THE CONTROLS ARE FREE

Saturday, August 3, 2013

The Controls are Free

"The controls are free. The wings are down and locked. The trim is set two down, zero and zero. The flaps are coming to one half. All the lights on the telepanel are out. The hook is up, my harness is locked, check yours, I am ready to go."

An act of professionalism, I suppose, but it is much more . This take off checklist, for the F-4 Phantom aircraft, is the stuff of gods and princes. It is the preamble to a declaration of intense sensory stimulation, fear pushed to the back of the conscious mind by superb training and a personal ego fulfillment unknown to most.

The preflight walk around the aircraft is often done without enthusiasm and excitement. In ever way and every day to "kick the tire and light the fire", will prove the old saw, "there are old and there are bold pilots, but there are no old and bold pilots". Your life hangs on the sleeve of the Reaper if you repeatedly show a lack of discipline that results in a sloppy and mindless rote performance.

Every input to the flight controls on the ground and in the air must be smooth but deliberate. I was taught that most inputs to the stick and throttle would require at least one if not more inputs to the throttle or stick in the opposite direction with one half the amplitude of the first input. Smooth is required at all times, but is especially important for aerial refueling, formation flying and recovering aboard the ship.

Like most professions, flying fighter aircraft is either an event that goes as planned or is an event that does not. The trick here is to ensure that you are not the primary reason for an unplanned event. In its most severe manifestation, an unplanned event that causes you to exit the aircraft before it successfully lands and comes to a full stop on all three landing gear is unseemly, unprofessional but most of all, really looks bad. Most fighter pilots would rather die than look bad. Looking bad is prevented by proper prior planning and skillful execution.

Even if you do all the things that are required and expected of you, it is still possible for you to lose control of your environment and have to eject from the aircraft. When this happens, you must, like getting bucked by a Brahma, immediately get right back on and finish the ride.

There are dozens of stories that course through my memory at present, but I will share only two.

The first story takes place in Kingsville, TX and on the USS Lexington sailing off the coast of the Florida Keys qualifying prospective Naval Aviators aboard this old but reliable ship of the line.

For weeks, we have been conducting FMLPs (Field Mirror Landing Practice) at outlying fields. We are flying a minimum of two sorties per day at remote fields scattered across the entire east Texas badlands and perhaps more sorties depending on the time of year and the amount of light available. We are in the hands of qualified experts referred to as LSOs. An LSO is a Landing Signals Officer and he expects and gets your undivided attention for every touch and go.

Here is the object of all the training. This is the picture you want to see. In this picture please note the mirror to the left of the landing area. It looks like its floating in the water. (Look at the close up of the mirror nearby.) In this picture, you see the mirror that is reflecting a light in front of it that projects the light out to infinity at a give angle in reference to the landing area. This beam of light is referred to as the glide slope and it is the optimum flight path of the aircraft all the way to touch down. In the picture, this light looks like an orange dot right in line with the two sets of green lights. The green lights represent the deck of the carrier. Just to the right and left of the mirror are a row of red "wave off" lights. If your approach to the carrier is hosed or the deck of the carrier is not clear, the LSO will command over the radio, "wave off, wave off" at the same time he will turn on the wave off lights by depressing a switch on the "pickle button" (see photo of me with the device in my hand and a cable going to the mirror). A wave off command over the radio or the illumination of the reds lights is mandatory. The pilot must wave off. There are absolutely no exceptions.

There are two other issues. The aircraft must be exactly on speed and lined up with the centerline of the landing area.

We practice for weeks getting to see a sight picture like the one above and practice until we do it right every single time. This is show time. This is the time to man up. All the bragging, bravado, and BS comes to a halt here. You can kill yourself and lots of other people on the carrier if you screw the pooch. It is an unforgiving environment and you can lose your wings and your career right now. Looking bad is a sign of failure and it is not tolerated. There is no, I repeat, no aviation task so demanding as a night carrier landing when the weather is dog poop and there is no beach that you can bingo (low gas) to.

During the Viet Nam war, a study was made of an A-4 squadron aboard ship who were flying daily sorties over Hanoi and Haiphong (the worlds highest concentration of anti aircraft weapons in the history of aviation at any time before, during or since). The study showed that the breathing and heart rates of the pilots were at their highest when the pilots lowered their landing gear and tail hooks to land on the ship. If you have not gotten the picture that this is serious business then you have not been paying attention.

Like most of the students, I am spun up. I am afraid. Really afraid. Not afraid of the physical dangers associated with executing the landings and catapult shots, I am terrified of screwing the pooch.

Every possible problem has been briefed a dozen times and the carrier procedures have been drilled into us for so long we know no other world. We have no families and no other distractions to interfere with the focus we need to successfully navigate this right of passage in Naval Aviation.

With this intro, my first story starts.

I am in a flight of five F-9Fs lead by an instructor who guides the flight just to the left of the carrier at about 800 feet. The plan calls for us to make a hard left turn (break) to generate separation between the aircraft, lower the gear and flaps and make four touch and go's then make six arrested landing and six catapult take offs.

For reason that remain a mystery to me, when I reach the place where I report my gear and flaps down with a fuel state, the LSO commands, "lower your hook for a full stop landing". NO,NO,NO this is not according to plan. My heart jumps into my throat and I start the process of lowering the hook while at the same time beginning to make my approach to the boat. In most aircraft, lowering the hook is a matter of touching one handle and pushing it down. Not the Cougar. The hook handle is on the right side of the cockpit extending from the instrument panel. You must grasp a "T" handle and ratchet the hook out and down by pulling on the "T" handle at least six times. Keep in mind, I am trying to accomplish the hardest task in aviation. While I am trying, I must let go of the stick with my right hand, grasp it with my left, give a couple of pulls on the hook handle and then reverse the process so I can make a power correction with my left hand. I play this dance two or three times and I finally get the hook down but as I roll out into the groove, I am way too low. I am three quarters of a mile from the end of the ship (Spud locker) when the LSO tells me to wave off. I apply full power and wait for the old engine to do its thing. I have the air craft wings level at optimum climb speed and my eyes are level with the deck of the carrier with me climbing very slowly. I am waiting for the LSO to tell me eject but I barely clear the spud locker and engage the "1" wire. I am safely aboard but scared to death. Every thing I had been briefed on is out the window. The plane handlers do not taxi me to the bow for a CAT shot but push me backwards toward the edge of the carrier. My tail assembly is hanging over the edge of the carrier with the motor still running as the deck apes chain me down to the USS Lexington, plug a fuel hose into my jet and I wait and watch. I watch as my entire team qualifies aboard the ship and then heads back to Texas for beer and back slapping. Not me, I am still chained to the deck.

But life is getting ready to get interesting. Over the 1MC (PA system) and over the radio, an announcement that the ship is changing its Foxtrot Corpen. Until five minutes ago, I did not know what this expression literally stood for. Thank you Google. The Foxtrot Corpen is the carrier's heading for optimum flight operations. So I hear this command and at the same time look at my right three o'clock and see an aircraft being man handled by about 20 able bodied seamen as they push the plane onto the forward starboard elevator to bring it to the flight deck. At the same time the captain brings the ship hard port and the boat, believe it or not, heels over to the starboard so much that the aircraft being pushed onto the elevator is picking up speed because of the ships angle. I was not kidding about the ship listing during a hard turn.

The plane captains and deck apes start throwing chocks under the wheels to stop its movement toward the edge of the elevator and the waiting abyss of the Gulf of Mexico. I recognize the pilot who is doing his best on the breaks but is much more interested in getting unstrapped from the jet. The sailors are successful in getting chocks under both main landing gear at the same time. But fate will not be denied. As the Cougar comes to a stop, the angle of the ship and the jets momentum combine to cause the nose to pitch up. On land this would not be a problem because the tail would hit the ground and issue over. Not here. There is nothing below the tail of this jet and the aircraft continues to pitch nose up until it falls off the elevator. The pilot is a blur of motion and I get just one look into his face and all I can see in his bulging eyes is justifiable fear!

The Cougar almost completes a back flip before it hits the water. I am dumb struck. It must be having a dream. This is no dream. The aircraft does not float for a minute. I can still see the tail as it passed behind my tail. I snatch my head to the left and the plane is gone. The aircraft, replaced by a churning mass of bubbles which makes the water white. God only knows how, but the pilot pops to the surface like a wine bottle cork with his Mae West fully inflated. He has a big smile on his face until he sees the side of the still turning ship headed right at him. He rolls on to his stomach and begins a crawl that any Australian would be proud to claim. There is a roll of water that is proceeding the ship as it slides through the water and acts like a wave from the North Shore and surfs the pilot until the boat finally passes him and rolls him like a toy in the turbulence behind the ship.

The pilot is picked up by one of the ships SAR helos, returns to the carrier, the pilot is removed, with no injuries, to the Quacks dispensary and is given the traditional measure of grog. He takes a shower, gets a clean set of skivies and flight suit, briefs his return to Kingsville, signs for an A/C and launches into the setting sun. I, on the other hand, am still chained to the deck.

The air boss finally gets his stuff together and after many calls from me asking for a status, I am taxied to the CAT fired into space, trap five more times and then fly home by myself arriving after dark with no one to celebrate my accomplishment. I go by the club, but all have departed. I go home to my loving bride who makes up for my disappointment by emoting an attitude of cheerful adoration that I really don't deserve but love just the same.

Story number two.

While stationed in Chu Lai, Viet Nam in 1969, my RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) and I were chosen to fly one of our jets to Cubi Point Naval Air Station in Subic Bay in the Philippines for salt water corrosion wash down. This was a sought after boondoggle because you got to stay in the BOQ, talk to round eyes (Caucasian women), get a Cubi Special (A couple of different kinds of rum and some kind of fruit juice mixer), a Cubi Dog (A foot long with all the trimmings.), your boots polished, a hair cut, a shave, a mustache trim, a shampoo, a neck and shoulder massage, a short nap all for $2.25. We goofed off a lot, but we mostly sat around the pool, drank Cubi Specials and ate Cubi Dogs until we fell asleep and napped for a couple of hours.

An afternoon shower, clean skivies and flight suit and off to the Cubi O'Club for dinner and drinks. Mostly drinks.

I no longer remember why, but I was forced to fly my jet back to Chu Lai without my RIO. In my entire career, this was the only time I was asked by competent authority to do this.

We tied all the rear seats harness straps together so they could not get caught in anything during the one hour flight back to Chu Lai.

I got air borne late in the afternoon and when I reached 30,000 feet or so, I noted that the sun, setting precisely on my line of flight had only a sliver of sun left before disappearing over the horizon. As far as I could see, the evening sky was on fire with lots of high altitude cirrus clouds used to spray lavender, burnt orange and flame red across the firmament.

There have many times when the sights and wonders of the sky have been breathtaking and moving. Yet, they seemed a fleeting moment and left my immediate memory with little in the way of poetic verse to articulate how the senses are translated by our intellect into moments of self awareness and appreciation for the bounty that fills our days. For the most part, I chalk this up to limited life experiences. In my current dotage of 71, almost all visions I experience end up with some kind of cerebral artistic display. This is particularly bizarre since I have zero artistic abilities.

How do you describe our sun? In this episode, the sun I see is not really the sun's location. The sun is already below the horizon but its rays are bent by our atmosphere with two results. First, the light rays, bent by the atmosphere, are also passing through a planet sized prism which changes the colors to something different form what is actually being emitted by this small star. The atmosphere also makes the object look just slightly out of focus. The impact is to make the sun appear to have softer lines and the light is diffused enough to look right at it with my visor down. I find it queer that I had a desire to look directly into the center of this Hydrogen fire as if there were some cosmic secret to be gleaned from it's core.

I do not know what airspeed at 30,000 feet comes close to the speed of the rotation of the earth at the equator, but what ever it is, the sun stayed precisely where it was on the horizon from take off to a descent to landing. I had more than an hour to view this spectacle of nature and gather a meaning of some kind. I just remember it was beautiful and that I was fortunate indeed to have been able to see it. Perhaps that is enough.

This was something very special about this not too infrequent event, but I was not able to attach a meaning to my vision at the time. There was no one to talk to and the silence put my mind to other pursuits. I wish I could translate it for you now, but it's message still escapes me.