by CDR Jack Woodul, USNR(Ret)
Puresome knew that it was going to be a "TINS" sea story when the Naval Aviator set down his cold beer in order to free his hands and admitted that, in the Antediluvian Age of Aviation, he had been a certified, bottled-in-bond Training Command ace of the base.
Back then, Jimster explained, he had been a Snuffy white-hat enlisted person who left the Naval service for college, had earned his degree and availed himself of the Aviation Officer Candidate program in search of a brown bar and Golden Wings. After boot camp, indoc at Pensacola proved a piece of pastry. He soon found he could "flop, chop, prop, one-ten drop" with the best of the T-34 chaps. His prowess at counting various drips under the engine of the manly T-28 and flinging it about the sky in approved Naval fashion had garnered him lots of attaboys and few "aw shit" flight grades. As the final exam of carrier qualification approached, Jimster was a leading candidate to eventually join the fabled Order of the Cherry, whose elite members had not received a "down" (unsatisfactory flight) during their Naval Aviation training and could expect orders to aircraft that whoostled.
So the USS Antietam (CVS-36) awaited their pleasure. As the big day arrived, Jimster's class took up a collection to buy sipping whiskey for its instructor, LT Lipster, as well as for the first student to finish his carqual. Sipping whiskey being what it was, competition was fierce, and the students cut cards for flight positions.
It doped out that the instructor would lead a flight of four and a second section of two students out to the "boat." ENS Jimster drew the wingman position in the section led by MarCad Mike, a Marine student aviation cadet who starched and ironed his government-issue skivvies to iron-sharp creases. Things did not look good for Jimster, and MarCad Mike salivated at the thought of long, cool drinks with paper parasols in them and kicking some serious Squid butt.
The carrier finally passed a Charlie time to the squadron, and it was time to hit the boat. The flights manned up--six sets of rotating speed brakes started slicing and dicing the air as mighty piston engines coughed, belched smoke, broke wind and settled into a steady roar. LT Lipster was carrying the Plane Captain of the Month in his rear seat to observe the festivities. The hard-working white-hat was used to the bucking and snorting of the big aircraft on the ground, but his eyeballs grew wide at the astounding racket of takeoff and the ballet of the running rendezvous as the students joined on the lead aircraft, slid up its wingline and separated into a close finger-four formation closely followed by the section of two.As if he didn't have enough to think about, Jimster knew that poor formation flying during carqual had gotten downs for looking bad around the boat, and he worked hard to fly perfect parade position on MarCad Mike. As Lead checked them in with Antietam over UHF, Jimster just had to sneak a look. The sight of the big, dark blivit steaming around the ocean up ahead caused a huge thrill of excitement and adventure, as well as a major twang of his pucker string. As the two flights went into Delta, holding above the ship for their turn in the landing pattern, occasional glimpses below showed the painted outline of the landing area on the flight deck, aircraft approaching and leaving the flight deck and the boiling white energy of the ship's wake against the blue sea.
The first break came when pri-fly called Flight Lead to send down two aircraft to fill the pattern, and he responded by detaching MarCad Mike and Jimster. Yaahoo! Down they went, finally paralleling the ship's course and flying up the starboard side. Somewhere in front of the bow, MarCad Mike tapped his head and blew him a kiss to pass the lead to Jimster. With that, the Marine broke downwind to join the landing pattern. Jimster checked his heading and started counting--at "ten potatoes" he checked Lead's position and rolled into a 30-degree bank, retarded the throttle, dropped his landing gear and flaps, opened the cowl flaps and, finally, opened his canopy. As he slowed to 90 knots, he checked that he was more or less behind the aircraft in front of him and that his position abeam the carrier was correct. Every throttle change was immediately felt in his fanny and ears as the big engine surged and gloppeda-gloppeda'ed loudly through the open canopy. The sense of hanging on the prop was very real, and the buffeting of the slipstream begged for a long silk scarf to whip in the wind.
As Jimster called Paddles at the abeam position with his aircraft side number, fuel state and name, MarCad Mike was in the groove for the first of two touch-and-go landings, and Jimster figgered fleetingly that first qualification honors and the jug of whiskey would be in the gloating, hairy hands of the man with the starched knickers. Paddles cleared the young ensign for the first of two touch-and-goes.
He started his approach turn abeam the LSO platform, even though it seemed impossibly close. The carrier obliged him by moving away from him upwind, and by the time he crossed the wake and rolled out on final, everything looked about right. He concentrated on "meatball, lineup, airspeed."
When Paddles gave him the cut light, Jimster chopped his throttle, switched his focus from the mirror landing aid to the flight deck and plonked the T-28 squarely in the middle of the wires. Jimster quickly added power, the engine roared, and after a short scuttle down the wooden deck, it seemed to leap into the air. He continued upwind to take interval on MarCad Mike, who was still maddeningly in front of him.
So it went for the next touch-and-go. Paddles then cleared him to drop his tailhook for the next pass. Jimster reached over and moved the lever (cleverly shaped like a tailhook) to the down position--he was ready for the real thing. Six traps and he would be carrier qualified, a real Naval Aviator. He made his abeam report with the addition of "hook down" and concentrated on flying precisely. Ahead of him, MarCad Mike plumbered a slight low on the glide slope with a bag full of power, and sailed over the top of all the arresting wires!
"Bolter! Bolter! Power and go!" hollered Paddles.
As MarCad Mike's empty tailhook scraped along the flight deck, Jimster knew the sipping whiskey was his. He grinned a fleeting, secret grin as he knuckled down, buckled down and followed the meatball down the glide slope. The LSO's cut again plonked him in the middle of the wires and his tailhook snagged him to an abrupt stop. Frantically gesturing yellow-shirted flight deck folks signaled him to raise his tailhook and ushered him quickly clear of the landing area. Other frantic yellow shirts taxied him slightly forward and lined him up for a deck-launch takeoff. After a quick run through of the check list, another yellow shirted figure signaled a two-finger turn-up, and shortly Jimster was thumping the short distance down the deck and into the air.
He remembered to drop the tailhook as soon as he was airborne and squared away because he didn't want to look like a weenie and have to buy Paddles a bottle of booze, the required penalty for forgetting to put the thing down. He picked up the aircraft ahead of him downwind, waited until the interval was right and turned crosswind to follow him.But inside his turn and cutting him out was the airplane that had just taken off behind him. "You Delta Sierra, you're taking interval on the wrong plane!" raged Jimster to himself.
"Aircraft crosswind, you've got the wrong interval--you're cutting me out!" he radioed.
Delta Sierra kept coming despite two more radio calls, and he slowed as much as possible and S-turned behind the offender. Nobody from the ship said diddly squat about the supreme offense, and Jimster figgered he was going to be the grape and would be waved off from his approach because he was too close to the aircraft in front of him. Which would, incidentally, sequence MarCad Mike back in front of him for rights to the sippin' whiskey!
But the Big Guy truly did watch out for righteous Naval Aviators. When Delta Sierra made his abeam call, Paddles radioed "Aircraft at the 180, wave it off. You cut the other aircraft out!"
Jimster did his part by snagging a wire five more times. When he leaped into the air after his last trap, he knew he was truly 7 feet 6 inches tall. He was first of his class to qualify and richly deserved the jug of Wild Turkey Essence ... Yahoo!
PriFly cleared him to the Delta pattern to join on his instructor at 5,000 feet. Jimster started a left climbing turn and looked for his leader. Passing through about 4,500 feet, he finally spotted the other aircraft on the opposite side of the circle.
Perhaps he was still thinking about the 7-feet 6-inch thing when he honked his airplane around, causing it to mush, stall and spin! There Jimster was, not flat on his back and without eight MiGs on his fanny. Nevertheless, he was spinning uncontrollably 'round and 'round above the ship, time standing still as the world revolved. Every detail of the flight deck and aircraft below him stood out in perfect detail, getting bigger and bigger ... Yaaaaaaa!
Doing the thousand-mile-an-hour hands-and-feet dance, Jimster recovered abruptly at about 2,000 feet. Thinking fast, he figgered that if he climbed back and rendezvoused like a striped-ast gazelle, maybe he would enter some Twilight Zone aviation time warp that would turn him invisible and un-frabb the last minute or so. So he came screaming in on the lead aircraft at the speed of heat, and all he could see were the eyeballs of the Plane Captain of the Month in the rear seat frantically scrabbling around the cockpit trying to find the transmit button on the ICS to tell the pilot they were about to be rammed. At the last second, Jimster chopped the power and popped the speed brake. Zot! He stopped in a perfect parade position.
"You OK?" axed LT Lipster.
"Affirmative!" squeaked Jimster, who held his breaths all the way back to home plate. Nobody said diddly squat.
He held his breath all during the celebration at the club, where he was well and truly presented with his First Qual Jug. Only MarCad
Mike, possibly suffering from a case of the dreaded "Close, But No Cigar" syndrome, pulled his chain some with subtle hand gestures of the "stall-spin-crash-burn-die" variety. Finally, after much celebratory hydration, his instructor eased up to him.
"Jimster, you're a good stick, but don't get too aggressive before you get to the fleet." He could only nod his head in relief as the lieutenant shook his hand and smiled a brief, enigmatic smile.
Jimster's daddy hadn't raised a completely stupid boy. He popped off to NAS Kingsville and the Advanced Training Command. His path was very straight and narrow, and by and by he held his breath less. MarCad Mike grew tired of flopping his wrists about because Jimster was bigger that he was, but mostly because ENS Jimster was his class leader and could throw a certain amount of shit his way. Finally, in a ceremony of impressive stomping and saluting, he was draped with the Order of the Cherry, pinned on golden Naval Aviator wings and went off to a long and interesting Naval career.
Still, when the Navy offered up flight training records to pilots who cared about such things, the long-retired Jimster was one of the first to order his. When the dog-eared, coffee-stained archives arrived, he tore them open and madly searched for the grade sheet from the fateful day, still fearful after all the years that smoking guano lay in the text.
It didn't say diddly squat.
Which once again proved to Puresome that, right after being shot at without result, the most exhilarating experience in Naval Aviation is the frabb-up that stays quiet right up to the time the frabbee turns it into a really good story at happiness hour.