Sunrise

We were assigned the yo-yo tanker for the early morning wasex (war at sea) launch. We being me and Joe.
One might ask what the heck is a yo-yo tanker? Well, a yo-yo tanker is either a good deal or a bad deal, depending on the viewpoint one wants to adopt.
A yo-yo tanker is usually the first jet launched off the carrier, in this case the USS Constellation. The tanker has a full load of jet fuel, climbs to on station, and awaits the strike force which will launch after the tanker.
The tanker quickly passes all the fuel he can to the fighters and bombers and sends them on their merry way to whatever target or adversary is out there and is the subject wanting the attention of so many of the Navy’s finest.
Once all the fuel the tanker can afford to give away is gone, the tanker goes right back down to the pattern and traps on the ship. Then the tanker hot pumps (is refueled on deck while still running), taxis to the nearest catapult, and is launched again to be available to the returning fighters and bombers who have burned up all of Uncle Sam’s precious fuel–being the purveyors of destruction and fast flight that they are.
The good deal part of all this is the tanker crew gets to bag two cat shots and two traps whilst the other mortals on the same launch get just one apiece.
The bad deal part of all this is the tanker crew is just that, a tanker crew. The other planes have left on a mission, they are going to practice dropping ordinance on some target and chasing bad guys around the pretend hostile sky. Droning around with a fuel hose out the back end is not the epitome of coolness. You have to adopt an attitude that works for you.
On this day Joe and I punched off the pointy end of the ship in our KA-6D while it was still dark. There was a pinkish edge to the horizon, which was an absolute bonus thing to see as the tanker accelerated off the bow into what could have been the deepest of dark black places in the sky. You take all the help offered, a horizon is always good for the soul.
Joe and I climbed up to about 20,000′ in the direction of the target and took up a left orbit. Soon the fighters showed up and one by one they sucked up all the fuel we could give for the moment. Calculating how much fuel to give away is an art and a survival tactic. The art part comes with giving away as much as you possibly can to those who will really need the fuel to accomplish the mission. Typically the fighter guys, F-14′s in this case, will take every ounce a tanker will give. If it weren’t for safeguards on the tanker the turkeys could suck out all the fuel the tanker owns and leave it in a flameout. The survival part is conniving as best as one can the anticipated time the tanker will land back on the ship. Give away as much fuel as possible but still have enough to loiter around until the ship has a clear landing area. Miscalculating and being too conservative means the strike force leaves with not as much fuel as they thought they would have. Being a liberal with the fuel give away might up the pucker factor greatly when the ship relays that it won’t be ready to recover aircraft when you thought it would.
On this occasion the ship let us know that it would at least 20 minutes or so longer than we anticipated before we could recover. And they let us know before we gave away that 20 minutes extra fuel. Nice.
So there we were, droning around in the sky all our own. Everybody else had left. Joe and I were simply enjoying the quiet interlude as we waited for the deck to be ready.
The pinkish twinge on the horizon turned to a bit of orange, and then a glorious burst of orange, Joe and I got to watch a spectacular sunrise at sea. The rim of the sun came out of the sea and mist with all the majesty Our Creator can muster. As sunrises go, this one was a lollapalooza. Just flat awesome. Aviation gives us bonuses once in a while.
Joe remarked that we had just seen one heck of a sunrise, he wished he could see it again.
Sometimes you get a request you can grant.
I rolled the jet over, pulled the nose down, and we dropped about 15,000′ or so quickly, then started a climb. Our descent had put us below the horizon relative to the sun.
As we climbed upward we got to watch the beautiful sunrise all over again.
Remembering that morning still makes me smile.

Not Tonight

It was a dark and stormy night. Nah. It was dark. I remember that distinctly.
We had been at sea for a couple of weeks and flying exercise after exercise. Crews were tired, the pace of operations was taking a toll on man and metal.

Joe and I were in the ready room as the alert tanker crew. There was only one tanker left in an up status, the other three had died of various ailments during the day. We were sitting in an empty ready room, sharing the space with the duty officer. It was late, the movie was over. The denizens of Ready Four had moved on to other habitats, a game of cards, letter writing, maybe a grease burger in the forward mess. Maybe an early rack time, perchance to score a full night’s rest without interruption, a rare event during workups.

Joe was new to the boat, the USS Constellation, new to our A-6 squadron. I had shared with him his first daytime trap not too long ago, and he had yet to be exposed to the nether world of night ops. We briefed the flight as if we were going to launch in the next few minutes. Never can tell when the call will come. Joe already had the daytime experience, albeit just a few day traps. Night ops were a different game, and I tried my utmost to pass on all the knowledge needed to fly and survive on the dark side.

The call to man up came just about the same time I was running out of pertinent items. Grab the helmets, kneeboards, and nav bags, head for the flight deck, might be time to launch.

Our KA-6D was spotted just forward of the island on the starboard side. Rather than being right on the flight deck edge with the tail jutting out over the ocean, the plane was tied down inboard somewhat, with the nose pointed right at the landing area. We preflighted the bird with our red lensed flashlights. No white lights on deck. Night vision is precious.

We preflighted the ejection seats and strapped in. The maintenance chief appeared at the top of the boarding ladder and passed on to me what the gouge was. There was only one airplane left to recover from the last launch of the day, an F-14, and he boltered on the first pass. No other tankers, we are to be insurance if the lad continues to have problems.

No sweat. One bolter doesn’t tell the story, odds are we won’t even start up. We close the canopy and look around us, our eyes adjusting more and more to the night world.

The blackness was…black. Can’t describe it any other way. An overcast sky took away the stars. Joe and I could see the landing area ahead of us in the dim red light and not much more. There were Intruders on either side of us, the ones closest showing vague details of the big nose and trademark refueling probe, the ones farther away sharing less and less conformity with our aircraft, morphing into yellow grey blobs toward the bow and stern.

To our left we heard and then saw an F-14 in the last seconds of his landing pass. The big turkey looked good for a three wire. A cinch, I thought.

Then the big jet appeared to stop his descent and went long over the wires, missing the 3 and 4 wire, dragging his hook in a rooster tail of sparks down the centerline of the landing area and then off the deck and into the blackness again. Bummer. Too much power in close, this guy’s adrenaline is pumping.

I shared my observation with Joe. He didn’t have much to say in response. This was his first time on the carrier deck in the dark.

A few minutes later the F-14 emerges out of the darkness on our left again. Good pass, I think, and then the mysterious too much power over the wires happens again. This time the turkey’s main mounts and hook barely touch down near the end of the landing area. Again the F-14 rotates and disappears into the dark of the night.

What the hey? That was a bit worse than the first pass we saw. What’s going on with this guy?

Joe and I discuss what we had just seen. While we are talking I pick up the lights of the SAR (search and rescue) helo aft of the ship beyond the LSO platform. The helo is doing odd things, going up and then down, up and then down. Weird. Must be bored and doing some sort of drill. I point this out to Joe and he looks at the same lights going up and down.

Then Joe asks me, “Isn’t the helo stationed on the starboard side of the ship? Behind us?”

Holy crap. Joe is correct, I’m not thinking. The lights I am looking at belong to the plane guard destroyer aft of the ship! Why is he going up and down like that?

Then the neurons in my brain pan kick in and make connections. A glance at the VDI, the main attitude indicator on the instrument panel in front of me, confirms what I had not picked up on. The Connie was moving. Up and down. As I watched the attitude indicator we went left wing down, then left wing up, then left wing down again. Crap, a pitching deck. I point to the VDI and let Joe in on my sudden revelation. As we go left wing down the plane guard’s lights climb up in the blackness, then back down as the Connie’s bow goes below the horizon.

We watch the VDI. The F-14 returns for another pass at the deck. Joe and I scan the F-14 and the VDI at the same time. The F-14 is just about to touch down and the VDI display shows us in an increasing right bank. The deck falls away from the F-14 as the bow of the Connie plunges, the tail hook passes over the 3 and 4 wires with room to spare. There is another brief shower of sparks from his tail hook as he barely touches the end of the landing area and then the Tomcat flies away into the night.

The plane captain’s wands light up, one of the yellow cones point at my left engine, the other cone points upward and the plane captain makes the light twirl with his wrist. Time to start engines and get ready to go. We light off both engines and make sure all systems are online. We wait for the light signals to undo the tiedown chains and taxi to the cat. It’s showtime for us. I tell Joe it looks like we are going to have to launch into the night and be in position to pass fuel to the Tomcat, he can’t have much left.

We are ready. The plane captain’s wands are crossed above his head, stay put with the brakes on is the signal.

Joe comes up on the ICS. “Bob,” says Joe. “If we are the only tanker left, who will give us fuel when we can’t get aboard?”

Ya know, Joe was smart. Perceptive. Thinking ahead. He voiced what I hadn’t even thought about. Now I was a confident fellow, sure of my abilities, but a pitching deck adds so much to the pudding of uncertainty.

Joe had a point. I thought for a second or two, not quite so sure of myself in light of (or in dark of!) what I had just seen and what Joe had said.

There was an answer. “Joe,” I said. “This is where we pray for the guy in the F-14. Pray that he arrives when the deck isn’t on the way up or down and that he grabs a wire on the next pass.”

What I didn’t say was pray that we don’t have to cat off the pointy end of this boat into nothingness to help someone and then hang around until he gets aboard. Then try to outsmart the pitching deck ourselves.

Don’t know that Joe prayed or not, we were silent for a while. I mentally had a short and sincere one way talk with the One In Charge Of Things.

The F-14 appeared above the stern again, a ghostly image in the dim red lights of the deck. I looked at the VDI, we were wings level.

The turkey hit the deck and came to a stop just in front of us, his engines howling against the stopping force of the arresting wire caught in his tail hook.

The plane captain dragged one of his wands across his throat. The shutdown signal. I pulled back the throttles past the idle detent and around to the shut off position.

We weren’t going to have to answer Joe’s question tonight.

Now the race is on…

Now the race is on and here comes pride in the backstretch, heartache goin’ to the inside…

I first heard this George Jones tune in a fraternity brother’s room. It was the late 60′s and country music was not “in” the way it is today. The Rolling Stones, the Mamas and the Papas, the Beatles, the Monkees, and many other pop groups took first place in the music world.

Don’t know why the lyrics to George’s song stayed with me all these years. I can still picture my fraternity brother’s room on the campus, it was never a bastion of neatness. Drew was never a bastion of anything but party on, brother. His focus in life was golf and beer. Or was it beer and golf?

Maybe that’s why George Jones’ death brought back thoughts about life and what it brings to us, and what it doesn’t bring. George lived a life that was out of control at times. Drew was the same, and he beat George to the finish line.

Drew was an alcoholic. Took me three tries with the spell checker to get that word right. I didn’t know he was one, most everybody in our fraternity would not know the difference between an alkie and an average college kid in the 60′s. We partied, partied a lot, drank heavily. Most of us saved the party part until the weekends. Drew didn’t. Anytime after noon or so you could find Drew in his room, an open beer bottle on the desk and George Jones records lettin’ loose tune after tune on the stereo. The door was always open, there was always a beer in the fridge. George and Drew had something in common.  Booze and a life out of control at times. The story of Drew driving home for a holiday once was legendary. He was pulled over for erratic driving, turns out he had consumed more than a few of the beers in the case he bought before leaving school to go home. The sheriff bluntly told him he’d been drinking. Drew’s candid response (“No #$%*, sheriff!”) caught the sheriff by surprise, so much so that the sheriff didn’t give him a ticket but instead escorted Drew all the way into the next county. Home.

Could it be that our generation was faced with Viet Nam and the implications that falling out of college meant in those days? Flunk out, lose the college deferment, go to the front of the line for service in ‘Nam. Not a popular war, not a popular topic amongst the college crowd, and a source of fear to many. Could it be that the pressure was there to perform, keep the grades on the passing side, keep the army out of the picture, no matter what? Was that the reason for the liquid dependence?

Or could it be that just the pressure of life was too much for some? Maybe for Drew?

I don’t know. Lost track of him after college, only to have his name come up one day 40 years or so later, when a friend of ours mentioned they were from a small town in Texas. Drew’s home town. Where? I asked, I have a fraternity brother from there, did you know Drew?

Yes, same high school class, was the response, followed by did you know about him and his life?

No, what happened, I asked.

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, the story was tragic. Too much alcohol, lost jobs, a stint as high school coach, a bank robbery, or maybe it was just an attempt, prison time, a lost and dissolute life, a wreckage of a family, and finally a lonely death on a New Year’s Eve a decade ago.  His death went unnoticed for days, no one went looking for him.

No one missed him.

I passed the news on to my fraternity brothers five years after his death and not one of them knew of his passing on. Most of us go in one direction, our lives are predictable, we don’t know or understand what hurts inside others and makes life misfire. I wonder what demons turned Drew down the wrong road.

George Jones’ death made me think of Drew again.

Now the race is on and here comes pride in the backstretch, heartache goin’ to the inside…

…and the winner loses all…

The Switch Part 2, or Keep Right

Joe and I headed out from North Island in our KA-6D (the one with the living room switch to control the tail hook) to catch up with the Connie, she was steaming west under the typical low cloud cover found in the Socal ops area every morning. It didn’t take long to pick up the azimuth and dme on the tacan and zero in on the ship. Joe checked in with Warchief, filled in all the blanks for those on the carrier who needed to know ‘zackly who we were and what our intentions were, and we switched over to approach.
This is where it got interesting. The shipboard controller we contacted said he’d be glad to give us a precision approach (CCA) to the Connie, basically a talk down (the needles were out of service), but he mentioned that his radar had undergone maintenance in port and wasn’t calibrated yet. Question marks flew around in my brain pan, non-calibrated radar wasn’t in my database. Had to ask, what does that mean to us? The answer was that we might not be precisely on course as he brings us down through the clag to land.
Not precisely on course? This didn’t resonate much with me as being a big problem. If there were mountains around and cumulo-granite clouds to reckon with my worry factor might have been higher, but what the hey, how far off can it be? It’s daytime, no storms, no rain. Let’s press on.
Can you pick up on the vibes here? A jury rigged tail hook switch, a brand new never-been-to-the-boat B/N in the right seat, and now a shipboard radar that may or may not be capable of accurate guidance.
The wisdom of many years of aviation since then give me pause as I write this. Grampaw Pettibone surely would be asking, “What was this lad thinking?” My present self says “Not much” and my past self had no thought other than OK, we’ll deal with things as they come, forward with enthusiasm. Joe’s first look at the back end of the boat would be fun for both of us, right? Right! Onward!
Onward it was, through the clouds, into the descent, drop the gear, flaps, and the all important tail hook, start the approach. The approach indexers on the glare shield are not flashing, which confirms that the hook is down and the living room switch on Joe’s side is working.

The approach was sterling. Got all the “on glide path, on course” callouts over and over again, with minor deviations here and there. I was impressing myself so much with my airmanship…
Joe and I get to the point where we are just about breaking out of the overcast, there is ocean below on both sides of the jet, Joe tells me there is another ship out here, he can see the wake off to the right, and the controller gives us the call I’d heard so many times before: “three quarter mile, call the ball.”
Which is where I look up and see the ship, pick up the meatball, call paddles and continue on to trap aboard the big grey boat.

Didn’t happen that way, though.
I look up, we pop out of the overcast, and I look ahead at nothing but the deep blue sea! What the…!
Joe comes up on the ICS and says there is a carrier over here and I look to the right to see the Connie, we are maybe a quarter to half a mile left abeam the ship. Well sonovagun, that’s what the radar guy meant about “not precisely on course.” Joe’s first look at the back end of the boat didn’t ‘zackly turn out the way I intended. Nice look at the side, though.
No chance to save this approach, it’s a go around, add the power and suck the gear up to get back in the pattern, go downwind, and try again.
Wonder what Joe’s thinking over there? Wonder what the LSO thinks of my aviation skills? Bet he’s never seen a jet at the 180 going the wrong way…
Back with the controller again, now I’m getting proactive and asking questions. Can you adjust the radar? We were waaaay left of the boat when we broke out of the clouds.
Nope, can’t just change the settings, how about another approach? Hmmm, OK, let’s try again. I tell Joe my game plan, we will fly the approach to the right and see what happens.
That’s what we did, at about 2 miles from the Connie I made a turn to the right and held it for a handful of potatoes while the controller gave me the “Going slightly right of course, going right of course, going well right of course” litany. Rolled back on to the ship’s heading when I couldn’t stand it anymore and kept going with the “well right of course” callout coming over and over.
Got to the “three quarter mile…” call and we popped out of the clag with the Connie darn near dead ahead! Woo hoo, this is too good!
Joe is struck silent at this point, I make the ball call, on glideslope and correcting to centerline.
“Roger Ball”, comes the welcome response, followed by “Wave it off, foul deck.”
Fill in the language here for me. You can match my words but not exceed them, I’m sure. #$%^$ and @#*& apply. Full power, back into the overcast, downwind again. Joe talks to the controller. Now I’m silent.
Again the approach, again the right turn at 2 miles, again we hold well right of course all the way down.
Pop out of the clouds right where we should be. Good start, call the ball, deck is clear. “Roger Ball.”
Fly the ball all the way, keep it in the center, watch the line up, paddles has nothing to say. Bam, hit the deck, full power, wait for the deceleration, and…we accelerate down the deck and take off again as paddles tells me what I already know: “Bolter bolter bolter.”
Well, poop. The hook skipped over the 3 and 4 wires. You may match my words once again but surely cannot exceed them. Only one bolter, the LSO doesn’t need to repeat himself, I mutter.
Wonder what Joe’s thinking over there?
Again the trek downwind, again the approach, again the right turn at 2 miles, again we hold well right of course all the way down.
Pop out of the clouds right where we should be. Good start, call the ball, deck is clear. “Roger Ball.”
This time we hit the deck and are slammed against our restraints. Huzzah!

Joe has his first trap.

The wire pulls us back, the taxi director in front gives the hook up signal, I flip the living room switch to the off position and push the hook retract button. It all works. Joe folds the wings.
The deck is alive with moving planes and people, we are directed to a tie down spot in front of the bridge and shut down. Joe waits at the base of his boarding ladder for me to come get him. I guide him through the jet blasts and whirling props to a ladder that takes us below the flight deck.
Once below, we stop and take our helmets off. Joe is a sweaty mess, and so am I. He looks at me with a big grin and says, “That was amazing! Is it always like that?”
Once in a lifetime you are handed a straight line.  Joe just gave me mine.
“No, Joe,” I said. “Sometimes it gets exciting.”

The Switch

It was a morning in February of ’77, I remember it well for all the unusual things that happened that day, starting with the fact that my carrier, the Constellation, and my A-6 squadron had left San Diego without me.
Seems that there was a broken KA-6D, a tanker version of the A-6, sitting on the ramp at North Island awaiting repair, and my squadron skipper assigned me to sit with the plane until it was fixed. Why the plane was not on the Connie already along with the rest of the squadron was never addressed and I viewed the assignment as a chance for another trap. Carrier pilots are greedy like that.
Oh, and another thing, says the skipper, there’s a new B/N that just joined the squadron, Joe is his name, we pulled him out of the RAG before he had any CQ, so bring him up to speed with the full carrier ops brief while you are waiting on the jet.
There are two ways to look at having a complete FNG in the cockpit going to the boat for the first time, I chose to view taking a new B/N to the boat for the first time ever in his career as a treat and a privilege. Joe would get the best brief I could give and his first look at the back end of the Connie would be fun for both of us.
So the Connie has gone to sea and we–Joe and I–will catch up with her today. I meet Joe for the first time in the ramp ops spaces, he was cheery, enthusiastic, and attentive. Leaving ATC behind and getting into the pattern at an aircraft carrier is a whole new world, the lingo is all new, the landing pattern is different, the tempo is stepped up greatly. There was a lot to pass on to Joe, he was expected to handle the radio comm for the entire flight and he was busy taking notes as we briefed. We also had to go over the nuances of the systems on his side of the airplane. Joe had been flying A-6E’s in the RAG going through his training. The B/N’s side of the A-6E is a plethora of switches and knobs, an inertial nav system, a radar system, an attack computer, and other things I could only speculate about, me being just the driver of such a vehicle.
However, the tanker A-6 was a different story, I knew all about Joe’s side of this airplane. His panel was a blank grey expanse suitable for post it notes and doodling, except for an 8 day u wind it clock.
Then the maintenance Chief comes in to let us know what is going on with the tanker sitting out on the ramp.
Seems that the problem is with the tail hook, he says, there is a short in the system somewhere. What happens is when the hook handle is pulled in the cockpit the hook extends to the proper position and then immediately retracts again.
The Chief now has my full attention, it would be really good to have a tail hook that works to land on the boat. Joe is paying even more attention to the Chief than he did me.
The Chief went on to explain that the problem lies with a tiny switch behind the hook release handle that controls the hook lift circuit. The switch is broken and we don’t have any available here, says the chief, so we’ve had to “make do” with some other parts.
What other parts, I ask.
Well sir, Mr. B, says the Chief, I made a quick trip to the Base Exchange and got a switch that will do the job. You’ll see it when you get out to the jet, says he as he walks out the door. Your jet is ready when you are.
Joe and I finish up the brief, gather up our gear, and walk out to the jet. Joe goes up the steps on his side of the airplane to settle in while I do the walk around, and then I step up to strap in on my side.
I get to the cockpit and sit down. Joe is staring at the panel in front of him.
There, next to the 8 day u wind it clock, is an ivory wall switch like you might see in any room of your house, complete with matching cover plate. Two white wires come out from behind the top of the plate and wind their way up the panel, behind the glare shield, then down between the instruments and disappear behind the hook release handle.
The Chief is right behind me at the top of my boarding ladder and he leans in to explain what we are seeing. Mr. B, we didn’t have time to check the circuit properly, so you’ll have to start up and we’ll see which position of the switch makes things work right, says he.
You’re kidding, I said. Got to be kidding.
Nope, says the Chief with a smile, go with me on this.
And descends the ladder.
I decide to go with the Chief on this, what the heck. The ship is getting farther out to sea every minute, let’s get started, Joe.
We run the checklists, put power and air to the jet and start the engines. Everything looks good, I give the Chief the signal to disconnect the power and air, after that we are ready to check the hook operation.
The Chief signals drop the hook. I pull the handle and there is a dull thump way behind me, followed by another dull thump. The Chief shakes his head and pantomimes that the hook went down and then immediately retracted. He makes a gesture with his right hand as though he is turning the lights on in his living room.
I look at the wall switch, which is in the “off” (down) position. I flip it to the “on” (up) position and nod to the Chief. He gives me the hook down signal.
I pull the handle. There is a single thump.
The Chief smiles.
He gives me the hook up signal. I push the retract button and look at the Chief. He shakes his head and motions that the hook is still down.
I put the switch to the “off” position and push the button. There is a faint thump and the Chief smiles and gives me a thumbs up.
We go through this routine a couple of more times and confirm that in order to make the logic of the thing work the wall switch must be in the “on” position to drop the hook and in the “off” position to raise the hook.
I then take out the grease pencil I have in my shoulder pocket and mark “DOWN” on the panel next to the switch in the “on” position. And then next to the “off” position I write “UP”.
Then I give the Chief the thumbs up and tell Joe to call ground control and tell them we are ready to taxi for takeoff.
No response. Joe? Joe?
He’s still sitting there, staring at the ivory wall switch, wondering how it is that his first operational day in the world’s mightiest nuclear navy could start out with base exchange parts and grease pencil instructions.
Little did either of us know that the day was going to be full of the unexpected.
But that’s another story.

Satchel wasn’t a fighter pilot

“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

Satchel Paige, the famous pitcher and Baseball Hall of Fame member, said that. Funny statement from a ground pounder.

Not so humorous for a fighter pilot. What might be gaining on a fighter pilot is something that wants to kill him.
“Check six” means look behind you. Frequently. The pilot in the cockpit with the adversary in front of him will be the victor, the one with the adversary or the missile behind him will be the victim. Always.

The F-35 Lightning II has more problems, besides the MSRP.  “Check six” is an issue.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130306/DEFREG02/303060011/F-35-Report-Warns-Visibility-Risks-Other-Dangers

Aside from the smile generated when reading that the Lightning has problems with lightning, the visibility thing is serious. Here’s a look at what the issue is:

F-16 Cockpit looking aft

F-18 Cockpit looking aft

Turn around and look behind you in either of these fighters and what do you see? Everything!

Now take a look at some other cockpits.

Here’s a couple of Aussie pilots in their F-111. The F-111 was at one time a candidate for the U.S. Navy as a fighter.

Note the rearward visibility in the F-111. Nil. Zilch. Bulkhead. Thank goodness the Navy had some sense and dumped the F-111 as a fighter and opted for the F-14.

Here’s a rearward looking photo in an F-14. Note that the carrier cannot sneak up on the Tomcat easily.

How does the F-35 stack up?

Hmmm. Another bulkhead behind the pilot, just like the F-111.

The Pentagon report included this sentence: “Unlike legacy aircraft such as the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18, enhanced cockpit visibility was not designed into the F-35.”

This is where I ran out of words and simply sighed.

We meet the F-14

There we were at Fallon again, on one of the endless dets before actually going to sea. The earth around NAS Fallon has to be the richest iron earth in the world, what with all the practice bombs and occasionally real bombs being rained down on the various targets over and over again until the bombers get it right or too close to really matter any more.
We practiced section flights, then division flights, then threw in all the attack guys (A-7′s and A-6′s), then made our way up the learning curve to a full blown strike, with the attack pukes, fighter guys (F-14′s), recce dudes (the RF-8′s), and the EA-6B’s on top with the E-2′s helping us out. Baby steps to elephant steps, one bomb at a time.
The baby steps included some basics that I didn’t think about until my name showed up on the skeds along with Tom, my trusty B/N, for a tanker launch. Single tanker, it says, brief with F-14 before launch. What was this all about? A few questions later we learned that there was an F-14 driver in one of the two F-14 outfits in the air wing that needed to learn how to tank, and we, Tom and I, were going to brief the F-14 guy on the tanker procedures, take off, meet him overhead the NAS, and teach, no, that’s not it, fly a stable tanker pattern while the fellow attacks the air refueling drogue. Piece of cake, suitable for a j/o and below. Presto, the assignment is all mine.
So we meet with the F-14 crew, I can’t recall either of the names here, but I’ll call the front seater Rick. Rick was the guy, somehow he’d gotten through all the RAG training without plugging into the tanker. Never done it.
The brief was more about where to find the tanker around the ship and the hand signals utilized to start the in flight refueling once joined up on the tanker. Normally around the ship everything is done with the ship’s heading as the reference point. Picture the bow of the carrier as pointing to twelve o’clock, the port side of the boat would be 9 o’clock, and so forth. When a fighter gets airborne his first radio call is “Tanker Posit.” The tanker is circling the ship counterclockwise at a certain distance and altitude. A succinct “three o’clock” reply from the tanker tells the fighter all he needs to know to locate the tanker.
For this flight we decided to use the runway heading for today, runway 31, as the bow of the simulated ship, and Tom and I would be circling Fallon at 12,000′ at a 10 mile radius. We briefed all that we needed to brief, the F-14 was going to be airborne before us and doing something else for a while, then return to Fallon and get a few practice plugs.
Tom and I lolly gagged a bit before manning up and getting in the air to give the F-14 time to finish whatever it was he had to do. Bear in mind here that the F-14 Tomcat was brand new to the fleet. Tom and I had watched the turkeys take off and land on occasion, I had even watched one crash (that’s a really good tale all by itself, no one was hurt and boy was I close to the scene). We had no idea of the big machine’s capabilities or maneuverability.
We were about to learn.
A leisurely man up and unhurried takeoff ensued and we began our orbit about the NAS, 12,000′ and 250 knots, left hand turns. Counterclockwise. Like we briefed. The standard.
A few orbits of the field and Rick comes up on the radio with the magic words: “Tanker posit.”
“One o’clock” was Tom’s reply, he was working the radios and we were not quite directly ahead of runway 31.
After a few moments delay Rick called us in sight. Said he’d be on our wing shortly. I asked him where he was as I looked over my left shoulder and didn’t see anything.
“I’m at your eleven” was the reply. I looked forward and was surprised to see an F-14 a few miles ahead to my left going the wrong way, clockwise.

Fighter pilots, they have big watches but have no idea how they work.

I called him in sight and suggested that he pitch out and come back around to join on us from behind, as was the usual.
“Nah, we’ve got it” came the reply.
I started to get a little bit edgy at this moment, what was this guy going to do, fer cryinoutloud? What is going to happen next?
We watched as the turkey grew larger and larger, he was about a quarter mile or so offset left of our nose and a couple of miles away. He came closer and closer going the wrong way and just when I was about to key the mike and say something Rick made his move. He rolled into a 90 degree bank with his nose pointed straight at our KA-6D and pulled back on the stick.
The swing wings on the mighty turkey spread out, his nose kept tracking on our nose, great quantities of vapor appeared over his wings. The F-14 put on some serious G’s, more than I thought any airplane could do in a rational airplane world. It was absolutely mind numbing to watch. The damn big jet was pivoting about a point, I swear.
Any sound effects attached to such an arrival would be akin to Robert Mitchum’s moonshine running car screeching to an untimely death.
But no death in this story.  Rick, his backseater, and this great big jet came out of this incredible maneuver wings level, 250 knots, about a wingspan or so off to our left.
I was speechless.
Tom, however, was not. He summed up all we had seen with just a few short words over the ICS.
“Hemorrhoids,” he said. “The man has got to have hemorrhoids.”

The Military, an equal opportunity employer

Going out on a limb here, might lose my publish permit, but I’m ready to rant.

Let’s talk about the women in combat thing. Our current leadership says we gotta have equality in everything . Wimmin on the front line, hauling’ the big pack and the 50 cal. Draggin’ the wounded out of harm’s way in spite of the smaller frame and muscle mass wimmin have. Being a grunt. One of the men guys troops.

Oh yeah. Let’s model all of society that way.

I’m waiting to see the NFL go 50% women.
Ban the women’s professional basketball league.
Pro baseball needs to be half women. “Batting clean up, number 7, Jennnny Parker!”
Why isn’t the White House staff half women?

How many female lumberjacks are there?

Push the parameters more, why isn’t the NBA an equal opportunity employer and why hasn’t the EEO gone after the NBA? The NBA is 95% black at present, a thirteen man roster should be, to reflect the makeup of the U.S. population like our government wants the military to be, 10 whites, one black, a Latino, and one whatever.  Half of those should be women. One should be gay. Or whatever. Where’s the government activism on the basketball court?

Why isn’t the Prez playing half court with women?

Just askin’.

Moe and Larry take a cat shot

2012 was a grim year for all of us. It follows that 2013 has to improve. Let’s get started…

Why it is that one “takes” a cat shot is beyond me. Could be that the crew has no choice once the cat fires, you have to take it because there is nothing else you can do whilst the cat is pushing the airplane up to speed. Gives a real meaning to the phrase “Along for the ride.”

Here’s a look at the airspeed indicator in an EA-6B during a cat shot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1K6az_GLlU

The video is taken on a night launch, you can bet the front seaters have their eyes glued to that indicator as their flight begins. The best way I can describe a cat shot to the uninitiated is this: Imagine yourself in a VW bug sitting at a red light on the boulevard.  The light turns green, you lift your foot off the brake to press on the gas, and at that exact moment a MACK TRUCK doing 160 miles an hour rams your Beetle from behind. There you have it. A rough approximation of a cat shot.

Now you have an idea what it’s like as I go on with this narrative. Larry (my B/N will be Larry) and I (I’ll be Moe) were first cruise guys in our A-6 squadron. We weren’t really rookies in the full sense of the word, we’d been with the squadron a while and suffered through REFTRA on the Connie for months on end. REFTRA means the ship does a lot of drills and training while most of the air wing sits on its collective butt for weeks on end.

Now we were at sea and the training stuff was behind us, the ship and air wing was getting up to tempo for a WestPac cruise and there were lots of opportunities to bag some cats and traps. Larry and I had done our share and were getting comfortable in the A-6E and working around the boat.

So one day our names show up on the skeds for a flight in the KA-6D, one of our squadron’s 5 tankers. Nothing new here, we had flown the tankers before through CARQUALS and done our share of penance in a left turn orbit about the ship. Even the A-6E’s were tankers as soon as a buddy store was installed on the centerline station, which was a frequent event. But this time was going to be different for a couple of reasons.

First of all, none of our flights had ever been at a full load. Most of the time we shot off the front end to come back around and bag a trap or two, so we didn’t have a full load of fuel or weapons. This time, the tanker was full of fuel. Instead of a launch at around 36,000 pounds gross weight we were going to weigh in at something like 58,000 pounds for the launch.

Here’s where I confess that I’m not a rocket surgeon.  I was a business major in college, and somehow all that mass, inertia, energy, acceleration stuff never found a place in my unscientific brain to roost. To me, this cat shot was going to be just like all the others Larry and I had been through. Those of you reading this who have a science or physics background can figure out that the energy to blast 58,000 pounds down the cat track has got to be a whale of a lot more than the energy needed for the 36,000 pound flying machine.

Larry and I were oblivious to this fact. And we were going to try something different on this launch which, in hindsight (ain’t hindsight great?), was not exactly the right time to try it.

We were going to launch seated upright. Not with our heads against the headrest, as we had done all the time, but leaning forward slightly and counting on our manly man neck muscles to keep us off the headrest and looking cool. The F-14 guys did it all the time! What we didn’t know is that the geometry of the F-14 was different on the cat, the nose compressed down for launch and the force vector was a little down and back, not straight back, so yes, they could look cool on the cat stroke and stay upright.

Larry and I also forgot to consider that fighter pilots have considerable less brain matter than attack pilots, which helped them and hindered us in our efforts to stay upright. Could be a valid observation…

All righty then, we taxi onto the cat, give a thumbs up to the 58,000 pounds on the weight board, feel the nose drop over the shuttle, feel the cat take tension. Throttles to the max, check the gauges and flight controls, salute the catapult officer and brace yourself, Larry, here we go. With our heads off the headrests.

One potato, two potato, and Ka Wham. No, more like KA WHAM! Cripes, what an instant physics lesson…

The boot in the keester was way past what we were used to, waaaay more than before.

And, because Moe and Larry were being cool and didn’t have their precious brain pans tucked up tight against the headrest, several things happened all at once.

Moe’s head (that would be my head) slapped back against the headrest tout de suite. On the short trip to the point of impact my helmet rotated a little bit aft.

This little rotation and impact unlocked the dark sun visor which I thought was down and locked tight. The visor rotated up out of sight.

Moe’s oxygen mask, which does have some weight to it, also moved a bit on his sweaty face.  OK, more than a bit. The whole dang thing, which is attached to the helmet on both sides with a fitting just below the ears, rotated with the helmet and smartly changed position from over the mouth, nose, and chin to over the nose and eyes. Caramba!

There is no way I can reach up and adjust anything during the cat stroke, remember I’m just “along for the ride” at this point. And totally blind.

So Moe (me) had to wait until the end of the cat stroke before reaching up with one hand, then both, to rip off his mask, which didn’t want to simply slide back in place over the chin, and then frantically grab the stick and assess where the airplane was in relation to the deep blue sea.

Grumman designed it all nicely, the airplane had rotated off the cat just like it always did, we were climbing, wings level.

And I could see Larry out of the corner of my eye, flailing about, trying to get his mask off his eyes and nose.

Ah, yes, we were manly men and ever so cool.

Not.

“This is going to be bad.”

The carrier aviation world is full of shortened names and numbers. Lex has taught us that an F-18 Hornet might be referred to as a Bug. An E-2 Hawkeye is always a Hummer, an A-7 Corsair was a SLUF, the venerable S2F, when it was around, was a Stoof. The USS Constellation was the Connie, the USS Saratoga was simply the Sara. The aircraft tail number 111 was Triple Sticks, tail number 500 was Double Nuts, and so forth. The Air Force did the same. A B-52 Stratofortress is just a BUFF, the F-105 Thunderchief was a Thud, and the A-7D was, well, still a SLUF. I even remember the Connie (CV-64), when tied up at the pier, being referred to as “Building 64″, just another structure at North Island.
There was an F-14 on the Connie back when I was there, the tail number was 111, and I have a vivid memory of that particular Triple Sticks.
We were launching off the waist cats to start the day. Ask the typical landlubber where aircraft launch off an aircraft carrier and most all of them will tell you that the aircraft launch off the front end, the bow.
Not so fast, landlubber. The Connie, like all modern carriers, had 4 catapults, 2 on the front end that most people are familiar with, and 2 more waist cats on the port side. I guess the name “waist cat” comes from the fact that the catapults are just about where the waist of the ship would be if you were looking at it from above. Launching from the waist cats is not unusual, particularly on the first launch of the day when there are no aircraft to recover and the landing area is not needed. When you launch off the waist cat you become airborne at the same place you would be going off the end of the landing area if you boltered.
Triple Sticks was in front of us on the #4 cat, the one farthest port of all the cats. (Nautical lesson here: the only way I finally figured out port and starboard and which was left and which was right was that port and left have the same number of letters and are the same.  Starboard is the other way.)
Our A-6 was ready to go, we were the second plane to launch that morning, Triple Sticks was fully configured. The JBD came up in front of us, and my bombardier and I watched as the pilot of the big F-14 got the runup signal and advanced the throttles. Things looked good, and Triple Sticks pushed the power up more. Both afterburners lit.
We had the best seat in the house.  The roar is intense and you can feel it even with the jet blast deflector between you and the wicked exhaust.
The cat officer checked everywhere, got a thumbs up from all the observers around the fighter, dropped to one knee and touched the deck with his extended arm, the launch signal. Buttons were pushed on the deck edge and with a sudden jerk the double tailed fighter accelerated down the deck and the JBD began to drop back into the deck to make room for our launch.
But all was not well with Triple Sticks. About halfway down the cat stroke the bright flame from the afterburner on the starboard engine disappeared.

Burner blowout.

Yikes.

As I learned later, the considerable distance between the two engines on the F-14 combined with a huge difference in power when one engine is in afterburner and the other is not makes for an instant control problem. In this case, with the right engine putting out far less power than the left engine, the airplane wants to and will go to the right. Dramatically so.
Which is what happened the moment Triple Sticks left the deck.
From our perspective the view went from a tail on aspect of an F-14 to a side view. Time stopped. The plane seemed to be suspended for an unbelievable length of time over the end of the cat. Pointed at the bow.
A bow absolutely packed with parked aircraft, 2 squadrons of A-7′s and a squadron of A-6′s.
I do remember thinking the F-14 was going to stall and tumble into the pack.
Self says to me: “This is going to be bad. Really bad.”
Then, in rapid fire succession, things happened. I saw spoilers pop up on the left wing, both rudders went left, and the the bright flame on the left engine went out.
The pilot had reduced power on the left engine to equalize the thrust.
Triple Sticks’ nose swung back to the left, we again saw both exhausts, and then bam bam, both afterburners relit and stayed relit.
The F-14 accelerated ahead, the landing gear came up, and the jet started a climb.
I started to breathe again, and my B/N and I both had the same two words to describe what we had just seen, something to do with things that are blessed and things that are brown and smell.  We both commented about how insanely cool the F-14 driver had to be to pull off what we had just seen.
The cat crew turned to face us and we were given the hand signals to taxi forward and get ready to launch. Things went back to normal that quickly. Somewhere ahead of the ship Triple Sticks was fast becoming a small dot against the clouds, accelerating up and away.
The Air Boss couldn’t stand it any more. He had to ask, breaking radio silence.
“Triple Sticks, are you OK?”
The response got us all laughing.
“I am now!” came the voice over the radio.
The voice was not the calm, cool, nerves of steel and cojones of brass voice we expected. It sounded a lot like the owner of the voice had been breathing helium and had transformed into Tweety Bird.
Adrenalin overdose can do that for you.
We were still chuckling about what we had seen and then heard when the cat fired and we were on our way as well.