Neptunus Lex

Training Command CQ aboard the USS Lexington, AVT-16, back in the late 80’s. The Lady Lex - as contrasted to your correspondent - was a wee, bitty thing with old fashioned equipment: A catapult that was “instant on” - none of your gradually increasing acceleration aboard the Lex - and arresting gear that required due […]

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Obviously the military places great store in obeying the orders of properly constituted authority - we can’t very well go around having a council of war at every different level once the whistle blows. But for all things there is a time, and for every rule an exception.
When I was a lieutenant I had a […]

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Turbojet engines like the one installed in the A-4 Skyhawk series typically run at about 33,000 RPM or so when firewalled - what we call “mil” power, or military rated thrust. They idle at around 61-64% of that speed on deck and a few percentage points higher in flight due to the “ram” effect of […]

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The T-2 Buckeye was not a particularly prepossessing machine, but it was a damned good basic jet trainer.

It had wide landing gear configuration for safe taxi on the ground, and the straight wings made it reliable and predictable in both up and away flight and the landing configuration. Two side-by-side engines gave you redundancy while […]

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When I was an adversary pilot in Key West, we’d get the chance to work with just about all of the east coast Hornet squadrons, a fair number of Tomcat folks and reservists from pretty much everywhere. We put the visiting squadrons through a two-week course of instruction: Academics in the morning for most of […]

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I’ve told the story before of the “mother of all sandstorms” that overcame my ship one night in March, 2003. And I’ve written about being struck by lightning while trying to get some gas off an S-3 tanker.
Here’s how these kinds of stories look from the other side.

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Fleet operations in the Southern California op-area during the late 80’s, and your humble scribe was on the LSO platform, basking in the summer sun and topping it the grandee, on account of the pickle which he held in hand.
(And may I add parenthetically that, if you yourself, gentle reader, were to go a-Googling for […]

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Pictures of Arleigh Burkes refueling Russian Federation destroyers brings back memories that even in the bad old days, we still managed to have some fun. I’ve written before about the Bear Box and Gate Guard missions but may have failed to share a story I heard about that occurred during one ship’s transit through.
This particular ship was […]

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It is often said in mult-seat aviation that you should never fly in the same cockpit with someone braver than yourself. A pilot should be a little bit afraid. We are but soft and vulernerable creatures: Our evolution has not kept pace with our technology, we were never meant to move through space at such enormous speeds. Our craft are […]

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Every job has its aggravations of course, but apart from specialized jobs within the services, firefighters and police, there are few, I think that require the daily mastery of physical fear. Carrier aviation certainly does, at least in the beginning when an aviator is first building the shell of self-confidence to hermetically surround and enclose his […]

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