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A controlled crash
Landing on an aircraft carrier is one of the most difficult tasks a pilot has to execute. The flight deck is only 150 meters long, just enough to stop the aircraft.
Unlike pilots in other military services or pilots of commercial aircraft, aircraft carrier pilots don’t have the luxury of landing on 6,000-10,000 feet because we are trying to land on a postage stamp in the middle of blackness.
According to Carey D. Lohrenz, author of the Wall Street Journal Best Seller “Fearless Leadership: High-Performance Lessons from the Flight Deck” and former US Navy F-14 Tomcat pilot, ‘A carrier landing is similar to a controlled crash. The touch down is enough to destroy most other airplanes. As the arresting hook snags a wire, your body is slammed forward with such force at times it feels as though your legs and arms are going to separate from your body.
‘That’s what going from 155 knots to a complete stop in 1.2 seconds does to you.’
US Navy S-3 pilot “watching the show” on the LSO platform
Mike Turner, former US Navy S-3 Viking pilot, recalls on Quora;
‘I flew S-3’s but remember many hours “watching the show” on the LSO platform.
‘I’ll never forget what one of the LSO’s told me one night. “Hornets generally look good all the way down the groove. But when things go wrong, they tend to go wrong really quickly compared to the other aircraft types.” I was not an LSO, but remember being surprised at a few (legacy) Hornet passes that seemed fine . . . right up to the point I saw burners lit just before crossing the deck.
‘But even the fat kids can surprise you. I remember my one questionable pass in the S-3 where I got a little complacent. Benign day conditions, nugget cruise but with enough passes to know better, decent stabilized approach for the first half of the pass. Everything was looking great, then all of a sudden, I was heading towards the round down after bunting the nose slightly to augment what I thought was a slight power reduction to fix a rising ball. I didn’t see it coming ahead of time (like I normally would). Amazingly, neither did the LSOs. My squadron paddles said he almost fumbled the mic trying to spit out a “POWER!!!” call that seemed to come from nowhere. It’s kind of a miracle that I managed to go on the power and still salvage a not-so-great pass. We all had some perplexed looks in that LSO debrief!
US Navy S-3 Carrier Landing Operations in the Persian Gulf
‘I had my share of other non-eye-watering passes (especially as a nugget) – but generally we could all see the (OK) coming ahead of time with the average deviations and corrections – there were really no abrupt, shocking surprises except for that one time . . .
‘But I WILL say – I actually got pretty comfortable with night passes during my second cruise. I was Ass-Ops and would actually keep myself on the night schedule most of the time. I liked sleeping in, and the Case-III approach is actually easier than the day approach pass – especially when you’re flying all-manual “working man’s” passes in an S-3). What made this possible was that we spent most of that deployment in the [Persian] Gulf, where the weather was mostly good, very low sea states, and all the oil well flames provided a great horizon reference at night- even on the nights with solid ceilings obscuring stars and Commander Moons.
‘So, mostly all the benefits of a stabilized straight-in approach without most of the butt-clenching fear from low viz, high sea states, resulting vertigo, etc. My night landing grades were WAY higher than my day grades, and I generally had the highest landing grades in my squadron most line periods (which endlessly vexed my CO, who was a former CAG Paddles).
Flying at night in other parts of the world
‘I ended up with about 400 traps during my flying career, with just about half of those at night. Almost 200 night traps!’
Turner concludes;
‘But I would have been singing a different tune flying at night in other parts of the world, in worse weather, with various aircraft malfunctions. For me, all that happened on my nugget cruise, and I remember many a dark and scary night where I didn’t care what wire I caught, and was surprised to see my legs shaking in the wires just like they were after my very first T-45 trap . . .
‘FLY NAVY!’
Photo credit: Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Todd Frantom / U.S. Navy
