All this was going through J. J.’s mind. Twice he had boltered—flown “over the top” and missed the wires. Each time he had jammed the throttles past the full power notch, into the afterburner detent. The extra power of the afterburners was nice, of course, when you were careening off the edge of the flight deck—but unnecessary. The Hornet’s basic engines—even without afterburner selected—delivered enough thrust to stand the jet on its tail. Afterburners sucked up fuel at nearly twice the rate as the basic engines.
Now J. J. was running low on fuel. He had to get aboard. He had to log one more satisfactory arrested landing in order to finish his qualification. He didn’t have the fuel for any more bolters.
He knew he was over-controlling his jet—yanking and snatching instead of finessing his throttle and stick movements. Flying the ball was a game of tiny, hair-splitting corrections. J. J. knew he had to clamp down on his adrenaline-charged nerves. Concentrate, man!
He did. On the next pass, he started down the glide slope exactly on speed, with the ball holding in the middle. He had a good pass going. Pearly was keeping quiet, letting J. J. work the ball.
And then J. J. saw the red wave off lights flashing. What the hell. . .
“Wave off! Wave off!” said Pearly. J. J. shoved up the throttles and pointed the Hornet’s nose up, back to the traffic pattern. Now he was confused. And angry. It was a damn good pass. Why did they wave me off. . .
“Sorry about that, Three-oh-two,” said the Air Boss on the radio. The deck went foul. Somebody decided to park an airplane with a piece sticking over the foul line.”
“Roger.”
“What’s your state, Three-oh-two?”
J. J. was almost afraid to look. If his fuel remaining wasn’t as much as they thought he needed to make another pass, he was finished. And so, maybe, was his career. “Three-point-six,” J. J. said.
Silence on the radio. J. J. knew what was going on: The Air Boss was having a phone conversation with Paddles about whether this guy Quinn had a snowball in hell’s chance of getting aboard before reaching bingo fuel.
“Three-oh-two,” said the Air Boss on the radio. “Here’s the deal. We’re gonna give you a tight pattern, bring you in for a short final. You won’t have a lot of time to set up. Are you gonna be comfortable with that? If not, just say so, son, and we’ll bingo you now.”
Comfortable? Beneath his oxygen mask, a grin spread across Quinn’s face. He keyed the microphone and said in his best matter-of-fact voice: “Three-oh-two, roger on the tight pattern.”
<>
It was tight. J. J. rolled out on final, with a centered ball, exactly on speed.
The ball stayed centered as J. J.’s jet came down the glide slope, descending toward the little trapezoid of lights.
And stayed there.
The gray mass of the ship materialized out of the darkness. He stayed focused on the ball, keeping it in the center. The trapezoid of lights was rising to meet him ---
Kerrrplunk. A two wire.
Taxiing out of the wires, following the director’s signals with the lighted wands, J. J. felt a wave of relief come over him. And satisfaction.
“Good job, Three-oh-two,” said a voice on the radio. It was the Air Boss.
“Three-oh-two, thanks, Boss.”
<>
That left Road Ammons. Road needed three more traps to qualify. He had gotten two successive one wires—settling at the ramp each time as he passed through the burble. And then he had boltered. Road wasn’t having a great night.
Pearly watched Road coming down the slope. ——The jet’s airspeed was too slow.
And then Road did what he had been doing all night. He saw the deck coming at him— and he went for it.
“Power!” called out Pearly.
Kerrrplunk. Pearly watched Road’s jet roll past the LSO platform, snagging the first arresting wire.
“That’s his third,” said Plug. “What do you wanna do with him?”
Pearly stood there for a second. He watched Road’s jet clearing the wires, taxiing to the forward deck.
Road had this trend going now—settling at the ramp and spotting the deck. It was a dangerous habit. It meant he wasn’t flying the ball all the way to touch down.
Pearly knew what he had to do. This was the part of the job that he hated. He shook his head. “Tell him to shut down. He’s disqualified.”
<>
Disqualified. Road Ammons was crushed.
No one had ever seen him like this. They found him sitting in the back row of the ready room, staring at the PLAT video screen up there on the bulkhead like it contained some message of vast importance. There was nothing on it. Just a static view of the aft flight deck with parked airplanes. And the blackness out there behind the ship.
It was an awkward time. The other nuggets came yelling and laughing into the ready room, punching each other on the shoulder, swapping high fives. Hell, man, they’d done it! The final test! The Big One!
“Hey, did you hear the Air Boss chewing on Yappy when he thought he was Russ. . .”
“Dark? You know how dark it was out there?”
“So I hear Pearly giving that ‘Pow-werrrr’ call, and, man, I know I better put on some power. . .”
“The hardest part, I swear it, is just sitting on that freaking catapult, looking at all that blackness out there, waiting to get catapulted.”
“And I really thought I had a wire. But it didn’t happen, and I was just, like, sitting there, waiting, you know, and—shee-it!—no more deck, nothing, flying off the end of the damn boat. . .”
“It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Easier, really. But ten times scarier!”
Road was trying hard to smile, congratulating his classmates and being a good sport about the whole thing. He tried to explain what happened to him. “I clutched up,” was all he could say. “I just clutched up. Like a kid in his first football game.”
You could see the pain in his eyes. Road had failed his CQ period, and failing was something he had no experience with. He wasn’t one of those kids he was talking about—the kind who clutched up in his first game. He was a Fine Mesher. Road Ammons had always been a winner.
Pearly and Plug came down to the ready room, still wearing their LSO vests and wool caps, carrying the grade book. Pearly motioned for Road to follow him into the little office behind the ready room.
“You’re a good pilot, Road,” Pearly said. “Hell, you’re an excellent pilot. You’ve got all the skills. You just got myopic on me out there tonight, going for the deck. That happens sometimes, on a guy’s first look at the ship. That’s why I took you out. I want to get you back in the FCLP pattern and reinforce your basic ball-flying habits.”
“When will I be coming back to the ship?”
“That’s up to the skipper. There’s another CQ det going out soon on the Washington, out of Norfolk. Maybe they’ll send you out with that group.”
While he was saying all this, Pearly was writing up Road’s grade sheet, transferring his notes from the LSO book to the official squadron grade sheet. Road watched him scrawl an X in the “Unsatisfactory” column.
A SOD. A down. It was the first he had ever gotten.
<>
The CQ detachment returned en masse to Cecil. Class 2-95, except for Road Ammons, was done. They had a few squares yet to fill—a couple of required instrument hops and an all-weather intercept problem. And then they would be, by official decree of the RAG and the U. S. Navy, real fighter pilots!
Each received their squadron assignment. J. J. Quinn was given orders to one of the strike fighter squadrons at the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, South Carolina. Marine squadrons either stayed there in Beaufort, or they deployed to the NATO base at Aviano, Italy, where they flew combat patrols over Bosnia. Occasionally a Marine squadron would be assigned to a Navy air wing, deploying aboard an aircraft carrier.
Chip Van Doren, Rambo Morales, and both the McCormacks all had assignments, just as they
expected, to strike fighter squadrons based right there at Cecil Field. At regular intervals they deployed aboard carriers to the Mediterranean or the Middle East or the Indian Ocean.
They didn’t see much of Road. The young Marine was staying to himself. He showed up for FCLP briefings every evening. He joined the new class out at Whitehouse, going round and round the FCLP pattern just as he had with the Class 2-95.
Pearly Gates wasn’t the controlling LSO for new CQ class. Pearly checked from time to time with the new class’s LSO, Lieutenant “Buddha” Young. How was Road Ammons was doing?
Okay, he was told. Nothing to report. Ammons was doing okay.
Still, Pearly worried. He couldn’t forget Road’s face the night of the debriefing after he had disqualified on the Nimitz. Seldom had Pearly seen a student look so devastated. Road looked like he had received a death sentence.
It sometimes happened that way with the Fine Mesh generation. One of these bright young super stars would show up, having sailed through college, through flight training, to strike fighter training, all the way to the cockpit of an F/A-18. The kid had the world by the tail. He was a winner.
And then he would fail. And it would blow him away.
It was more than he could handle because he had never failed at anything. He had thought of himself as one of the chosen—somehow exempted from the everyday calamities that afflicted normal humans. Failure was like death and acne—something that just didn’t happen to hotshots like himself. Fail? Me? No way, man. . .
When it happened, it changed his chemistry. He fell to earth like a disoriented duck. In some instances, the kid never regained his sharp edge—that grinning, swaggering, Top Gun cockiness of the cool-handed fighter pilot. There would always be that nagging seed of doubt. . . he had failed once. . . and he could not shake the feeling, the fear.. the horrible expectation that it was bound to happen again.
Now everyone was wondering: Was that happening with Road Ammons?
You couldn’t tell. Road wasn’t a guy who poured his guts out to people. He showed up at the FCLP briefings and sat by himself, jotting notes on his kneeboard. He stayed out of the ready room talking-with-your-hands bull sessions.
One thing was for sure: It wasn’t the old Road. Gone was the Yamaha keyboard grin, that aw-shucks-I’m-just-another-Marine shuffle. Gone was that understated self-assurance of the Mississippi black kid who had excelled in a white world. Now he was just another African American G. I. with dog tags and a side-walled haircut.
Pearly and the other instructors were wondering: When Road got back to the boat, would he “clutch” again? If he did, he would disqualify again. And it would be the end of him.
<>
Things started going to hell early. Road and his new class of CQ students were supposed to fly out to the U. S. S. Washington, cruising now off the Florida coast. The weather had turned lousy. A squall line was hovering a hundred miles offshore, with patches of rain and stiff winds and lightning. The carrier was reporting that the ceiling was down to seven hundred feet. It would be a hell of challenge for a bunch of nuggets, everyone said, making their first landings in such conditions.
But from the Washington came the word: Crank up your engines and take off. This is as good as it’s going to get, guys. You’re going to give it a shot.
Off they went, the first flight of Hornets, out into the murk to land aboard the Washington. Road Ammons was in the first flight.
Three days later, he was back.
<>
From the second deck window in the squadron hangar, Pearly and Plug and the other instructors watched. They could see the Hornets returning from the Washington. When the jets had taxied through the fuel pits, they rolled up to the flight line and shut down the engines. One by one, the pilots climbed out of the cockpits and walked across the ramp toward the squadron hangar.
The first guy in the ready room was Buddha, the LSO from the Washington det. While he was still pouring himself a coffee, he was deluged with questions. Everyone wanted to know the same thing. What happened out there? How did it go? How did the nuggets do? Did anyone disqualify?
What about Ammons?
“Ammons? You mean Cool Hand Luke?” he laughed. “You wouldn’t believe what happened. It was truly evil out there, that first night. Like something from hell—rain and lightning and low black clouds. And here’s your guy Road down in the ready room telling everyone it’s gonna be ‘no sweat.’ ‘A piece of cake,’ he says. A piece of cake for Christ’s sake! Everybody shit scared, which is normal for the conditions—and here’s this nugget giving them pep talks, like he’s Cool Hand Luke.”
The only thing was, Road was cool. When it came his turn to fly that night on the Washington, Road Ammons flew six straight passes down to the target wire.
No bolters. No wave offs. No one wires. Road Ammons was the superstar of the show. He was Cool Hand Luke!
“Well, what happened? Did he clutch?”
“Hell, he was cool. When it came his turn, he flew six straight good passes. No bolters. No wave offs. The kid was a superstar.
Road had recovered from his setback out on the Nimitz. No sweat. A piece of cake. . .
It was amazing. Now they knew something about Road Ammons they hadn’t known before. They knew he wasn’t one of the prima donna Fine Meshers who let himself be blown away by his first setback. Cool Hand Luke! No sweat. A piece of cake. . .
It made them wonder. Where did the coolness come from? Had he been pumped up by someone like his grandfather? His astronaut mentor? One of those salty old Tuskegee Airmen fighter pilots?
They would never find out, at least from Road. That wasn’t his style, to talk about such things. It was too personal. But one fact was apparent: Road Ammons had been forced to search somewhere deep inside himself. And he had come up with what he needed. He had found a source of inner steel.
You could see it now, watching him out there on the ramp. He was walking from his parked fighter toward the hangar. It was the old Road.
He saw all the faces peering at him from the second-deck window. He gave them a thumbs up. He was flashing the Yamaha grin, giving them the aw-shucks routine, walking with just a hint of. . .a swagger.
Epilogue
On a wintry day in January 1996, the carrier Washington sailed into the Adriatic to relieve the USS Roosevelt on station off Bosnia. It was a time for reunion. On the flight deck of the Roosevelt, the McCormack twins hugged each other. They had been separated for six months—the only time in their lives.
Despite the twins’ desire to be assigned to the same unit, the Navy decided otherwise. Russ went to a Cecil-based squadron that was sailing for the Mediterranean. Rick’s orders were to VFA-131, also based at Cecil, but on an opposite deployment cycle. When Russ had finished his six month cruise, it would be time for Rick to go.
Thus did Russ McCormack receive a distinction: He became the first of the Class 2-95 nuggets to see combat. During four days in September, 1995, McCormack’s squadron from the Roosevelt carried out air strikes against Serb targets in Bosnia. For its performance, VFA-82 won the battle “E”—designating it the best strike fighter squadron in the Navy. Russ logged over a hundred day and night carrier landings, flew five combat sorties, and, during the height of the Bosnian crisis, spent sixty-one consecutive days at sea.
Meanwhile Rick McCormack had received a separate distinction: He was selected for training as a Landing Signal Officer. It meant that he, like his training LSO in the RAG, Pearly Gates, would spend countless days and nights out there on the lip of a runway or on the edge of the flight deck, willing his fellow airmen to a safe landing.
The reunion was brief. The twins practiced a little Heckling and Jeckling and exchanged brotherly counsel about everything—wives, kids, not busting your butt during night carrier landings, staying alive when bad guys were shooting at you.
And they discovered something interesting. While they were apart, each had reached an independent conclusion: The Navy—and flying figh
ters—was dangerous work. It was demanding of their most precious time and energy, calamitous to family life, financially unrewarding.
They loved it. Heckle and Jeckle were both lifers.
<>
Tom “Slab” Bacon, who had been a lifer, was jumping ship.
Slab’s hoped-for assignment as an F/A-18 instructor with the Swiss Air Force didn’t come through. On the day he received the news that the coveted job had gone to someone else, Slab dropped his resignation letter on the skipper’s desk.
Slab shook hands around the squadron, said his goodbyes, turned in his I. D. card, and drove out the main gate. He was in a hurry because he already had a new job: He was beginning his career as a pilot for United Airlines.
But Slab Bacon and the U. S. Navy weren’t finished with each other. He kept his commission in the naval reserve. And because of a new policy in the Incredible Shrinking Navy that allowed reservists to be assigned to active duty units, Slab went right back to his old squadron, VFA-106. He would keep doing what he did best: instructing in the F/A-18 Hornet.
<>
Though Shrike Hopkins prevailed in her battle to keep her wings, winning the right to re-enter strike fighter training, she lost her medical qualification due to complications from her surgery. While in a non-flying status awaiting a final medical disposition, she requested that she be assigned to the Air Force’s Space Command in Washington, D. C., where her unique qualification in astronautical engineering could be put to use. Instead, the Navy assigned her to administrative duty in the strike fighter training squadron where she had been a student. Shrike was a paper-shuffler.
From her office window on the second deck of the great yellow hangar at Cecil Field, Shrike could watch the flight line. She could see the pilots in their gray-green flight gear, carrying helmets and navigation bags, strapping into the F/A-18 Hornet fighters. She didn’t know when—if ever—she would join them.
<>
Angelina “Rambo” Morales received orders to a Hornet squadron, based at Cecil Field, which already had one woman pilot on its roster. Since there were still fewer than a dozen women pilots in the entire strike fighter community, she suspected the assignment of two women to one squadron was more than coincidental. Had the Navy decided to assign multiple women pilots to certain squadrons to make the women feel less isolated? Or to keep other squadrons men-only?
Bogeys and Bandits Page 33