Part LIII The End

The JG looked forward in the ready room to see his squadron CO and XO break from a closely whispered conference – his CO looked him in they eye even as the JG tried to answer the questions of his brother JO’s. The old man pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, raised his chin pugnaciously – and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. Nodded at him. Well done.

Turning his smiling face back to his brothers, it was all the young man could do not to weep.

Part XLVII Decision Made

In the CATCC gallery, each of the senior squadron reps sat in the darkness, looking at the naked and anticipatory flight deck on the closed-circuit television, each avoiding eye contact, most of them secretly pleased not to be a part of this decision.

“I want to give him a shot,” the CO repeated.

“Roger that, skipper. I’ll take it to CAG.”

Part XLVI Decision Time

External tanks were rather alarmingly expensive – there were only so many spares in the carrier’s hangar bay – and hurling them into the sea regardless was considered very bad form. Keep that sort of thing up and pretty soon the FA-18Cs were out of the fight. Like most of his breed, the squadron CO was not a “path of least resistance” kind of guy.

“OK, I’m on step 4 now, checklist page E51: Bleed air knob ” Cycle through “Off” to “Norm.”

“Two.”

Part XLV Troubleshooting

There it is: Left external tank nearly empty, 300 pounds of fuel. Right tank completely full – 2300 pounds. Quickly did the math: Two thousand pounds of unusable gas, also meant fourteen thousand foot-pounds of lateral asymmetry. Out of landing limits, or nearly. And a lot less gas than he’d thought he’d had, just a moment ago.

Thought for a moment, keyed the throttle-mounted radio mic switch down, flight admin frequency, just him and his lead: “Dragon one, Dragon two.  I’ve got a right external transfer failure.”

“Dragon one,” came the thoughtful reply.

Part XLIV En route to station, a fuel discrepancy

Committed now he rested his helmet back against the seat box, braced the throttles up against the stops with his left arm, raised his right hand to the canopy rail handle and waited for the shot which came, as it always did, with unexpected, almost unimaginable violence.

In a screeching mist of noise and steam, shaking and bouncing in the cockpit like a rag doll as the jet went from a standstill to 165 MPH in two and a half seconds, he fought against the acceleration to look at his HUD, hoping to see three numbers in the airspeed box. With three numbers he could fly, said a prayer so abbreviated that the only word in it was God and finally she fell off the edge, released by the catapult and he was flying, flying, flying. A good shot.

“311 airborne.”

“311, Departure, roger. Passing angels 2.5 switch Red Crown, check in.”

“311.”

Part XVIII A nugget’s night cat shot

On the bow cats, the lieutenant junior grade saw a yellow-shirted director walk up to his jet, with a single light want pointed up: “Is your jet up?”

The JG took his red-lensed flashlight out of his chest harness, fumbled for a moment before turning it on and then moving it in a rapid circle: “Up jet.” The director responded with an upward thrust of his wand, followed by brushing motions across his forearms: “Off chocks and chains,” followed by crossed wands over his head: “Hold brakes.” The young pilot felt his heart jump in his chest. He’d heard that in the old days, during Vietnam, there had been an experiment wherein the attack pilots were wired to measure their pulse during combat, as a way of determining their stress levels. It had surprised the flight surgeons to discover that, almost to a man, all of the pilots had manifested higher pulse rates during their approach to land aboard the carrier at night than they had during final attack run of a defended target under flares, with the terrain rushing up to meet them as they refined their targeting solutions in 45 degree bomb runs, the altimeter unwinding crazily even as the SAMs and AAA rose up to meet them. He didn’t have any idea how that might have felt, the JG reflected. But he knew that his heart rate had to be at least a hundred and twenty just at the signal to break down the jet’s chocks and chains. Once he started rolling forward, he’d be committed to the cat. Once on the cat, he’d have to launch. Once airborne, he’d have to land. And he hadn’t been landing very well lately. He knew he didn’t have many more chances to prove that he could. You either hack it or you don’t, he thought. Sooner or later, non-hacks get scraped off. Nothing personal. Just business.

A Hornet rattled down Cat-3, afterburners shouting in the darkness. ‘departure, 304 airborne,” said his commanding officer.

“Roger 304, passing angels two-point-five, switch Red Crown, check in.”

“304.”

Part XLII The night launch continues

Bobbing in the wake aft of the enormous jinn which had materialized out of the darkness, hands gripping tight on the gunwales, Farokh gave thanks to God for his unmerited deliverance, checked the compass and once more shaped his course southwest, towards Bahrain. There was a trade to make.

Damn, that was close, thought the squadron CO as he taxied aft. His legs were still shaking on the rudder pedals and it took extra concentration to follow the director’s signals. Finally he was passed off to the Assistant Fly-3 Petty Officer, who’d seen none of what had just transpired up on the bow and was in any case a rather phlegmatic sort. Got to take it easy now, one step at a time, get back on the checklist. It’d be nuts to save oneself from falling into the sea on a heavy roll, only to omit some critical step and meet the same fate off the catapult. Life’s short, he thought, paraphrasing John Wayne, and adding “it’s shorter if you’re stupid.

Part XLI A near miss

“Boats, five short blasts,” the OOD had cried, his voice trembling as the dhow neared a mile, right forward on the bow, almost under the shelf of the bow catapults, almost out of sight. Once out of sight he would not be able to tell which side of the ship the dhow was maneuvering towards, if in fact it was maneuvering. At that point it would all be in God’s hands.

“Bosun’s mate, aye-aye,” replied the BMOW and the sound of the ship’s signal whistle sounding its hoarse cry of emergency and distress brought the ship’s Captain now fully out of his chair, shouting “Officer of the Deck! We need to maneuver the ship!” followed rapidly, too rapidly by, “Aye, Captain – CONN, left full rudder!”

“CONN, aye – Helm, left full rudder!”

“Helm, left full rudder aye!”and spinning of the ship’s great wheel to the left before being countermanded by the Captain himself, “Belay that! Ease your rudder to left ten! Officer of the Deck, what’s the ship’s speed?”

“Ease my rudder to left ten, aye!”

“Twenty knots Captains, winds were light for launch,” the OOD replied, quailing under his CO’s fierce and red-eyed glare: Above 15 knots, use of full rudder was restricted due to heel, but they were in extremis even if aircraft were taxiing and launching. Even as the Helmsman eased his rudder back to ten degrees left the ship dug into the turn, heeling well to starboard, the physics of mass and momentum at war with the two great rudders biting into the frothing sea. In Flight Deck Control the Handler cursed before screaming into the 5MC flight deck announcing system, “Head’s up on the flight deck, turning port, heel to starboard!”

On the bow cat the squadron CO’s heart leapt suddenly into his throat as he felt the ship heel over, port side rising into the air before him as the starboard fell away behind him. He swore violently into his oxygen mask as the throttle setting for taxi power became suddenly insufficient to move forward against the sloping deck – she slowed, she stopped, she started rolling backwards, back towards the parking spot, back towards the deck edge, back towards the invisible, waiting sea.

“Bosun’s Mate of the Watch, sound the collision alarm!” cried the Captain.

Part XL In extremis

“Unknown vessel in vicinity of twenty-eight degrees, forty-two minutes north, fifty degrees, forty-five minutes east, course 190, speed 5 knots, this is a United States Navy warship ten miles off your port bow. I am engaged in flight operations and restricted in my ability to maneuver. Request you contact me on this frequency and alter your course to the southeast to maintain a safe distance, over.”

Down on the flight deck, the CO and his problematic wingman sat in their turning fighters thinking their private thoughts.

Of the drama playing itself out in slow motion on the bridge, they had no knowledge.

Part XXXIX A contact on the bow, and walking for the night go

The Junior Officer of the Deck walked to the port side chair, and with the OOD looking over her shoulder started her report, “Captain, JOOD, I have a contact report.”

“Go ahead.”

“Captain, we’re on course 345 at 12 knots. I have a contact twenty degrees right of the bow at 24,000 yards. Contact has a target angle of five degrees left with a slight right to left drift. Closest point of approach is in 20 minutes at 1500 yards off the left beam. Recommend coming right to course 000 to open the CPA.”

The Captain considered this for a long moment with his eyes still closed before asking, “How long until the next launch?”

“Fifteen minutes, sir.”

“And where are the winds?”

“Um. 340, sir,” she replied, reddening slightly, grateful for the darkness. Altering course to starboard would only bring the contact back to the bow when the carrier turned into the wind for the launch.

A long pause: Reflection? Rebuke?

“Call him.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.”