It was only my third cruise, but it was obvious to me that the stress level on Ranger was much higher than usual this early. I’m sure a big part of it was the fact that we all knew we were going to be in a shooting war, but most of it was the exhausting flight schedule that was the result of winching our birds onto the ship instead of flying them out.
Under normal circumstances, the ship would sail and within a few days, the air wings would begin to arrive. Each crew had to execute four carrier landings, or “traps” in order to be qualified for flying during this cruise, something that a pilot would move heaven and earth to make sure he’d accomplished because not getting cruise qualified could be a career-ender. When the Wing flew out to the ship, that first trap accounted for 25% of a pilot’s qualification, traps that we wouldn’t have, since the Navy had loaded our A-6 Intruders onto Ranger. Spread out among an entire air wing, that was a lot of activity to make up, since each trap was preceded by a briefing, refueling, a pre-flight check, a cat (catapult) launch, and the actual flight mission, even if it was a trip around the “patch,” before the trap was logged. Furthermore, because of the logistical nightmare of shuffling aircraft around the deck, up and down the elevators, etc…We had to “hot seat” during these qualification missions, meaning changing aircrews while the engines were still turning. It could be dangerous, as well as stressful, having a bunch of different guys flying your aircraft.
The thing about other pilots and BNs flying your airplane wasn’t just that it was kind of like trusting your wife to another man (though there was that, too) but that there existed the very real phenomenon of “stranger-breaking.” In my other time stream, my best friend, Dan Garmen had one explained that materials get used to being handled in a certain way. Plastics, wood, even metals physically change as they are used, structurally adapting themselves to the forces acting upon them. Along comes a different person, who exerts different forces and stresses on the item and it breaks.
No Naval Aviator wanted to break another flyer’s kite. but, we had little choice, and if we wanted to fly during this cruise, we had to get cruise qualified, and that was that.
One of the reasons that Pat and I made such a good team, was that we both were proactive, and hated procrastination with a passion. For me, I hated putting off what I could do today because that kind of behavior had created a lot of the problems I lived with in my other life, and armed with that self-knowledge, had made it a point to not let that habit take root in THIS time stream. It had worked. I never put off for another five minutes, what I could do at that moment. I think Pat’s hatred of procrastination was because as the youngest of 6 Irish Catholic boys growing up in Boston, if he didn’t jump at the chances life offered, one or more of the other five would. Also, Pat was just wired that way and he had way too much energy to postpone something that he either wanted, or HAD to do. Just “F’in do it” was his creed.
So, there was no discussion about our strategy. When we weren’t flying, or otherwise engaged, we’d be suited up and ready to jump in if an Intruder opened up. The flight schedule was so stacked up, an aircraft with no crew to fly could bring things to a grinding halt. So, Pat and I would hang out in the passage way just inside the hatch to the deck, in case the launch officer found that he was an A-6E long, and needed someone to fly. It paid off the second time we did this, when a pilot from the other Intruder squadron slipped while climbing the ladder to enter his aircraft. He hit the deck hard, throwing his right arm out to break his fall and breaking the wrist. The jet’s turbines were still turning from the aircraft’s last flight, and the cat officer remembered that we’d been hanging around the day before, and had one of his sailors come looking for us. The young swabbie, clearly on his first cruise, poked his head around the open hatch, and seeing us, shouted “Lieutentant Biggs says if you guys wanna fly, you’re up!”
Pat and I looked at each other an then moved quickly for the hatch, slipping through it 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, then followed 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 it again. No distrust among aircrews, it was just the way it worked. Nothing from memory, either. We worked from printed lists that left no room to forget anything. That’s not to say we took our time, though. The cat schedule was already 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 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 had were both “up” gripes, which meant they were problems that needed to be addressed, but didn’t keep the plane from safely completing is 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, and they took that responsibility very seriously.
As Pat did his part to steer the Intruder into position so the cat personnel could connect the plane’s nose gear to the hydraulic arm that would pull our airplane down the deck of the ship fast enough to launch us into the air, 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, but it wasn’t a big deal. We would be refuelling inflight, meeting another Intruder that had been fitted with extra tanks, about 50 miles from the ship. Routine, but better than just circling the ship and landing again. But, for now, the task at hand was the launch, the “cat shot.”
There’s nothing like a cat shot.
I really don’t care what anyone says, there’s no carnival ride, training exercise, or even out of the blue accident as thrilling as being shot off the deck of an aircraft carrier. The whole operation is filled with ritual, partly because that’s how the Navy does things, and partly because if you don’t know exactly when something like a catapault shot is going to happen, you could really hurt yourself. When you’re a newbie, even with all the preparation, it’s a surprise when it happens. When you’re more experienced and you get in sync with a cat crew during a cruise, you know exactly when the catapault pressure is going to hit the critical level and when it will release, hurling you down the deck toward the end of the ship. It’s important that 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 that energy is coiled and ready to fire are all important parts of the ritual.
My method was to always be just 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 just below Pat’s a second or so before he made a crisp, snapped salute that would have prompted our Marine DI to say “Mr. Maney, please hold that while I go to my quarters and retrieve my Kodachrome camera so I can take a picture to send to my family, and to frame for all future generations of Naval Aviation Candidates to emulate.”
He’d actually said that to Pat once, but he done so sarcastically.
I’d be just a second or so ahead of Pat, so I was ready for the cat shot. But in truth, you’re never truly ready for one.
The next time you’re in an airliner, rolling down the runway, feeling the building power as the huge jet engines push the airplane forward, just before “rotation,” or 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 catapault 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 solidly back into his seat. Then, the nice, calm, stable and solid world liquified.
At least that’s how it always felt to me. The application of several Gs of force almost disconnects you from the world, making you feel as if you’re actually outrunning the world, getting just the least little bit ahead of it. There is no gentle pressure. It’s 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. It only takes one cat shot where your head is turned to the side and you cant face forward again until the giant fist let’s go of you to learn.
Different pilots and B/N’s behave differently on the shot. Some, like me, are quiet as they’re thrilled with the speed and G-Forces involved, but some yell all the way down the deck, as if they were 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, but steadily recovered and seemingly unaware of his hysterics, became as quiet and by-the-book as they get. It was the most annoying thing I’d ever experienced. He’d been through three B/N’s (and after the launch it was obvious to me why)and I heard later that he’d finally found a flying partner who exhibited exactly the same behavior. Pat had told me that 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, that had been funny the first four or five times, but got old pretty fast. Still, he said that 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, we were able to pull ourselves from the back of our seats, the G forces bleeding off, and seemingly miraculously, our airplane flying. 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 we felt the engines, turning full, begin to get purchase and push the Intruder up into the air.
The weather was perfect. Crisp, and horribly cold air was 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 times like this, when there wasn’t enough to do to fill up the minutes between the things that needed doing.
“Whaddya got, Richie?” Pat asked, and I knew he was referring to food, and more accurately, candy, that I carried in my flight bag, a stash of sweets and protein bars called “pilot monkey food.” It was the B/N’s job 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,”as he continued 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, and that just didn’t rate in his world.
“Heard that,” he said simply. This hop today would give us the last one we needed for cruise qualification, and we’d be able to give up out spots in the current, crazy, qualification cycle. our squadron would be done that much faster, and things could settle down to a more normal pace, if there was anything “normal” about 5,000 men and women cooped up in a ship, working practically around the clock. Still, it was amazing how quickly you acclimated to that sort of life.
The flight was 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 in order to get the aircrews qualified.
Our inflight refueling went off without a problem as well, and in fact was 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 the bird was going to be done 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 in the direction of Ranger.
Before we knew it, we were sliding into our “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, since the ship was in sight, the weather perfect and the seas only slightly rolling. In Naval Aviation, 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 nice, sharp, square corners, the transition from “downwind” to “base” legs, and base to “final,” where you are lined up with the runway, intending to land, are both supposed to be square. Not so in the Navy. For a number of reasons I wont get into here,transitions in Naval aircraft are supposed to be smoother, more rounded.
So, when Pat was flying, the were precisely round. This approach to the ship was no different. among carrier pilots, a trap on a “severe clear” day was even more stressful than one on an overcast, choppy day, 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. When the weather was good, it was “Hollywood Time.” Perfection wasn’t demanded, it was all that was acceptable.
Pat performed. He “called the ball” when ordered to do so at a quarter mile. The. “ball” being an orange indicator light on the ship that indicated whether you were above or below the recommended glide path to the ship. On days like this one, where the ocean the ship is traveling throu is calm, a good pilot will keep the ball pretty well centered, with a but of a rhythmic up and down through the center. On a day with tall waves and a rolling deck, it was a much more complicated pattern the pilot had to manage. On this hop, I remember shaking my head in wonder as I watched the ball on our short final approach. If I didn’t know Pat Maney, I’d have radioed Ranger suggesting they cycle the ball mechanism because it appeared to be frozen. But I knew the ball was working just fine. My best friend was flying this Intruder, though mostly it was said in jest, with a big serving of sarcasm, there was some truth to the statement that like most everyone on deck, when Lt. (Senior Grade) Patrick Maney 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,these is calm and the weather couldn’t be better, and a pilot is fooled into believing landing on a moving ship is just like landing on the painted outline of a ship on a runway. It couldn’t be more different. Most carrier pilots will tell you that the easiest trap is harder than the most difficult “terra firma” landing, that it’s harder to successfully land a plane on an aircraft carrier when the sun is shining and the weather is calm, than it is 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 . It’s at times like this, with perfect weather, that pilots get a little cocky, think they can’t fail, but do. And when that happens, aircraft that cost tens of millions of dollars to replace, and aircrews, that aside from the million dollars it takes to train them, are irreplaceable, are lost. War is full of tragedy and loss, but it is worst 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. It took me a while to realize, however,that the only time Pat did anything that was dangerous and foolish was when no one that he cared about unwillingly shared any of that 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 I. The car to buckle up whether the passengers include his little girls, or me. Pat never took chances with the well-being of those he loved.
Which was why the trap on this beautiful day in December of 1990 was so perfect. There was no arresting wire in the world for Pat, save the third, and on this day, like on so many others, rain or shine, day or night, calm or or tempestuous, Lt.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, but completely expected stop. The universe seemed to pause for three heartbeats, then the arresting wire that held our aircraft in place pulled us backwards as if to demonstrate to the Intruder that even though it could fly through the air, so far that it couldn’t even see the ship, it still belonged to Ranger.
Then, the wire dropped to the deck as it was stowed 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 watched 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 “yellow shirts”, we made it to our spot, and to our mild surprise, got the “cut engine” signal. It looked like we were 314′s last hop of the day, and why not, I thought. It had been a good hop. 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.
About an hour later, we were in the Squadron’s ready room when the Landing Signal Officer, or “LSO” came by to give us the grade for Pat’s landing. To call Commander Garret Tully “brutally honest” was like calling the sun “fairly bright.” If there was anything to criticize, Tully would find it. On our last WESTPAC cruise on Ranger, I overheard him grading Commander Coleson on what was a pretty good trap under very tough conditions.The decidedly stiff breeze had been shifting all day, requiring Ranger to change course at least three times so her aircraft could land into the wind. The seas were rough, too, with swells that pitched the deck of the ship up and down each time by more than 10 feet. Coleson had caught the number three wire, and had done so without resorting to “diving” on the deck. Still, Tully had a list of at least five things the Squadron Commander could have done better, and told him so, as if Coleson had been a brand-new pilot on his first deployment. They were friends, but it was brutal.
I expected a similar diatribe from Tully this day, but was shocked when he came into the room, opened his metal clipboard, pulled a single sheet of paper from it, looked it over, then signed it and handed it to Pat.
“Pass.”
That even stunned Pat, who for the first time since I met him, and probably in his entire life, was speechless. A few silent seconds though, it was over, and life on the ship resumed for us.
Two pilots from squadron came in the room, laughing at something I couldn’t quite make out, mainly because my attention had been captured by the small television mounted high in the corner opposite the hatch that led into the ready room. CNN, captured by one of Ranger’s many satellite receivers, ran continuously these days, oddly enough, our best source of information about the coming conflict. The anchor, a beautiful girl in her mid 20s with long, wavy chestnut hair read the news, a video loop playing showing Marines disembarking from a C5 transport, other soldiers milling around in freshly sprouted camps in the desert and then finally, Ranger steaming out in the middle of the ocean, a single F14 Tomcat on approach. A small, ironic cheer went up in the room, small because there were only about 10 of us in there, and ironic, because we’d seen that same video a hundred times in the past couple days.
“Hey, there’s your girlfriend!” Rich teased, shoving my left shoulder as I watched the broadcast. “My girlfriend” had earned her nickname the first week of the cruise, when one of the other B/Ns commented that I seemed “all too interested in that particular news honey.” So, she had been assigned the “handle” of “Wax’s News Honey,” since they didn’t know her name.
I knew her name, though. The CNN reporter who had made it to the anchor’s chair during the conflict that would be come to known as the “First Gulf War,” was a 24 year old from Chicago, by the name of Molly Wallace.
Yea. “My” Molly, at least in another timeline, one in which she had given up the entry-level TV reporter’s job in Atlanta at the fledgling start-up network to move to San Diego to a potentially bigger opportunity with a local TV station, but in truth, for a boyfriend who didn’t really deserve her.
Me.
I came back here with the basic outline of an idea that I wanted to try and convince Molly and Samantha about. When I woke up this morning, I had no idea how I was going to sell it to them, but knew I had to try. I haven’t been completely forthcoming about all the traveling I’ve been doing, but I’m going to have to tell them.
My first day in 1933 was far more difficult than I expected. It’s hard to understand how we’ve spread out, unless you go to a time when we weren’t that way. Remember, virtually all the pictures you see of the past showing the people, the fashions and the buildings of civilization were taken in the cities, towns and villages where people gathered. “The country” wasn’t in vogue through most of our history, that’s a fairly recent thing. So, when I found myself in 1933, I was shocked at how small the areas of human habitation were. The country was a big place, and again, I’d left my car in 2008.
Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. 8 months for you, I’m told, but just over 3 years for me. Thanks to everyone who has written, followed the blog, sent your thoughts and good wishes, and generally been interested in what’s been happening to me.
People at work aren’t even asking about my “go-bag” anymore.
I have to say, I love the movie