Neptunus Lex

Now, for something a little bit lighter, here’s what’s bouncing around the service pipes:

“At this Command, we have written in large, black letters: DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on the back of our security badges.” Maj (CENTCOM)

“‘Leaning forward’ is really just the first phase of ‘falling on your face.’” Marine Col (MARFOREUR)

“I am so far down the food chain that I’ve got plankton bites on my butt.”

“None of us is as dumb as all of us.” Excerpted from a brief (EUCOM)

“We’re from the nuke shop, sir. We’re the crazy aunt in the closet that nobody likes to talk about …” Lt Col (EUCOM) in briefings

“Things are looking up for us here. In fact, Papua-New Guinea is thinking of offering two platoons: one of Infantry (headhunters) and one
of engineers (hut builders). They want to eat any Iraqis they kill. We’ve got no issues with that, but State is being anal about it.” LT
(JS) on OIF coalition-building.

“The chance of success in these talks is the same as the number of “R’s” in ‘fat chance…’” GS-15 (SHAPE)

“His knowledge on that topic is only power point deep…” MAJ (JS)

“Ya know, in this Command, if the world were supposed to end tomorrow, it would still happen behind schedule.” CWO4 (EUCOM)

“We are condemned men who are chained and will row in place until we rot.” LtCol (CENTCOM) on life at his Command

“Right now we’re pretty much the ham in a bad ham sandwich…” GO/FO (EUCOM)

“If we wait until the last minute to do it, it’ll only take a minute.” MAJ(EUCOM)

“The only reason that anything ever gets done is because there are pockets of competence in every command. The key is to find them … and then exploit the hell out of ‘em.” CDR (CENTCOM)

“I may be slow, but I do poor work…” MAJ (USAREUR)

“Cynicism is the smoke that rises from the ashes of burned out dreams.” Maj (CENTCOM) on the daily thrashings delivered to AOs at his Command.

“WE are the reason that Rumsfeld hates us…” LTC (EUCOM) doing some standard, Army self-flagellation

“Working with Hungary is like watching a bad comedy set on auto repeat…” LCDR (EUCOM)

“I finally figured out that when a Turkish officer tells you, “Its no problem,” he means, for him.” Maj (EUCOM)

“Never in the history of the US Armed Forces have so many done so much for so few…” MAJ (Task Force Warrior) on the “success” of the Free Iraqi Forces (FIF) Training Program, where 1100 Army troops trained 77 Iraqi exiles at the cost of, well, …way too much…

“Our days are spent trying to get some poor, unsuspecting third world country to pony up to spending a year in a sweltering desert, full of pissed off Arabs who would rather shave the back of their legs with a cheese grater than submit to foreign occupation by a country for whom they have nothing but contempt.” LTC (JS) on the joys of coalition building

“I guess the next thing they’ll ask for is 300 US citizens with Hungarian last names to send to Iraq…” MAJ (JS) on the often-frustrating process of building the Iraqi coalition for Phase IV
“Between us girls, would it help to clarify the issue if you knew that Hungary is land-locked?” CDR to MAJ (EUCOM) on why a deployment from Hungary is likely to proceed by air vice sea

“So, what do you wanna do?”…”I dunno, what do YOU wanna do?”…”I dunno, what do YOU wanna do?,” etc. — COL (DIA) describing the way OUSD(P) develops and implements their strategies.

“I’ll be right back. I have to go pound my nuts flat…” Lt Col (EUCOM) after being assigned a difficult tasker

“I guess this is the wrong power cord for the computer, huh?” LtCol (EUCOM) after the smoke cleared from plugging his 110V computer into a 220V outlet

“OK, this is too stupid for words.” LTC (JS)

“When you get right up to the line that you’re not supposed to cross, the only person in front of you will be me!” CDR (CENTCOM) on his view of the value of being politically correct in today’s military

“There’s nothing wrong with crossing that line a little bit, it’s jumping over it buck naked that will probably get you in trouble…” Lt Col (EUCOM) responding to the above.

“Never pet a burning dog.” LTC (Tennessee National Guard)

“Ah, the joys of Paris: a unique chance to swill warm wine and be mesmerized by the dank ambrosia of unkempt armpits…” LCDR (NAVEUR) [obviously this guy has been to the wrong parts of Paris…]

“‘Status quo,’ as you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in…’” Attributed to former President Ronald Reagan

“We are now past the good idea cutoff point…” MAJ (JS) on the fact that somebody always tries to “fine tune” a COA with more “good ideas”

“Nobody ever said you had to be smart to make 0-6.” Col (EUCOM)

“I haven’t complied with a darn thing and nothing bad has happened to me yet.”

“Whatever happened to good old-fashioned military leadership? Just task the first two people you see.”

“Accuracy and attention to detail take a certain amount of time.”

“I seem to be rapidly approaching the apex of my mediocre career.” MAJ (JS)

“Much work remains to be done before we can announce our total failure to make any progress.”

“It’s not a lot of work unless you have to do it.” LTC (EUCOM)

“Creating smoking holes (with bombs) gives our lives meaning and enhances our manliness.” LTC (EUCOM) at a CT conference

“Eventually, we have to ‘make nice’ with the French, although, since I’m new in my job, I have every expectation that I’ll be contradicted.” DOS rep at a Counter Terrorism Conference

“Everyone should have an equal chance, but not everyone is equal.”

“You can get drunk enough to do most anything, but you have to realize going in that there are some things that, once you sober up and realize what you have done, will lead you to either grab a 12-gauge or stay drunk for the rest of your life.”

“Once you accept that a dog is a dog, you can’t get upset when it barks.” Lt Col (USSOCOM)

“That guy just won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.” MAJ (EUCOM)

“Let’s just call Lessons Learned what they really are: institutionalized scab picking.”

“I can describe what it feels like being a Staff Officer in two words: distilled pain.” CDR (NAVEUR)

“When all else fails, simply revel in the absurdity of it all.” LCDR (CENTCOM)

“Never attribute to malice that which can be ascribed to sheer stupidity.” LTC (CENTCOM)

And finally, my own personal favorite:

“CENTCOM - the ‘L’ is for ‘leadership.’ “

Got some pics back. To go with the speech, I guess.

A lovely day aboard ex-USS Midway. My goram sword came out of the spindle just as I took the podium and started to pontificate. I had an awkward moment trying to put it all to rights, before finally giving up, unsnapping it, and laying it across the lectern. The sour lemon face you see below is the realization that I’m about to give a speech to a bunch of chief petty officers out of uniform…

After that the Master Chief got his medal. Promptly turned around and gave it to the missus. Which is something I’ve got to remember to do, when it’s my go.

As to the speech itself? Below the fold, if it do ya…

(more…)

Even now, all these years later, it’s hard for me to say goodbye to the F-14. Not because I’ll miss it all that much - I think I’ve made my feelings clear on that score - but because momma always told me that if I couldn’t say anything nice, then I oughtn’t to say anything at all.

Now, many’s the occasional reader who will submit to you that that rule has been honored in these pages more often in the breach than in the observance, and I’ll concede the point up front.

Still, there are many out there who, when they think of naval aviation - if they think of it at all - think of the movie Top Gun, what with its homoerotic shower scenes between Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and the patent absurdity of aircraft in flat spins, simultaneously heading out to sea. A depressing number of my fellow citizens express shock to discover that the Navy actually flies airplanes.

“Airplanes?” they might cry, “The Navy flies airplanes?”

 ”Only too true,” I would regretfully reply, deeply sorry to shatter such fundamental and deeply held illusions: ”Only think of the word ‘aircraft carrier,’ and let your imaginative associations run free…”

There’s no question that Tomcat crews loved their mount; thick, cross-grained and ungainly a brute as she might otherwise appear. Whether or not that love was somehow tied up in their own narcissism is something I’m unqualified to judge. But I will admit, at least, of the possibility.

She carried a lot of gas, to be sure, and would go like a striped-assed baboon when you put her to the spur, which are both advantages in the world of naval aviation on the one hand, and air combat on the other. The old F-14A engines were an unmitigated mess, and I’ve lost count of the fights I had to knock off for compressor stalls - suspiciously, they always seemed to come just before I’d closed to gun range. But once they got the big motors installed, the reliability issue went away, and she didn’t bleed airspeed like a hemophiliac with the Ebola virus in a turning fight, as she was once wont to do. And I’m man enough to admit that an F-14B or D with a LANTIRN pod and a couple of laser guided bombs could make a Hornet pilot’s most intensive labors look like child’s play in comparison.

But her cockpit combined the ruthless efficiency of the Italian bureaucracy with the user friendliness of a Parisian waiter, while in terms of reliability you might well be safer putting your life in the hands of a Tijuana policeman. A hundred mile missile was all to the good, but it was useless without a radar and there were a sufficient number of times a Tomcat somehow managed the consecutive miracles of struggling off the flight deck and making the briefed rendezvous on time, only to check in on my wing reporting “IFF only” to leave the top of my O² mask caked with the salt of my tears. From the outside looking in, a Tomcat crew’s life was one of busy workarounds, pulled circuit breakers and crossed-fingers.

Oh, yes: And bolters. Many, many bolters. At least a first. Landing the airplane at night would be a challenge sufficient to break many a good man down, and it only now occurs to me that the affection some of the F-14 guys had for their bird was not unlike the tragic and affectionate gratitude of a spouse who’s happy that the beatings have finally stopped.

Still, in spite of (or maybe because of) their many trials and tribulations, the F-14 crews formed an unusually solid bond between themselves, threw great “happy to be alive” parties and were generally fun to be around, taken in small doses. They’re welcome to the Hornet ranks, so long as they pitch their voices civil, and don’t go around taking on airs, says I.

For a different perspective on all this, check Pinch. Who, along with his friends, is getting all weepy and everything.

“If you could look behind the sunglasses of these pilots out here watching this, you’d see a lot of wet eyes,” Cmdr. Mark Black said. “I know that’s why I wore sunglasses today.”

Whatever.

As far as his contention that the Tomcat is the best looking aircraft on the ground or in the air, well he’s at least  half right. Depending, of course, on your point of view.

I’m feeling vaguely dyspeptic and out of sorts in this blogging thing, for all that I had a wonderful bike ride this afternoon up the coast. Carmel Valley to Del Mar, and up that miserable hill. Then down again, through Solana Beach, which soon gave way to Cardiff and then finally Encinitas. At Swami’s in Encinitas I turned around and came back the way I’d gone, to the tune of 23-odd miles or so of a very pleasant day.

So to put it all away and just write something, I thought it’d be fun to share a mini-sea story with you.

Now, I may have mentioned somewhere along the way that a pilot signals his readiness for a night catapult shot by turning on his external lights, usually by means of a pinkie switch outboard on the throttle(s), an “exterior lights master switch.”

It’s important that the switch be located there, since he’ll want to brace the throttle up against the full power stops on the cat shot - the natural tendency would be for the inertia to roll the throttle back to idle as the cat fired otherwise, which would be in so very many ways a lamentable thing to have happen, once flung into the thin insubstantial air.

Which, it must scarcely need be said, is even thinner and more insubstantial at night.

Now, having done all that is necessary to link the jet to the catapult, roger the weight board, finish the take-off checklist and run the engines up to military or even combat-rated power (afterburner), there will still be a number of fairly consequential cockpit tasks to accomplish before actuating the external light switch, signalling that willingness to leave the cold comfort of the carrier deck for the aviator’s natural element. These take only a moment or two to complete, but sometimes that moment or two is just too much to an anxious catapult officer or deck-edge operator.

At least it must be so, since I had the opportunity one dark and storm-tossed night (they are all dark and storm-tossed in the gladitorial halls of aviator memory) to hear this exchange between the S-3 crew but an instant before launched off Catapult 1 into the murk, and the Air Boss, up in his tower:

“Viking off Cat 1, turn your lights on please!”

“Wilco Boss, I’ll turn them on just as soon as I’m ready to go flying.”

Which I’d have loved to have the presence of mind to say something like that, if it had ever happened to me.

What would you do, if, on the night of your rehearsal dinner, with wedding nuptials just around the corner (chronologically speaking) a band of sturdy young men clad all in black and sporting ski masks for to hide their features burst into the Chinese restaurant where you, your betrothed and your several, sundry and assorted friends and family members were dining? And having thus burst in on this charming, almost Rockwellian tableau, the happy band of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells made off with the struggling, squirming, muffled bridegroom? By dint, you know: Of overwhelming physical force?

Taking him, I might add, heavens knows where?

Well, I’ll tell you what one fellow’s friends and families did, on that night that we, the fraternal order of the junior officer protective association (hereinafter referred to as the “JOPA”), crème de la crème and flower of the nation’s youth, made off with our squadron Operations Officer, having burst into his rehearsal dinner all regardless of the fact that we were quite uninvited, unexpected and indeed, (say it!) unwelcome: They let out a collective “Eek!” and then sat quietly in their chairs, frightened nearly to stupefaction by such an unanticipated turn of events.

Which suited our purposes perfectly, the strong desire not to actually hurt anyone warring at all times with the compelling need to take it to The Man on this, his Special Night.

Harv was not merely a representative of the departmental officer’s professional association - or DOPA – although as a lieutenant commander he certainly was that. He was also a hell of a good fellow, for all that he’d earned his call sign by graduating from that last bastion of eastern academic liberalism (Oh, that it were true!) on the Charles River. Destined for eventual carrier command and flag rank, he had the misfortune to arrive in a squadron of experienced young FA-18 lieutenants – look it up in the dictionary between “honest arrogance” and “superabundant ego” – and repeatedly attempt to tell us tales of how it used to be back in the good old A-7 days. Which is precisely as interesting as maybe it sounds, if the sound of hearing tales told about constant-thrust/variable-noise, sewer pipe-looking, single engine mud movers is as boring to you as it was to us.

All of his attempts to inform and educate us about the good old days were met either with scoffing abuse which somehow managed to stay just the proper side of naval discipline (aviation-style – our boundaries being somewhat broader than elsewhere in the service, and subject to more or less continuous testing) or else with something quite approximating a reptilian indifference. But we were silently keeping score, gentle reader, making a list of him and his dinosaur stories. We were keeping account of his transgressions.

And the evening of his rehearsal dinner provided, we thought, the perfect opportunity for a reckoning.

The evening came and our preparations went on apace. Being but callow youths, our exquisitely designed plan amounted to little more than, “Dress up in black, wear a ski mask and let’s go get him.” So when that deed was done and we’d hustled him out to the van, bound hand and foot and working right hard to stop his gob without risking actual suffocation, it occurred to us severally and by degrees that we had thought things through no further than this. This in itself was nothing like sufficient humiliation, and it would never do to just turn him back to his guests. In our discussions while driving around it was clear from the sudden relaxation in his shoulders - not to mention the ferret-like darting of his eyes – that he had finally determined who in fact we were, and was keeping a kind of score on his own account.

Seeking to regain the moral high ground, it occurred to us that it couldn’t hurt to strip him down to a form his maker would recognize him in, and that dark deed was quickly done. In a matter of moments we had a Harvard-educated lieutenant commander bereft of both clothes and dignity, but increasingly garbed in what was to be a rather towering rage.

Off to a country back road we took him, lacking any better plan, discovering a dirt track far away from any chance of discovery by stray passers-by. Out of the van our hero was unceremoniously dumped, and we drove away again giggling, wondering what might become of him, bound, alone and naked on a dirt road in rural California.

Which, the more we thought about it, the worse that idea seemed.

So having driven away just far enough, we turned back around and picked him up again. He was evidently relieved enough to inadvertently encourage us to greater endeavors, and a plan was quickly effected to drive him on the nearby naval air station, where, it was hoped, further inspiration awaited.

This we discovered in the form of an AD-1 Spad happily decorated in our squadron’s colors, a-setting on a pin hard by the front gate. With a length of rope, rudimentary boy scout skills and a lucky toss, we soon had Harv trussed up sailor-fashion and suspended from the Spad’s wing, the better to take pictures of him. Just as this was being affected, base security rolled up with lights flashing and beefy hands on be-pistoled hips. If they were surprised at the sight of a Navy lieutenant commander swinging naked, bound and gagged from a Korean war-era turboprop while surrounded by a group of grinning junior officers they hid it well. “Never to fret,” some one of us offered up, “We’ve permission from the base CO, and anyway this man is getting married.” Which was at least half true, and good enough an explanation for security to return to their vehicle, having warned us all to be careful in the letting of him down.

At last it was done, the man returned to terra firma and re-acquainted with his slops. We generously offered him a trip back to the restaurant, which he generously accepted. Once there we escorted him back to a wedding party which had only just began to bestir themselves, offering our apologies and quietly whispering to himself that if all went according to plan, he’d soon have access to both the photos and the negatives.

And that was the end of the A-7 stories, at least for a while.

(Previously)

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.

Over in Dragon One’s cockpit, the already darkened world outside the Plexiglas canopy went a shade darker as the flight lead’s mind turned within itself, turning over the folds of time layered flat within, sifting through nearly twenty years of flying experience for a solution to this problem – innocuous enough ashore, but potentially uncomfortable in a shipboard environment. Might as well start with the procedures in the flight manual:

“Have you put your external pressurization switch to override yet?”

“No sir, I’ll get that now,” replied the JG looking down and to his left to find the switch. He found that he was starting to get hot again, to sweat as he strained to twist around and see the switch, especially with the night vision devices blocking out all but the peripheries of his vision. The JG grunted, briefly unhappy with himself - you were supposed to be able to know every switch in the cockpit by touch even if blindfolded, and he was almost entirely sure that the pressurization override switch was the middle one in a bank of three switches directly aft of the throttles. But there was also a premium in an emergency on ensuring that the procedures were followed exactly, and many aircraft, even people’s lives had been lost by harried pilots activating the wrong switch when faced with an emergency. He knew that being upset at himself for simple things was a way to make a little problem into a larger one, so he took counsel of his lieutenant friend from earlier that day and put his discomfort in a box. “Skipper, I’m going off goggles,” he announced.

The CO pursed his lips inside his O2 mask for a moment, and as he completed the formation rendezvous, he cast an evaluating glance into his wingman’s cockpit, as though he could somehow see the young man’s face, measure his stress level before shrugging slightly, “Roger that. Step three is to cycle the external pressurization switch from ‘ORIDE’ to ‘NORM’ to ‘ORIDE’ again.”

The only cue that the CO would have as to his wingman’s mental state was the sound of his voice on the UHF radio, but already he was sifting and weighing the options should the tank fail to transfer entirely – the JG would have to take some gas from the overhead tanker into his other external to get within asymmetric landing limits and then stop that gas from transferring. That would put his useable gas “on the ball” at something like 2500 pounds – easily half what he’d normally have, too little to divert ashore with and only one attempt away from a barricade landing, and that for a kid who’s been having trouble getting aboard.

Barricade - the CO mind recoiled at the image of a barricade arrestment for this young man. Even apart from the millions of dollars of damage the barricade netting would do to the fighter, a barricade was truly the landing option of last resort: To affect the landing, the LSO’s would bring a barricade jet aboard almost dangerously low, so low that on a normal landing they’d probably wave him off. Too, since the barricade engine didn’t have the self-centering function of the normal arresting gear, he’d have to be tracking straight down centerline with no drift or else he’d probably go over the side, and with the netting covering his canopy he’d be unable to eject. Finally, he would shut his engines off just prior to landing on the LSO’s “Cut – cut – cut!” call, so it was truly a one-shot deal. No, the CO reflected, a barricade landing was not in any way an acceptable outcome.

Having followed his imagination down that line as far as it would go, the CO briefly turned over the path of least resistance – if the tank wouldn’t transfer, they could just jettison the damn thing into the sea. The JG could tank up to an acceptable landing weight to make up for the lost gas, and he’d just look a little funny coming aboard, with one tank on and one tank gone.

But 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.”

(to be continued…)

Well. It’s official.

I dunno. The Sailors are going to like the new working uniforms I think (although we’re going to have get them some new words to use when complaining about “the khakis”) and the digital cammies look sorta cool. Even if the last thing you want to do if you go over the side and into the ocean is “blend in.”

But I guess it could have been worse.

Hey, Jonboy! First flight in the TA-4 - How do you like it so far?

“Taco,” a SERGRAD (ed.- a recently winged pilot retained as an IP rather than sent to the fleet straightaway) was the instructor in the back. We took off with me in control for my first front seat hop and there was a thump when the gear came up, but I didn’t know if it was a normal thump or excessive.

We went out to the working area to run through the training items and when we reached the part where I was supposed to simulate coming into the break (ed. - a hard, airspeed dissapating turn to downwind) and then dirty up downwind, the nose gear position indicator stayed barber-poled (ed - an “unsafe / not down and locked” indication).

When I raised the gear the barber-pole immediately disappeared while the main gear took some time to come up. We were sharing the working area with another TA-4 from VT-7 so we joined up and he passed me the lead so he could check us out. The nose gear door was open and the strut was visible inside the wheel well, but wasn’t coming out or moving at all when we cycled the gear.

We went through the NATOPS check list and informed base of the problem.

We burned down all the fuel in the dual drop tanks and then proceeded to burn down the fuel in the wing tank. The base crew stripped the short field arresting gear wire from the east west off duty runway while we circled overhead.

With two drop tanks, one on each wing, the NATOPS procedure was to land with the gear up, flaps down and as you can see in the picture, speed brakes open, after all the wing fuel was used to minimize the potential for fire.

Because of the modification to add a back seat to the A-4 frame, the fuselage tank in the TA-4J doesn’t hold a lot of fuel, so once the wing tank is empty, you have a relatively short time period available to land.

TACO did the landing from the back seat. He flared prior to landing and held the aircraft off for a little bit and then settled to the runway.

I had a front row seat for the landing and can still remember watching the big white stripes sliding under the nose of the jet. It reminded me of the beginning of the TV show “The Fugitive.” For a moment I was a little worried that the probe would catch one of the expansion joints and we would pole vault over, but we slowed down pretty quickly.

The drop tanks collapsed, first one and then the other and that is why we ended up just a little sideways and off centerline.

TACO shut the engine down on touchdown so once we stopped the engine was spooling down and we realized we had to unlock and open the canopy before the engine stopped turning or we would not have any hydraulic pressure.

It was a funny feeling stepping out over the side of the cockpit onto the runway. Of course the emergency crews were driving up as we were standing there, and Taco was bouncing up and down with the adrenaline rush. The corpsmen trundled us into the ambulance and off we went to the medical facility for the post mishap examinations.

I called my wife from there to let her know there had been a problem at the field and that I was all right. I was worried she would hear something about me being in a mishap from someone and get worried not knowing what happened.

It turned out that the bolt connecting the shrink link to the strut had snapped from a fatigue crack. It is impossible to see on preflight.

The nose gear strut on the Skyhawk retracts with the wheel going toward the front of the plane and the top of the strut hinged toward the back of the wheel well. As the strut is pulled up, there is a separate connecting rod called the shrink link that compresses’ the strut, pulling the wheel end aft and making the strut shorter as it comes up so it fits in the wheel well.

The bolt that snapped is located right next to the tire.

So the nose gear came all the way up into the wheel well and then the bolt broke and the strut extended straight forward into the bulkhead. They had to drain the hydraulic fluid and vent the gas from the strut and still had to use a breaker bar to pry the nose gear out of the wheel well.

One funny thing about this is that the aircraft sustained much more damage from the wheel strut extending into the forward pressure bulkhead than from the wheels up landing.

A little paint and body work and two new drop tanks would have had this “727″ back in the air. But with the bulkhead damaged, the aircraft could not maintain cabin pressure. This jet became a hangar queen for a few months until that was fixed.

Most of the “interesting” flights I’ve had have been first flights of some sort.

I told you about the first fleet squadron flight on the carrier during workups when the aircraft started rolling backwards toward the side of the boat before the engine was started.

I’ll have to tell you about my first hop in the the A-7E when the pitot tube feed came off halfway down the runway during take off.

Wooo Hooo!!! Lot’s of fun.”

Any landing you can walk away from. Nice work, Jonboy.

Speaking at the retirement ceremony of the finest leader I ever met, my departmental master chief petty officer aboard USS Last Ship. Thirty years of service and the Navy’s senior enlisted air controller. We’re doing the service aboard the USS Midway museum, which should be great, so long as I don’t get any part of my dress whites that isn’t the soles of my shoes in contact with any part of the ship. Don’t care how “decommissioned” she is, she’s still an aircraft carrier and that means grease topside.

The Master Chief is the kind of leader that I wish I could have been, and I hope I’m up to it.

The uniform at least is all rigged up and ready to go:

Wish me well.

(Previously)

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.”

Up and further up into the inky darkness, focused on the airspeed and altitude boxes on the head’s up display, ten degrees nose up pitch at first to capture 300 knots, then 8 degrees nose up as he passed 12,000 feet, now targeting an optimal mach number. The reassuring thrum of the GE F404 motors behind him almost masking the whirr of cockpit cooling fans, the rhythmic surging of the environmental conditioning system, or ECS as it kept pace with the increasing altitude and decreasing outside air pressure.

Between his legs on the horizontal situation indicator – the HSI – he selected the ship’s tactical air navigation set, or TACAN as the steering source and using a toggle switch just to the side of the flat panel display, dialed in a course line of 320 degrees magnetic. His flight lead and squadron CO would be on the 320 radial at 80 miles, waiting for the JG to take station at 30 miles on the same radial and commence their air intercept training runs. A short cycle this evening, only a 1+15 (with no launch to wait for upon return) so no tanking required for this mission. Which, he reflected with a grimace, was really not so very much about tactical air training as it was him landing on the first try back at the end of the flight.

(more…)