“Tough flight, huh?”
Harrison dropped his eyes and massaged his forehead with a hand. “No…Got a cigarette?”
“Sure.” Jake passed him one, then held out a light.
After Harrison had taken three or four puffs, he took the cigarette from his mouth and said softly, “After we landed, I almost taxied over the edge.”
“It’s dark out there.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. No light at all, the deck greasy, rain on top of the grease…it was like drying to taxi on snot.”
“What happened?”
“Taxi director took me up to the bow on Cat One, then turned me. Wanted me to taxi aft on Cat Two. It was that turn on the bow. Sticking out over the fucking black ocean. I was sure I was going right off the bow, Jake. I about shit myself. I kid you not. Pure, unadulterated terror, two-hundred proof. I have never had a feeling like that in an airplane before.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was turning tight, I could feel the nose wheel sliding, the yellow-shirt was giving me the come-ahead signal with the wands, and the edge was right there! And there isn’t even a protective lip. You know how the bow just turns down, same as the stern?”
“So what did you do?”
“Locked the left wheel and goosed the right engine. The plane moved about a foot. I could feel the left wheel sliding. To make things perfect I could also feel the deck going up and down, up and down. Every time it started down the vomit came up my throat. Then the yellow-shirt crossed his wands and had the blue-shirts chock it right where it sat. When I climbed down from the cockpit I couldn’t believe it — the nose wheel was like six inches from the edge! It was so dark up there that I had to use my flashlight to make sure. There was no way the nose wheel was going around that corner. Even if it had, the right main wouldn’t have made the turn — it would have dropped off the edge.”
Harrison took a greedy drag on his cigarette, then continued: “My BN couldn’t even get out of the cockpit. The plane captain didn’t have room to drop his ladder. He had to stay in the cockpit until they towed the plane to a decent parking place.”
“Why’d you keep taxiing when you knew you were that close to the edge?”
Harrison closed his eyes for a second, then shook his head. “I dunno.”
“I know,” Jake Grafton told him positively. “You jarheads are spring-loaded to the yessir position. Doug, if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. You have only one ass to lose.”
Harrison nodded and sucked on the cigarette. The color was slowly coming back to his face. After a bit he said, “Did you ever watch those RA-5 pilots taxi at night? The nose wheel is way aft of the cockpit. They are sitting out over the ocean when they taxi that Vigilante to the deck edge and turn it. I couldn’t do that. Not in a million years. Just watching them gives me the shivers.”
“Don’t obey a yellow-shirt if it doesn’t look right,” Jake said, emphasizing the point. “It isn’t the fall that kills you, Doug, or the stop at the bottom — it’s the sudden realization that, indeed, you are this fucking stupid.”
When Doug wandered off Jake went back to the notes of his talks on carrier operations. He was expanding and refining them so he could have them typed. He thought he would send them back to the senior LSO at the West Coast A-6 training squadron, VA-128 at Whidbey Island. Maybe there was something in there that the LSOs could use for their lectures.
Boy, if he wasn’t getting out, it would sure be nice to go back to VA-128 when this cruise was over. Rent a little place on a beach or a bluff overlooking the sound, fly, teach some classes, kick back and let life flow along. If he wasn’t getting out…If Tiny Dick Donovan was willing to take him back. Forgive and forget.
But he was getting out! No more long lonely months at sea, no more night cat shots, no more floating around the IO quietly rotting, no more of this—
Allen Bartow came up to the desk. “When you get off here tonight, we’re having a little game down in my room. We need some squid money in the pot.”
“I’ve still got a lot of jarhead quarters from the last game. I’ll bring those.”
“The last of the high rollers…”
He wasn’t going to miss it, he assured himself, for the hundredth time. Not a bit.
One of the most difficult tasks in military aviation is a night rendezvous. On a dark night under an overcast the plane you are joining is merely a tiny blob of lights, flashing weakly in the empty black universe. Without a horizon or other visual reference, the only way the trick can be done is to keep your instrument scan going inside your cockpit while you sneak peeks at the target aircraft. The temptation is to look too long at the target, to get too engrossed in the angles and closure rate, and if that happens, you are in big trouble.
On this particular night Jake Grafton thought he had it wired. He was rendezvousing on the off-going tanker at low station, 5,000 feet over the ship on the five-mile arc. There it was, its lights winking weakly.
“Ten o’clock,” Flap said.
“Roge, I got it.”
“He’ll be doing two-fifty.”
Jake glanced at his airspeed. Three hundred knots indicated. He would have to work that off as he closed. But not quite yet.
The tanker would be in a left-hand turn. Jake cranked his plane around until he had his nose in front of it and was looking at it through the right quarter panel, across the top of the radar scope-hood. He eased in a little left rudder and right flaperon to help keep his plane in a position where he could see the tanker.
With the target plane on the right side the A-6 was difficult to rendezvous because the cockpit was too wide — the BN sat on the pilot’s right. This meant that the right glareshield and canopy rail were too high and, as the planes closed, would block the pilot’s vision of the target aircraft if he allowed himself to get just a little behind the bearing line or get a tad high. Jake knew all this. He had accomplished several hundred night rendezvous and knew the problems involved and the proper techniques to use without even thinking about it. Tonight he was busy applying that knowledge.
Yet something was wrong. Jake checked his instruments. All okay. Why was the tanker moving to the right? Instinctively he rolled more wings level, rechecked his attitude gyro, the altimeter, the airspeed…All okay. And still the sucker is moving right!
“Texaco, say your heading.”
“Zero Two Zero.”
Hell! Now Jake understood. He was still on the outside of the tanker’s turning radius, not on the inside as he had assumed. He leveled his wings and flew straight ahead to cross behind the tanker, feeling slightly ridiculous. He had assumed that he was on the inside…
Now, indeed, he was on the inside of the tanker’s turn. He turned to put the nose in the proper position and started inbound. Checking the gauges, watching the bearing, slowing gently…280 knots would be perfect, would give him 30 knots of closure…
And the tanker was…Jesus! Coming in awful fast—way too fast! Power back, boards out, and…
“Look at your attitude.” Flap.
Jake looked. He was at ninety-degrees angle-of-bank, passing 4,500 feet, descending.
He leveled the wings and got the nose up. The tanker shot off to the left.
“I’m really screwed up tonight,” he told the BN.
“Turn hard and get inside of him, then close.”
Jake did. He felt embarrassed, like a neophyte on his first night formation hop. Yet only when he got to within two hundred yards and could make out the tanker’s position lights clearly was he sure of the tanker’s direction of flight. Only then was he comfortable.