitz at sea.

  Now it had come down to this: the final test. This was the last—and most difficult—test the nuggets would face in their path to becoming fighter pilots. Pearly knew that his kids were ready. They had all the tools.

  All they needed was confidence. And that was the reason for his Vince Lombardi briefing. A pilot’s confidence was the most fragile and irreplaceable substance in aviation. Without it, all the skill, training, and experience of a lifetime counted for nothing. The specter of fear could slither into a cockpit like a serpent. It crippled a pilot, poisoned his mind, stole his skill. Fear killed more aviators than all the mechanical malfunctions that ever afflicted flying machines.

  On the wall-sized grease board, he had written “Pearly’s Pearls.” They were more like commandments:

  1. Dominate the Ball!

  2. BE the Ball!

  3. You Are Not Alone!

  4. Trust the LSOs!

  5. There Is No Life Below the Datums!

  Pearl number five referred to the bottom half part of the Fresnel Lens. The “datums” were the horizontal row of green datum lights, protruding at mid-point from both sides of the lens, that served as the “on glide path” marker for the pilot. —If the pilot landed with a “high” ball, he would either catch the last—number four—wire, or miss the wires altogether and get a “bolter,” taking off again from the angled deck. If he let the ball go low, beneath the row of datums, it meant that he would get an early wire—a one or two instead of the ideal number three wire.

  It also meant that he came perilously close to the blunt, unforgiving killer ramp. He had come close to being a ramp roast.

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  The movies on the Nimitz were endless. Day and night, twenty-four hours straight, they flickered up there on one of the three ready room television monitors. The only time the movies stopped was when an LSO briefing was taking place.

  The Nimitz had a seemingly infinite supply of movies. You could check out everything from newly released Stallone groaners to Bogey classics from the thirties.

  That’s what they did, the off-duty sailors, pilots, maintenance personnel of the CQ detachment. The big, cavernous ready room with its upholstered, airliner seats became the between-shifts hang out. It didn’t matter what the movie was. They plopped down in one of the deep chairs, relieved to be away from the nerve-numbing havoc of the flight deck—and stared glassy-eyed at a flick.

  The other two monitors were for ship’s business. One was used for routine messages, like a community television channel, announcing the times of church services, opening and closing of the ship’s store, birthday greetings. It could even relay cable stations like CNN.

  Another monitor was the PLAT— the deck-mounted video camera that recorded every approach and landing to the ship. You could sit there and observe each jet roll into the groove and swoop down toward the camera. If the jet landed precisely on target, it looked like it had plopped down right on the camera. Then another camera, mounted up on the island superstructure, would follow the jet as it rolled out on the deck, caught by the arresting wire.

  The PLAT tapes could be replayed for LSO debriefings, just in case someone wanted to argue about his grade from the LSO.

  The PLAT had another purpose. On those rare occasions when someone really botched a pass to the ship—when he and his jet became one with the killer ramp—the investigators could retrieve the tapes and see just why things had so badly gone to hell: “Ah ha! See that? Sucking power at the ramp, getting slow. . .”

  Kabloom. There it was, recorded for posterity on video tape.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE TREBUCHET

  Rick McCormack was the first onto the catapult.

  He could see the director down there on the flight deck, just under the nose of the Hornet, moving his arms in the “come forward” motion, urging McCormack to move his jet onto the number one catapult shuttle.

  This was it. McCormack felt his pulse rate shift into high gear. Ahead he could see the three-hundred feet of catapult track—the distance in which he and his Hornet fighter would accelerate to flying speed. And at the end of the catapult track was the squared-off, precipitous forward edge of the flight deck. Beyond, thin air. And the heaving blue Pacific ocean.

  It was the most vulnerable—and unnatural—moment of a pilot’s life. Once he was in the mechanical grip of the great, merciless steam catapult, the aviator relinquished all control of his destiny. His life—or death—was at the whim of a detached, mindless power beneath the surface of the flight deck.

  That was the part that took getting used to: the powerlessness. A fighter pilot, by chemistry and divine right, was supposed to be in control. But here he was, for two-and-a-half interminable seconds, caught like a cat in the jaws of a pit bull. The pilot sat there while the catapult propelled him from zero to one-hundred-sixty miles-per-hour. Nothing he could do during that infinitesimal flea-speck in time—snatch back his throttles, stomp on the jet’s brakes, scream epithets in his radio—nothing would halt the forward rush of that behemoth steam catapult.

  For Rick McCormack, taxiing onto the Nimitz’s number one catapult, this was the first time, at least in the Hornet. His previous two dozen catapult shots and arrested landings in training jets while he was still a flight student now seemed like ancient history. That was in another, safer life. This was the real thing, in a real fighter, on a real carrier. With real danger.

  All the things that could go wrong on a catapult shot ran through McCormack’s brain. The most awful thing, of course, and the one that haunted the worst dreams of carrier aviators, was a cold catapult shot. “Cold” meant that the catapult, for whatever reason, failed to accelerate the jet to flying speed. On a normal cat shot, the jet went off the bow of the carrier at about fifteen knots above stall speed. As the jet soared off the front of the ship, the pilot took over control of his jet and flew away.

  At less than sufficient speed, something closer to stalling speed, the pilot would have his hands full. He would wrestle with the sluggish controls, wondering what the hell was going on. If he were smooth on the controls, quick enough to jettison the external stores hanging beneath the airplane, like an auxiliary fuel tank or a load of weapons, he might be able to fly aw
ay.

  At anything below stall speed, the jet was doomed. The pilot had only one option: eject immediately. The problem was time. The malfunction would have to be recognized, analyzed, and acted upon in the space of about four seconds.

  Cold catapult shots were rare these days. A more likely failure was with the jet itself. Firing a fifty-thousand-pound package of whirling turbines, computers, gyros, pumps, valves, and switches like a stone from a siege gun did sometimes cause things to break. Engines failed. Instruments quit. Sometimes entire displays came out of the instrument panel, hitting the pilot in the chest or, worse, jamming the control stick. Wheels broke from landing gear struts. Controls froze. Computers crashed.

  Three seconds. All his life’s experiences, training, instincts—it all came down to that: dthree critical seconds. What the hell was happening? Will this sucker fly or not? Should I punch out now, or stay with it?

  The force of the catapult shot affected the pilot too. His body was crushed back against the seat as the jet hurtled down the catapult track. His internal organs wrapped around his spine. His eyeballs flattened in their sockets, distorting his view out the windscreen. His left hand maintained a death grip on the throttles to keep from involuntarily snatching them back to idle thrust.

  And his right hand, in the most unnatural act of all, was up on the “towel rack,” the catapult grip on the canopy rail. The idea was to keep the pilot’s hand out of the way of the control stick during the catapult shot, because the force of the acceleration would cause him to yank the stick too far back, to the nose-up position. In the Hornet, the jet’s flight control computer did it for him, “flying” the jet off the catapult, commanding the correct amount of nose-up deflection from the fighter’s tail surfaces.