Trusting the LSO
By lex, on July 8th, 2004
Real short sea story.
1987, first deployment, North Arabian Sea. I’m a raw nugget (new guy), flying maybe my fourth or fifth fleet night flight. An air intercept control mission – fleet air defense.
We’re miles from nowhere, no diverts are available. When the shooter pulls the trigger on the catapult, you’re either landing on the ship or in the water. Those are the only options available. And it’s darker than a hat full of a**holes.
Twenty or thirty minutes into the flight, I notice that the jet needs progressively more and more lateral trim to fight a tendency of the left wing to drop – there’s a “coolie hat” on the control stick which relieves control forces in flight. Now, the FA-18 automatically trims to 1g flight in pitch with the flaps in “auto,” in other words, during normal flight. Re-trimming is required in the landing configuration, but rarely when cruising around with the flaps up. A little bit of lateral trim if the aircraft is carrying an asymmetric external load. Perhaps a twitch of longitudinal (rudder) trim from time to time.
But she keeps wanting to wing drop to the left, and I keep trimming it out. Which is strange, because I’m symmetrically loaded. Eventually a light bulb goes off in the brain housing unit, and I check the external fuel quantities. At sea, the FA-18 normally carries two external fuel tanks, each carrying a little over 2000 pounds (nearly seven hundred gallons) of fuel. They normally transfer to the fuselage tanks as those empty. One of my two external tanks was empty. The other was still full. A transfer failure. Two thousand pounds of gas seven feet displaced from the longitudinal axis of the jet. Fourteen thousand foot-pounds of lateral asymmetry.
The FA-18 doesn’t carry a lot of gas, for a fighter. At sea, you’re always watching the fuel gauges, making sure that your usage rates will not deplete your available fuel faster than the recovery time permits. Because in cyclic operations, you can’t come back and land just any old time. You come back and land on schedule. If you’re early, you’ll find the deck clobbered with the next launch – the landing area will not be open – and nothing can be done. And you have to bring enough gas home to allow yourself a few attempts at the deck, in case you bolter or are waved off – either for technique (translation: You suck) or a foul deck (translation: The guy in front of you got stuck in the wires – he sucks).
So it was a little disconcerting to realize that I had 2000 pounds less gas available than I would otherwise have been entitled to.
I called my flight lead, and together we went through the various trouble shooting steps, trying to un-stick the transfer valve. Positive and negative g are applied. I’ve cycled the arresting hook and refueling probe. Nothing seemed to work as the fuel in my left tank stayed stubbornly full.
Decision time – a full external tank is a liability. Merely carrying its weight around uses gas that you no longer have available. But, jettisoning the tank into the sea comes with a certain amount of baggage as well, they’re not cheap.
The decision is made to bring me aboard first, at the beginning of the recovery, with all the trapped gas. First I’ve got to go to the tanker to take a little gas into my right external, to keep me inside asymmetric landing weight limits. Then I have to turn the external transfer switches off – I’m not allowed to use that gas, otherwise the jet is out of limits again.
Because of weight limitations on landing, the combination of the trapped fuel in my left tank, and the “saved” fuel in my right, I’ve only got about 2500 pounds available to me for landing the jet.
That’s not a lot.
In the daytime, an experienced pilot might elect to land with 3500 pounds. At night, because it’s harder (oh my God, it’s so much harder), he’s expected to save 4500 pounds. The wise man will recover with over 5000 pounds. Because things could happen, down there. You never know. Best to be safe.
With 2500 pounds, if I bolter I’ve got to find the tanker, plug in and start transfer within about 3-5 minutes. Any less, and I’ll be at a barricade fuel state. And you don’t want to barricade. It makes a mess of the jet, and it carries a significant risk of failure (read: We hardly ever do it. You might easily die). Too, a barricade approach is very highly demanding. The ship’s captain would rather stand on his head naked in a hailstorm than barricade a nugget.
Which means this: Find the tanker in the 3-5 minutes, get plugged and receiving, or go for a swim. In the North Arabian Sea, miles from nowhere. If you had to eject, there’s every chance they might find you, before the parachute dragged you under. It could happen.
Or, you could land on the first try.
I thought I’d try and do that. That would be good.
So I’m on the approach, working my butt off, trying to set myself up for success. The time comes to call the ball, and I’m looking good. Not a lot of experience yet, so I’m still stuffing demon doubt into his little jack-in-the-box, where he will still keep trying to pop out, saying, “Impossible! Can’t be done!”
The time comes when I’m sure I’ve got the ramp made. I ease power a bit, thinking, “If CNO didn’t want you to catch the 1-wire from time to time, he wouldn’t have put it there.”
Thing is, there’s a lot of water between the jet and the ramp at the point the pilot thinks he has the ramp made. It’s one thing to land early. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to smack into the back of the ship. The Landing Signal Officers are explicitly chartered to ensure you don’t “hit the ramp,” among other things.
So my squadron mate, “Booter,” gives me a “Power” call. Not screaming, but not whispering either. He’s saying to me, “Not yet, Lex. You aren’t home yet. Keep flying the jet.”
So I bump the throttles up a bit. There, that should satisfy him. And then, because I really don’t want to bolter, and see if I can find that tanker in less than 3-5 minutes, I ease them back again.
“POWER!” he shouts, almost instantly. So I run the throttles up a little further, and scanning the meatball, which is now heading down below the datums like an elevator at a resort hotel, I bump them up a little further. In fact, I bump them up to the stops. And a moment or two later, I’m in the wires, safely stopped, engines screaming, lights flashing.
The Air Boss tells me to throttle back, throttle back, they’ve got me.
And the reply that formed in my mind, which thankfully doesn’t leave my lips, is “Boss, do I bother you when you’re taking a sh*t?”
But I learned to trust the LSO.
Thanks, Booter.
Quite a story. No pressure there
A “barricade approach” – is that when they would throw nets up to catch you?
The barricade approach is flown into one big net, about 20 feet tall, with vertical straps. Aircraft are stopped in the straps that glom onto the wings. Yes, the aircraft is damaged, lots of taxpayer dollars to fix, but the plane is saved and the pilot doesn’t have to undergo an ejection followed by a float check. Most barricades are a result of landing gear damage of some sort. The one we heard of back in the 70′s was an F-14 that took the barricade. Seems the hook wouldn’t come down due to the big safety pin in place…with the red remove before flight banner still firmly attached!
Busbob – I was thinking about this all day – think of the strength that net has to be to absorb the kinetic force of a plane weighing 1000s of lbs going 120+ kts –
I’ll bet someone really caught it for not removing that safety pin!
And I was thinking of the mental discipline required in that situation – as Lex said – to stuffing “demon doubt back in the box” – a lot of pressure there ….
Always remember too – on the subject of “go-arounds” or Navy-speak “bolters” one poor pilot doing 22 before he made it.
The story, as I remember it, was that his knees were knocking when he got on the deck. The weather had to have been awfully bad, or some mechanical problem – don’t remember that part.
Hi Bill B.:
“I’ll bet someone really caught it for not removing that safety pin!”
If they were following SOP, there should have been two or thress people who caught that red flag.
Paul
The worst part of a bolter is trying to get the seat pan out of your posterior before the next pass.
The story we got was that the pilot who missed the pin was either the CO or XO of the squadron, which made the tale all the better.
Pre dawn (night) launch with day recovery, tail toward the water in the dark on preflight, lots of folks who could have seen the pin, as Paul says. Happened during blue water ops, no place to go but in the net.
Lots of giggles afterwards for the JO’s, all of whom probably were thinking “Thank God that wasn’t me!”
Busbob – Paul – I know this is a dumb question – but in addition to the carrier flight deck crew then the pilot is responsible for the final walk around? That pin – with a nice (presumably) red “Remove Before Flight” would be pretty hard to miss but as you mentioned it was dark.
Such a simple thing that can have such profound consequences if not removed.
Do navy aircraft have some pin locking the movable control surfaces from the outside, such as stabilators, rudders and ailerons?
It seemed – in a recent video Mongo posted, that when hooked up to the catapult someone is giving the pilot a final checklist – making sure all the control surfaces are moving – the pilot then moves them proving there is no lock – then he salutes (indicating all OK?) and in a couple of seconds he’s doing 140 Mph off the deck.
Having a stuck stabilator or aileron while being shot off the deck at 140 would have “undesirable consequences”
The more I read about Navy craft the more amazing they seem to be – sitting out on a flight deck, tied down, exposed to the salt air and high winds for years. Then performing like F1 cars in the air.
I would think the landing gear assembly and fuselage have to be extra tough for the stress they take catching the wire.
I don’t remember any control locks on the aircraft, everything was hydraulic power, I suppose that without pumps running the controls were not going to move anyway. Not a dumb question, by the way. The pilot is the one who faces the consequences of something missed on preflight, but there is a safety net of so many others looking at the jet before it goes off the pointy end…
Your comment about the salt air exposure is sharp. Corrosion is a big problem, your personal shower on the ship was on a lower priority level than washing the planes first. We were told to dirty up (drop the gear and flaps) and fly through any rain shower we would come across while airborne. A squadron that failed a corrosion inspection–yes, they did that–would have a new skipper post haste.
Busbob – thanks for your explanations. I am learning a lot about Naval aviation!