“You’re going to go slow,” Real told the pilot. “Little power.”
The red foul deck light went out and the green light came on.
“Clear deck,” shouted the LSO talker.
“Clear deck,” McCoy echoed, and lowered his right arm.
The jet was slamming through the burble caused by the island, his engines winding up, then decelerating. In seconds the Phantom crossed the ramp with its engines wailing, its hook reaching for a wire. Then the hook struck in a shower of sparks and the main gear thumped down. The hook snagged the second wire as the engines wound up to their full fury — a futile roar, because the big fighter was quickly dragged to a quivering halt. The exterior lights went out. The hook runner raced across the foul line with his wands signaling “hook up.” Seconds later the Phantom was taxiing out of the landing area and the wings were folding.
Meanwhile McCoy was giving the grade to another LSO, who was writing in the log. “Little slow in the middle, OK Two.”
McCoy glanced at Jake. “Nice pass. Pitching deck and reduced visibility and he handled it real well. I bet I couldn’t do as well on a shitty night like this.”
Then he was back out into the landing area listening to the radio. In seconds another set of lights came out of the goo. Another Phantom. This guy had more difficulty with the pass than the first fighter, but he too successfully trapped. The third Phantom boltered and McCoy waved off the fourth one. It was going to be a long recovery.
One of the LSOs handed Jake his radio. He put it to his ear in time to hear the RA-5C Vigilante call the ball.
The Vigilante was the most beautiful airplane the Navy owned, in Jake’s opinion. It was designed as a supersonic nuclear bomber back when nuclear bombs were big. The weapon was carried in an internal bay and was ejected out a door in the rear of the plane between the tailpipes. The Navy soon discovered this method of delivery didn’t work: the bomb was trapped in the airplane’s slipstream and trailed along behind— sometimes for seconds at a time before it fell free. The weapon’s impact point could not be predicted and there was a serious danger that the bomb would strike the aircraft while it was tagging along behind, damaging the plane and the weapon. So the Vigilantes were converted to reconnaissance aircraft. Fuel tanks were installed in the bomb bays and camera packages on the bellies.
With highly swept wings and empennage, a needle nose, and two huge engines with afterburners, the plane was extraordinarily fast, capable of ripping through the heavens at an honest Mach 2+. And it was a bitch to get aboard the ship. Jake thought the Vigie pilots were supermen, the best of the best.
Yet it was the guys in back who had the biggest cojónes, for they rode the beast with no control over their fate. Even worse, they rode in a separate cockpit behind the pilot that had only two tiny windows, one on each side of the fuselage. They could not see forward or aft and their view to either side was highly restricted. A-6 BNs with their seats beside the pilot and excellent view in all quadrants regarded the Vigie backseaters with awe. “It’s like flying in your own coffin,” they whispered to one another, and shuddered.
Tonight the Vigie pilot was having his troubles. “I got vertigo,” he told McCoy on the platform.
“Fly the ball and keep it coming,” the LSO said. “Your wings are level, the deck is moving, average out the ball. You’re slightly high drifting left…Watch your lineup!” The Vigilante was a big plane, with a 60-foot wingspan — the foul lines were 115 feet apart.
“Pick up your left wing, little power…right for lineup.”
Now the Vigie was crossing the ramp, and the right wing dropped.
“Level your wings, ” McCoy roared into the radio.
The Vigilante’s left wing sagged and the nose rose. Jake shot a glance at the PLAT monitor: the RA-5 was way too far right, his right wingtip almost against the foul line.
His gaze flipped back to the airplane, just in time to hear the engines roar and see the fire leap from the afterburners, two white-hot blowtorches fifteen feet long. The light ripped the night open, casting a garish light on the parked planes, the men standing along the right foul line, and the ship’s superstructure.
With her hook riding five feet above the wires and her left wing slightly down, the big swept-wing jet crossed the deck and rose back into the night sky. Only then did the fire from the afterburners go out. The rolling thunder continued to wash over the men on the ship’s deck, then it too dissipated.
An encounter with an angry dragon, Jake thought, slightly awed by the scene he had just witnessed.
“A nugget on his first cruise,” McCoy told his colleagues, then dictated his comments to the logbook writer.
The motion of the ship was becoming more pronounced, Jake thought, especially here on the platform. When the deck reached the top of its stroke, he felt slightly light on his feet.
McCoy noticed the increased deck motion too, and he switched the lens to a four-degree glide slope, up from the normal three and one half. The talker informed the controllers in Air Ops.
In seconds there was another plane on the ball, this time an A-7 Corsair. “Three One Zero, Corsair ball, Three Point Two.”
“Roger ball, four-degree glide slope. Pitching deck.”
This guy was an old pro. McCoy gave him one call, a little too much power, and that was all it took. He snagged a three.
The next plane was the Phantom that boltered, and this time he was steadier. Yet the steeper glide slope fooled him and he was fast all the way, flattened out at the ramp and boltered again.
The next plane, an A-7, took more coaching, but he too caught a wire. So did the Phantom that followed him, the one that had waved off originally. The next A-7 had to be waved off, however, because the deck was going down just before he got to the in-close position, while he was working off a high and slightly fast. If he had overdone his power reduction he would have been descending through the glide slope just as the deck rose to meet him: a situation not conducive to a long life.
An A-6 successfully trapped, then the Phantom came around for his third pass. Clear sky and the tanker were twenty-one thousand feet above, so the pressure was on. McCoy looked tense as a coiled spring as he stood staring up the glide slope waiting for the F-4’s lights to appear out of the overcast.
There!
“One Zero Two, Phantom ball, Four Point Two, trick or treat.” Trick or treat meant that he had to trap on this pass or be sent to tank.
“Roger ball, four-degree glide slope, it’ll look steep so fly the ball.”
A dark night, a pitching deck, rain…these were the ingredients of fear, cold, clutching, icy as death. A carrier pilot who denied he ever experienced it was a liar. Tonight, on this pass, this fighter pilot felt the slimy tentacles of fear play across his backbone. As he crossed the ramp he reduced power and raised the nose. The heavy jet instantly increased its rate of descent.
“No,” screamed McCoy.
The hook slapped down and the main mounts hit and the number one wire screamed from its sheaves.
“There’s one lucky mother,” McCoy told the writer and the observing signal officers when the blast of the Phantom’s two engines had died to an idling whine. “Spotted the deck and should have busted his ass, but the deck was falling away. Another military miracle. Who says Jesus ain’t on our side?”
More A-7s came down the chute. The first one got aboard without difficulty but the second announced he had vertigo.
“Roger that. Your wings are level and you’re fast. Going high. Steep glide slope, catch it with power. More power.” He was getting close and the red light on his nose gear door winked on. He was slow. “Power. Power! Power!”
At the third power call the Real McCoy triggered the wave-off lights, but it was too late. Even as the Corsair’s engine wound up, the wheels hit the very end of the flight deck and there was a bright flash. With the engine winding up to full screech the plane roared up the deck, across all the wires, and rotated to climb away. McCoy shouted “Bolter, bolter, bolter,” on the radio.