Pearly Gates sucked in a lung full of the clean-smelling ocean air and gazed at the white wake of the ship. For half a mile behind the carrier, the wake gurgled like a white highway in the brilliant sunshine. In the distance, Pearly could still make out Point Loma and the skyline of San Diego.
The Nimitz was making, he figured, nearly thirty knots. They were steaming in a straight line for the operating area between San Clemente and Santa Catalina islands. In half an hour’s time, when they had reached the area, the carrier would reverse course and turn into the wind. Then the action would begin.
His nuggets would show up, roaring overhead the ship in what he hoped would be a spiffy-looking echelon formation, ready to land aboard.
Sometimes Pearly had to marvel at the way the Navy made everything so complicated. California, for instance. Why the hell did they have to come all the way to the Pacific freaking ocean for this?
It wasn’t as though they didn’t have a perfectly good ocean right there at home, a mere twenty or so miles east of Cecil Field. Off the shoreline of Florida they had plenty of open sea in which to perform the carrier qualification ritual.
But that wasn’t the way the Navy worked. Each of the half dozen or so carriers assigned to the Atlantic fleet were busy with missions deemed more urgent than playing nursemaid to a gaggle of shave-tailed nugget fighter pilots. Three carriers were already committed to the Mediterranean where, should the order be given, they would commence the pulverization of the Bosnian Serb army. The other three were variously pre-occupied with fleet chores, either standing down or working up from some other readiness exercise.
So California it was. The U. S. S. Nimitz was operating in the friendly waters off southern California—and had an open deck.
The logistics of such an operation looked like the supply route for the D-Day invasion. Six F/A-18s had to be ferried to Miramar naval air station in San Diego, which would be the staging base for the fly-out to the ship. A thirty-person maintenance crew had to be hauled by a C-9 military airlifter to North Island naval air station, also in San Diego, three days in advance so they could walk aboard the Nimitz with all their tools, spare parts, and support equipment. Another contingent—LSOs, administrative personnel, and several squadron officers—would be flown out to the ship aboard a twin-engined C-2 COD (Carrier On-board Delivery) aircraft.
All of this so a handful of kids with expensive educations could land their airplanes on a ship.
It was chilly out there, standing in the wind that swept over the flight deck. Pearly was wearing his LSO costume, the same old outfit he always dug out of his locker when he went out to sea for carrier qualification periods. The costume was his talisman. So far, it had brought him—and his students—good luck.
Not that Navy LSOs were superstitious. But they were steeped in ritual and tradition, and one time-honored tradition was that LSOs, alone among the starched and pressed sea-going Navy, were expected to affect bizarre costumes.
So Pearly was wearing his special, old turtleneck jersey, the same one he had worn for two cruises on the Saratoga and for a dozen or more CQ detachments with the RAG. Over the jersey he wore the survival vest that everyone who worked on a carrier deck was required to put on when they went topside. The vest contained a flare pencil and had inflatable bladders that were supposed to keep you afloat in case you were swept off the deck, into the ocean below.
Every deck hand’s vest had a label, identifying the wearer. Pearly’s vest had stenciled on the back: VFA-106 LSO. On the front he wore the special LSO embroidered patch—a view of the back of a carrier with the pseudo-Latin motto: RECTUM NON BUSTUS.
Pearly looked like a panhandler, walking around the ship in his fatigue pants, jersey and vest, his old black wool watch cap pulled down to his ears. Some LSOs took the weirdness license to extremes. They showed up on the platform with ski masks, babushkas, red fezzes, Russian fur hats, capes, gorilla face masks, and in one instance on the carrier, Lincoln, a stuffed Seeing Eye dog.
Pearly busied himself setting up shop on the platform. The LSO platform was an eight-by-eight foot wooden grid jutting out the port side of the flight deck, hanging out over the water eighty feet below. The platform was just aft of the first of the four arresting wires stretched across the flight deck. Beneath the platform, hanging out over the water, was the safety net. The net was there to catch anyone who fell off the platform and to provide an escape for the LSOs if a jet in the groove veered toward them.
The LSO platform faced aft, toward the aircraft approach path to the flight deck. Directly behind it was stretched a piece of canvas which served as a windbreak and a deflector from the jet blast up on the forward flight deck. At the forward edge of the platform was a console containing the communication equipment, a television monitor showing the image shot from a deck-mounted video camera, and displays indicating the approaching aircraft’s type, speed, and distance from the ship. Also displayed were read-outs of the ship’s speed, the wind direction and velocity, and the magnitude of the deck’s pitching.
On the platform with Pearly was a petty officer wearing a sound-powered headset. His job was to stay in constant communication with Pri-Fly, the glass-enclosed nerve center up on the sixth level of the ship’s superstructure, and with Air Ops, the carrier’s air traffic control center down in the bowels of the carrier. The petty officer would relay to the LSO any urgent information about the deck or the airplanes in the traffic pattern.
Pearly checked his equipment. He tried out his radio handset. He checked the “pickle”—the black handle at the end of a long cable with two switches: one for the red wave off lights on the sides of the ball, and one for the “cut” light. He flashed the wave off lights, and then triggered the “cut” light by which, in an emergency landing, he would signal the pilot to “cut” —chop the throttle on his jet—as he crossed the ramp. Pearly then adjusted the intensity of the ball, the yellow blob of light on the Fresnel lens that delivered glide slope information to the pilots.
The Fresnel lens was an offshoot of the British-invented mirror landing system. Originally, a mirror was mounted at the port edge of the deck. A high-intensity light was shone against the mirror and reflected upward at the precise angle of the glide slope. A set of green reference lights was rigged midway up the mirror, serving as a datum—an “on glide-slope” reference. A pilot making his approach would see the reflected light on the mirror as a “ball,” and its position above or below the datum lights would tell him he was high or low on the glide slope.
The Fresnel lens, developed in the 1960s, took the mirror idea a step further. It still looked like a ball on a mirror, but instead of a real mirror, the lens was actually a vertical row of five glass boxes. The green datum lights were extended outwards from the middle, or third, box. Each box projected a beam of light at a different angle, so that the pilot, seeing the light—the “ball”—from one of the boxes, could know his relative position, high or low, on the glide slope.
The beam of light narrowed as the aircraft flew closer to the ship. As the jet passed over the fantail of the carrier, the beam from the middle lens—the “centered ball”—was only two feet high.
That was the target: a window two feet high. The pilot landing his jet aboard the carrier had to fly through that tiny aperture in order to clear the ramp and to catch a wire with his tailhook. He had to fly through it in all conditions—day, night, and when the deck was heaving up and down like a rowboat in a rapids.
It was the most demanding feat in aviation. And it was a feat that every carrier-based naval aviator had to perform again and again. Without fail.
<>
The nuggets wore the standard gray-green flight suits, wandering the passageways of the great ship, knocking heads on the low overheads, banging shins on the step-over “kneeknockers” that you passed at every bulkhead along a passageway. Everyone got lost.
There was a smell to an aircraft carrier. It was a redolence you only noticed when you first walked down from the sprawling, open-aired flight deck to the labyrinthine interior of the great ship. It was not unpleasant—an olfactory blend of machine oil, paint, jet fuel, sweat. Every aircraft carrier was different. Each had its unique below-deck atmosphere.
The Nimitz was enormous. Ninety-five-thousand tons—a statistic that exceeded the average aviator’s computational power. It was like a floating city. How could anything that heavy float? How could it move, for that matter?
But move it did, at something in excess of thirty-five miles per hour, faster than most frigates and destroyers. The Nimitz knifed through the oceans of the world on the energy of two Westinghouse nuclear reactors, powering her four steam turbines and propellers.
The Nimitz was a super-carrier, first of the Navy’s fastest and most powerful group of carriers called the Nimitz class. Her normal sea-going complement included a crew of 5,550 men and women. When the Nimitz went on overseas deployment, she took on board a nine-squadron air wing, numbering from eighty to ninety aircraft. The air wing had two F-14 Tomcat squadrons, shore-based at Miramar, California, and two F/A-18 Hornet squadrons from Naval Air Station Lemoore, California. Included in the air wing was a squadron of A-6 Intruder attack jets; a unit of four EA-6B Prowlers, which were tactical electronic warfare versions of the A-6; a squadron of S-3B Viking anti-submarine warfare jets; a detachment of at least two E-2C turbo-prop Hawkeyes, which were early warning and strike control aircraft; and a detachment of SH 60F Seahawk anti-submarine helicopters.
With her nuclear power plant, the Nimitz possessed nearly unlimited mobility. Already she had gone more than eighteen years without refueling. Consumables, like food and jet fuel, could be replenished underway by supply ships and sea-going tankers.
Being aboard a mighty warship like the Nimitz, marveling at the modern American technology, it was hard to believe that the most critical technology on the aircraft carrier was not American. Modern aircraft carriers would not be possible except for two major developments since World War II: the angled landing deck that made safe arrestment of jet airplanes possible, and the steam catapult that permitted the launching of high performance jets from flight decks.
Neither were invented in America.
That these developments came from Britain, of course, always caused glee among visiting Royal Navy pilots. When a Brit deigned to come aboard an American carrier, it was always with just the. . . slightest trace of superiority. He would glance at the modern equipment and smile. “Hmm, it looks like you yanks may be finally getting the hang of it. . .”
It was the steam catapult that made ships like the Nimitz possible. Without the catapult, supersonic fighters like the Hornet and the Tomcat could not fly from the tiny parcel of real estate available on a carrier’s flight deck. Thin, swept wings, heavy weapons and fuel loads—such aeronautical luxuries required a vast amount of energy to reach flying speed.
Nor could the jets return to the flight deck without another British invention—the angled deck. In the old days, before supersonic jets and steam catapults, all aircraft carriers had a single fore-to-aft flight deck. Airplanes landed on the aft portion—and stopped. There were no “bolters”—touch and go landings—because other airplanes and equipment were parked on the forward half of the deck. The straight-deck ships had as many as thirteen arresting wires and a huge nylon barricade to prevent airplanes from hurtling onto the forward deck.
But then the British designed a carrier deck with the landing runway aligned about eleven degrees to the left of the ship’s centerline, thus permitting airplanes to touch down and then take off again from the side of the deck. The new V-shaped carrier deck had, in effect, two runways: the aft, off-center (angled) deck for touch and go landings, and the forward, straight deck used exclusively for launching.
The four “wires” stretched across the Nimitz’s landing deck were actually 1.375 inch thick steel cables, suspended five-and-a-half inches above the deck. Each of the cables ran below deck to its respective “engine”—a giant hydraulic cylinder that worked like a shock absorber. When a jet’s tailhook snagged one of the cables, the cable pulled a piston in its hydraulic cylinder, absorbing the energy of the arriving jet and braking the jet to a metered stop up on the flight deck.
For each aircraft that approached the carrier, a signal was sent down to all four arresting engine rooms to adjust the pressure for the weight of that particular aircraft. A heavy Tomcat fighter would require a different setting than a much smaller, lightly-loaded Hornet. Each arresting cable was able to bring a 54,000 pound jet, moving at 140 miles per hour, to a stop on the flight deck in two seconds, within 340 feet.
After a jet rolled to a stop and pulled the power back on its engines, the cable slackened and dropped from the hook, back onto the deck. The hydraulic engine below deck then retracted the wire back to its taut position across the deck, ready to trap the next jet.
It was not a foolproof system. Accidents happened. Death sometimes struck with numbing suddenness on a carrier deck. Everyone who had gone to sea for extended cruises aboard aircraft carriers had seen it happen: A cable would be snagged by the tailhook of a landing jet. The cable would pay out just like it was supposed to, while the hydraulic arresting engine down below absorbed the kinetic energy of the landing airplane. The cable would strain against the pull of the twenty-ton jet. . .
And then it would break.
It didn’t happen often. The cables were regularly checked for fraying, and the total number of “hits”—arrestments—on each cable was carefully logged. After a hundred hits, a cable was retired and replaced with a fresh one.
But still, it happened. One night on the Saratoga, an A-3 caught the number three wire. As the wire paid out, slowing the big jet—the cable snapped. With its engines already at full power, the A-3 floundered off the end of the deck and managed to fly again. The crewmen in the jet escaped.
The crewmen on the deck did not. The separated number three arresting cable lashed across the surface of the flight deck like a scythe. It mowed down everything in a seventy-foot arc—maintenance equipment, antennas, tugs—and half a dozen deck crewmen, severing their legs like a laser gun.
<>
There was no such luxury in naval aviation as idle time. You were supposed to be either flying or doing your collateral ground job. If you were doing neither, then they scheduled you for a briefing.
And so it was aboard the U. S. S. Nimitz for the nuggets of Class 2-95. This one was the pre-night qualifications briefing. It was Pearly Gates’s chance to play Vince Lombardi.
It was already well known in the squadron that Pearly took his briefings very seriously. And he expected everyone else to take them just as seriously. Any poor fool who ignored the red “Briefing In Progress” light over the ready room door and blundered into one of Pearly’s briefings would get his head snapped off at the shoulders.
This was the occasion for a Pearly Gates bravura performance. For six weeks now he had been working with his young charges, coaching, critiquing, praising, encouraging. He had nursed them through the first awkward FCLP periods, the inky-black night sessions at Whitehouse, through the trauma of losing a classmate, through the adrenaline-surging, catapult-firing, first-trap exposure to the Nimitz at sea.
Now it had come down to this: the final test. This was the last—and most difficult—test the nuggets would face in their path to becoming fighter pilots. Pearly knew that his kids were ready. They had all the tools.
All they needed was confidence. And that was the reason for his Vince Lombardi briefing. A pilot’s confidence was the most fragile and irreplaceable substance in aviation. Without it, all the skill, training, and experience of a lifetime counted for nothing. The specter of fear could slither into a cockpit like a serpent. It crippled a pilot, poisoned his mind, stole his skill. Fear killed more aviators than all the mechanical malfunctions that ever afflicted flying machines.
On the wall-sized grease board, he had written “Pearly’s Pearls.” They were more like commandments:
1. Dominate the Ball!
2. BE the Ball!
3. You Are Not Alone!
4. Trust the LSOs!
5. There Is No Life Below the Datums!
Pearl number five referred to the bottom half part of the Fresnel Lens. The “datums” were the horizontal row of green datum lights, protruding at mid-point from both sides of the lens, that served as the “on glide path” marker for the pilot. —If the pilot landed with a “high” ball, he would either catch the last—number four—wire, or miss the wires altogether and get a “bolter,” taking off again from the angled deck. If he let the ball go low, beneath the row of datums, it meant that he would get an early wire—a one or two instead of the ideal number three wire.
It also meant that he came perilously close to the blunt, unforgiving killer ramp. He had come close to being a ramp roast.
<>
The movies on the Nimitz were endless. Day and night, twenty-four hours straight, they flickered up there on one of the three ready room television monitors. The only time the movies stopped was when an LSO briefing was taking place.
The Nimitz had a seemingly infinite supply of movies. You could check out everything from newly released Stallone groaners to Bogey classics from the thirties.
That’s what they did, the off-duty sailors, pilots, maintenance personnel of the CQ detachment. The big, cavernous ready room with its upholstered, airliner seats became the between-shifts hang out. It didn’t matter what the movie was. They plopped down in one of the deep chairs, relieved to be away from the nerve-numbing havoc of the flight deck—and stared glassy-eyed at a flick.
The other two monitors were for ship’s business. One was used for routine messages, like a community television channel, announcing the times of church services, opening and closing of the ship’s store, birthday greetings. It could even relay cable stations like CNN.
Another monitor was the PLAT— the deck-mounted video camera that recorded every approach and landing to the ship. You could sit there and observe each jet roll into the groove and swoop down toward the camera. If the jet landed precisely on target, it looked like it had plopped down right on the camera. Then another camera, mounted up on the island superstructure, would follow the jet as it rolled out on the deck, caught by the arresting wire.
The PLAT tapes could be replayed for LSO debriefings, just in case someone wanted to argue about his grade from the LSO.
The PLAT had another purpose. On those rare occasions when someone really botched a pass to the ship—when he and his jet became one with the killer ramp—the investigators could retrieve the tapes and see just why things had so badly gone to hell: “Ah ha! See that? Sucking power at the ramp, getting slow. . .”
Kabloom. There it was, recorded for posterity on video tape.