Time Flying (25 page)

Pat and I looked at each other before moving quickly for the hatch, slipping through into the heavy breeze blowing on deck as
Ranger
moved through the water. The sailor got out of the way and then held the hatch open for the injured pilot and those helping him come through, before following us as we ran, heads down, toward the Intruder waiting to launch.

Even though the original crew had run the pre-flight checklist, Pat and I did so again. We worked from printed lists that left no room to forget anything, but didn’t take our time. The cat schedule had already been thrown into disarray by the minor accident that gave us the opportunity to fly, and we wanted to do our best to make up for that lost time.

By the time Pat received the signal to taxi our Intruder to the catapult, we had settled in, were comfortable our aircraft was in good enough condition to fly, despite two complaints we found that weren't serious enough to ground the plane. It was rare bird, especially later in the cruise, that didn't have at least a couple gripes. The gripes this Intruder were both 'up' gripes, which meant they represented problems needing to be addressed, but didn't keep the plane from safely completing its mission. “Down” gripes grounded the aircraft until they could be fixed. Pilots had the final say as to whether an aircraft was airworthy or not, a responsibility all of them took seriously.

As Pat did his part to steer the Intruder into position for the cat personnel to connect the plane's nose gear to the hydraulic arm responsible for launching us into the sky, I had a chance to sit back with nothing to do. We would brief in the air, since we were a last-minute crew replacement. We would be refueling inflight, meeting another Intruder fitted with extra fuel tanks, about 50 miles from the ship. Routine, but better than simply circling the ship and landing again. But, for now, the task at hand was the launch, the “shot.”

There's nothing like a cat shot.

I don't care what anyone says, no carnival ride, training exercise, or even out of the blue accident comes close to being as thrilling as being shot off the deck of an aircraft carrier. The whole operation is filled with ritual, as most Naval activities are, but partly because if you don't know exactly when something like a catapult shot is going to happen, you could really hurt yourself. When you're a newbie, even with all the preparation, it's a shock when it happens. When you're more experienced and you get in sync with a cat crew during a cruise, you begin to anticipate when the catapult pressure is going to hit the critical level and then release, hurling you down the deck toward the end of the ship. It's important for everyone watch everyone else. The pilot's salute to the cat officer, his settling back against the headrest, and the beat of suspended time when all the energy produced by the steam driven catapult engine is coiled and ready to fire, are all important parts of the ritual.

My method was to always be a bit ahead of Pat. I would nod casually to the cat crew member on my side of the aircraft, and settle back into my seat to the right and slightly lower than Pat's a second or so before he made a crisp, snapped salute. I'd be a second or so ahead of Pat, so when he made his salute, I was ready for the cat shot. 

The next time you're in an airliner, rolling down the runway, as the huge jet engines push the airplane forward, just before “rotation,” when the nose wheel lifts off the ground, you may experience a momentary visceral thill in your gut.

I'm here to tell you that's NOTHING like a catapult launch, but, I suppose it's as close as a someone who never finds himself in an airplane taking off from an aircraft carrier will ever get.

Out of the corner of my left eye, through my tinted eye shield, I saw Pat's salute, and his settling back into his seat, followed by a single beat. Then, the calm, stable and solid world
liquified
.

The application of several Gs of force almost disconnects you from everything, as if you're outrunning the world, getting a little bit ahead of it. There is no gentle pressure, but rather as if a huge hand, with a fist as big as the airplane, hits you, pushing your entire body back into the seat. In training, you're taught to make sure your head is facing forward for the shot. The first cat shot where your head is turned to the side and you can’t face forward again until the giant fist lets go, teaches you to keep your head straight.

Pilots and B/N's all develop their own personal behavior during the shot. Some, like me, remain quiet as they're thrilled with the speed and G-Forces involved, but some yell all the way down the deck, as if on a roller coaster at the fair. I flew once on a ferry mission with an Intruder pilot who started a huge rebel yell as soon as the catapult fired, hurling his plane forward. Not only didn't he stop after the G-Forces let up, he kept yelling and laughing halfway up to cruise, by which time he had slowly recovered and seemed to be unaware of his hysterics. While in cruise, he was as quiet and by-the-book as they get, but the launch was the most annoying thing I'd ever experienced. He'd been through three B/N’s, and I heard later he'd finally found a flying partner who exhibited the same behavior. Pat had told me on the next WESTPAC (Western Pacific) cruise, the OPS Center would put their intercom on the PA during launch for the entire ship's entertainment. According to Pat, the bit had been funny the first four or five times, but got old pretty fast. Every now and then throughout that cruise, the OPS Center would, without fanfare or comment, pipe the Intruder's intercom to the ship's company.

Seconds later, as always, able to pull ourselves from the back of our seats, as the G forces bled off, our airplane flying, we got down to business. Pat executed a shallow left clearing S-turn, to make sure the air around our aircraft was clear of any other planes or helos and the engines, turning full, begin to get purchase and push our bird up into the sky.

The weather was perfect, crisp, and horribly cold air held at bay by the aluminum skin and thick plexiglass of the Intruder's canopy a few inches from our heads. Good to be in here, and not out there, I always thought in the gaps when I didn’t have enough to do.

'Whaddya got, Richie?' Pat asked, referring to the food stores I carried in my flight bag, a stash of sweets and protein bars we called “pilot monkey food.” One of the B/N's jobs was to always have a good supply of “PMF,” since the last thing anyone wanted was a nutritionally deprived Intruder driver “calling the ball,” preparing to land on a dark, pitching deck.

In my previous timeline life, a pilot friend of mine likened an aircraft carrier landing to “turning all the lights off on a football field in the pitch black, running at full speed to where you think the fifty yard line is, and diving headfirst, trying to hit a postage stamp with your tongue.” I can't remember if he had said with eyes open or closed, but you get the idea.

Obviously, you don't want your pilot hungry when he's trying something like that. “Clark Bar,” I said, pulling open my flight bag and looking in. “Tiger's Milk Bar...and three Hershey’s” I concluded.

“How bout a Hershey?” Pat responded, then upon receipt of one of the rectangular blocks of chocolate, adding “Thanks,” he responded, continuing his instrument scan, even though the day was clear, and the aircraft behaving itself.

“Man, we lucked out, getting this ride,” I said, foregoing the monkey food for cut up pieces of an apple from a plastic bag. I hadn't mentioned the apples to Pat, because...well, it was healthy food, which just didn't rate in his world.

“Heard that,” he said. This hop today would give us the last one we needed for cruise qualification, and we'd be able to give up our spots in the current, crazy, qualification cycle. The Swordsmen would be done that much faster, and things would settle down to a more normal pace, if 5,000 men and women cooped up in a ship, working around the clock counted as “normal”. Still, it amazed me how quickly you acclimated to life aboard ship.

The flight proved uneventful, the weather being so cooperative and the shipboard air controllers so focused on safely moving as many aircraft around
Ranger
's patch of ocean as they could while in order to get the aircrews qualified.

Our inflight refueling went off without a problem as well, and in fact went much quicker than expected, since the tanker we met up with had revised orders to only serve us up a couple hundreds pounds of fuel, rather than an almost full top-off. I figured the next crew to fly this aircraft must need a tanker approach and refuel for their logbooks, or maybe we were the bird’s last hop for the day. After we disconnected our two aircraft, I watched the other Intruder recede into the distance after we executed a break-right departure and began our descent toward
Ranger
.

Before long, we slid our Intruder into the “downwind” leg of the approach, looking at
Ranger
on our port, or left, side as we flew parallel, but on the opposite course as the big ship.

At this point, I was little more than a passenger, with the ship in sight, the weather perfect and the seas calm. In Naval Aviation, however, it’s never a good idea to think things were going to be too easy, since any number of things can go wrong in the last few minutes or even seconds of a flight, but I had to admit to myself, this one looked pretty simple.

In civilian aviation, pilots are taught to fly patterns with sharp, square corners, the transition from “downwind” to “base” leg and the one to “final,” where you are lined up with the runway, intending to land, are both supposed to be square, but not so in the Navy. Transitions in Naval aircraft are supposed to be smoother, more rounded.

So, when Pat was flying, the transitions were perfectly round, this approach to the ship no different. Among carrier pilots, a trap on a “severe clear” day was even more stressful than one under overcast, choppy conditions, because more was expected of you. No excuses to miss the number three wire, or have to dive to the deck because your approach was too hot. Good weather meant, “Hollywood Time.” Perfection was the only option.

Pat performed. He “called the ball” when ordered to do so at a quarter mile. The “ball” being an orange light on the ship that indicated whether your glide path to the third arresting wire on the ship’s deck was above or below the one recommended for a perfect landing. On days like this one, where the ocean the ship is traveling through is calm, a good pilot will keep the ball pretty well centered, with a bit of a rhythmic up and down through the center. On a day with tall waves and a rolling deck, landing on the deck would be a much more complicated pattern the pilot had to manage. On this hop, I remember shaking my head in wonder as I stared at the ball on our short final approach. If I didn't know Pat Maney, I'd have radioed
Ranger
, informing the ship the ball appeared to be frozen, and suggesting they cycle the system. But the ball was working just fine. My best friend flew this Intruder, and though mostly said in jest, often with  sarcasm, there was some truth to the statement that like almost everyone on deck, when Lt. Commander Patrick Maney, call-sign “Frodo” trapped, even the ball stood and watched.

Some of the biggest landing errors are made on perfect days like today, when routine rules the day, when the airplane is working perfectly, the wind calm and the skies crystal clear. Conditions like these can fool the pilot into believing landing on a moving ship is no different from landing on the painted outline of a ship on a runway. Most carrier pilots will tell you the easiest trap is harder than the most difficult “terra firma” landing and it’s harder to land a plane on an aircraft carrier when the sun is shining and the weather calm, than to land on 5,000 feet of concrete when the visibility is zero and winds are shifting all around the compass at 50 miles an hour . At times like this, with perfect weather, pilots can get a little cocky, thinking they can't fail, but do. And when the worst happens, aircraft that cost tens of millions of dollars to replace, and irreplaceable aircrews are lost. War is full of tragedy and loss, but the worst is when the loss is pointless, a product of a moment's distraction or carelessness.

In his personal life, I've seen Pat Maney do many stupid things. Pranks, alcohol-fueled fights, and stunts were simply a part of who he was. I realized early on, however, that the only time Pat did anything dangerous and foolish was when no one he cared about shared any of the danger. I once watched, heart in my mouth, as he rode down a bumpy hill on a four-wheeled ATV crouching in the seat like a trick rider in a rodeo, yet he's the first one in the car to tell everyone to buckle up whether the passengers include his little girls, or me. Pat never took chances with the well-being of those he loved.

The trap on this beautiful day in December of 1990 was perfect. There existed no arresting wire in the world for Pat, save the third, and on this day like on so many others, rain or shine, calm or tempestuous, Lt. Commander Pat Maney caught it, and Grumman A6-E Intruder 314, of Attack Squadron VA-145, known as the “Swordsmen,” part of the Air Wing of the USS
Ranger
came to a sudden stop. The universe seemed to pause for three heartbeats, then the arresting wire holding our aircraft in place pulled us backwards a few feet as if to demonstrate to the Intruder that even though it could fly through the air beyond the horizon, it still belonged to
Ranger
.

Then, the cable dropped to the deck, and retracted to await the next airplane. Pat, hands delicately operating the throttles, drove the airplane toward the temporary parking spot to await the next crew as I served as lookout for deck traffic, my “head on a swivel” to make sure we didn't end up trying to occupy the same patch of deck as another aircraft.

Guided by the yellow shirts, we rolled to our spot, and to our mild surprise, got the “cut engine” signal. We were 314's last hop of the day after all, and why not, I thought. The hop had been a good one. Pat and I performed the shutdown checklist, and making sure we had gathered all our gear, kneeboards and papers, opened the canopy, unstrapped and climbed out of the Intruder, down the ladders the yellow shirts had placed against the airplane, to the deck.