February 2014; Embarked USS George H.W. Bush, middle of the Atlantic Ocean
During the first week of the cruise, in addition to making ourselves comfortable in our new digs, we settled into the boat routine. While onboard Mother, aviators operate on a totally different schedule than the ship’s company. Sailors and officers assigned to the ship wake up and go to bed early, standing watch at all hours of the day and night. Aviators do just the opposite, getting up late and staying up late. Our Sailors worked twelve-hour shifts, half on days and half on nights, to make sure our aircraft were always ready to fly. The reason for our late schedule was that we flew most of our daily sorties (flights) at night, which is one of the greatest advantages the US Navy has over its foreign adversaries. The United States is one of the only countries in the world to dare to take off and land on aircraft carriers at night, and therefore, US naval aviators are night owls.
One of the biggest perks for aviators is that, per safety regs, we always get at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and since we all stayed up late, most pilots and NFOs sleep in until ten, though dozing until the crack of noon was not unheard of in the Sharktank. I’m not normally an early riser, but on the boat I liked to get up at eight. I enjoyed having coffee by myself, where I could read the news online and answer emails in peace. Timing was critical, because each morning from eight to nine all of the ship’s company performed cleaning station duty, and with four thousand Sailors thus occupied and away from their computers, I could use the extra bandwidth to get on the Google News mobile site.
My morning ritual included powering on the squadron laptop Taylor and I shared and opening as many news articles as I could in different tabs so they would load while I headed over to our in-room coffee bar to caffeinate. When I’d sit down to check emails, the articles would still … continue … to load. Internet at sea is slower than the original AOL dial-up, and when the news did load, it would be sans pictures, thanks to bandwidth restrictions and security measures. Additionally, all email was screened, so if you passed any sensitive information or violated any rules—sent a nude photo or used a trigger word like bomb or Iraq—your Internet privileges would be revoked for up to a month. My family and I always used code words for flagged topics and a cryptic number system for the dates I’d be in port.
After catching up on current events and email, when the cleaning stations ended at nine a.m., I’d head to the officers’ gym—a tiny space about the size of a motel room—shared by three hundred officers. It had two treadmills, a stationary bike, an elliptical, three weight benches, two pull-up bars, and a set of free weights. My workout, like everything else on ship, had to be timed just right. If there were more than seven people in the gym at once, it was almost impossible to move around, let alone work out in the cramped space. Assuming I had space to work out, I’d shower and make it back to the Sharktank just as the other girls stirred in their racks.
As my roommates woke up and did the email shuffle, I studied for my master’s in Administrative Leadership at the University of Oklahoma. I would end up completing half the coursework while on deployment, finishing the degree in about a year and a half, all while working and flying full-time. Of my eight squadronmates who started the program with me on deployment, I would be the only one to complete it. I’d like to believe this had to do with academic ability, but in truth, I give a lot of credit to getting up early, working late, and timing my days just right.
Like most aviators, my first meal of the day was lunch, then off to the Ready Room that all thirty-four officers in my squadron shared. There, I got down to business. Every day I wrote the squadron flight schedule (my ground job at the time), studied tactics, briefed, flew, debriefed, had dinner, maybe flew again, hung out, then went to midnight rations, or MIDRATS, followed by cowboy time—coming together after the events of the day, sitting around a big table and telling tall tales of our flights, life, tactics, or, really, anything.
Sometimes at the end of a long day, we would watch a movie in the Ready Room, usually a war movie chosen by one of the guys, something like Lone Survivor. Or the ladies and I would go back to the Sharktank, pull down the movie screen, and binge on Downton Abbey or old episodes of Sex and the City. Of course, seeing Carrie and Mr. Big up there on the screen, I’d start wondering about Minotaur in Afghanistan. He had joined his combat squadron when I joined mine, the Blacklions, and was already on his second overseas deployment. He’d checked in through email from time to time, but our contact had tapered off.
But it wasn’t like I had much time to pine away for him. As we transited the Atlantic, we flew every few days in order to stay current. The goal of our flights at this early stage in deployment was to take off, climb up high to conserve gas, practice tactics, and land safely. We went through the switchology for dropping bombs, made sure we had enough gas, performed some basic maneuvering, checked our fuel some more, landed, and then did it all over again. When flying around the boat at sea, we knew fuel was life, dictating anything and everything we did in the flight. Some days there weren’t any diverts to go to if we ran low, and the carrier wouldn’t allow us to land outside the normal launch and recovery cycle if we got ourselves in extremis, so it was critical to always hawk the fuel gauge.
Out in the open ocean, en route to Europe, the seas often became incredibly choppy, complicating landings. On normal days, it was challenging enough trying to land on a flight deck while it drove away from us, but then we had to do so while the slippery deck heaved in the huge waves. If, for some reason, the conditions were just too severe to land on the boat that day, protocol dictated we divert to a foreign country where we would land with little support. In anticipation of this, I always carried international charts and airfield diagrams for the runways nearby, as well as an international cell phone, credit card, my passport, a fresh change of underwear, and a toothbrush just in case my pilot and I got stuck for the night. When it came time to transit the Straits of Gibraltar, I half hoped an angry sea would force me to land in Spain where I could do a little shopping. Sadly, the Mediterranean calmed and my night in Palma de Mallorca had to wait.