"Should be good to go for
a recovery at..." the JG pauses, running the math again in his head, rechecking
the performance charts - got to keep in mind that he's dirty: gear and flaps
down will increase fuel consumption, "No more than 45 minutes or so, to be on
the safe side. Put him on deck with
three-point-oh." - "Three
point oh? Doesn't give him much of a margin for
error!" - "That's
about the max he could make an attempt with, as hot as it is. Any more than that
and he won't have single-engine wave-off capability. It'll be tight as it
is." - "Man,"
the Air Boss exclaims, "This just keeps getting better and better." He turns and
picks up a phone again, buzzes the
Captain.
She bucks hard with a mechanical
“TOC!
TOC!”
sound, rocking quickly back and forth from side to side as 1500 pounds of
taxpayer financed, pilot jettisoned ordnance goes tumbling in sequence from his
wings, down to the waiting sea below. Although Kestrel 304 seems relieved to
have shed the weight and drag of the 500-pound laser guided bomb and JDAM, she
is still no rocket ship with three air to air missiles, two external fuel tanks
and a Forward Looking Infrared targeting pod. The FLIR is bolted to the airframe
and can't be jettisoned, while air-to-air missiles can be hazardous to
jettison. As it is, the pilot is only able to just maintain level flight on his
one good engine with the gear down and flaps at one-half. He knows that as he
gets lower he’ll get more usable thrust with the increased air density.
But he also knows that with that increase of air density will come an increase
in fuel consumption, courtesy of the tyranny of partial pressure formulas and
constant fuel-air ratios. Until he knows what time he will land, fuel will be
his main concern. That is, if now new thing arises.
But at least he's flying again,
instead of settling into the waiting sea. He lets a ragged breath out that he
didn’t even know he was holding, starts to relax just that little bit.
He’s finally starting to feel like he’s caught up with the jet,
which is wonderful thing: For the better part of the last hour and a half, ever
since he had hasty repairs effected during the last launch and ended up getting
shot into the air late he has felt like he’s been holding on to the
jet’s horizontal stabilators with his nails, body flapping in the
slipstream while the jet tried to race away from him. Now that he can maintain
level flight, the second hand has stopped racing around his watch and once again
he has the aviator's necessary feeling of being in control of his environment.
He rocks a wing up, into the
operating motor, just in time to see the jettisoned bombs splash harmlessly
below him in the greasy, pewter colored Arabian Gulf some 15,000 feet below.
He’s grateful both for the wingman’s help in clearing the water
space below of traffic and for the unexpectedly confident voice of the squadron
rep, a mere lieutenant junior grade, on the radio back at the ship. Good for
him, with the problems he’s been having, the pilot thinks – and then
remembers the naval aviation adage about the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
“If the heat’s on somebody else, it not on you.” Well, after
today’s fiasco on the tanker, culminating just now in the act of casting
expensive warheads intended for enemy foreheads into the indifferent ocean, it
will take a Herculean display of airmanship from this point on for the pilot not
to become a permanent heat sump. He has committed himself to flying the very
best single engine approach that anyone has ever seen, and even if that does not
wipe clean the shame of the basket slap, or having to jettison his bomb load, it
will at least ease the sting.
He
wearily recognizes that he’s almost certain to have earned a new call sign
by the time today is over, he’s been around long enough to know the drill:
He can see his brothers in arms, those wickedly inventive, irreverent and
unremittingly cruel members of the Junior Officer Protection Association even
now, and can imagine the wheels eagerly turning in their pointy little heads. As
a matter of decorum, the JOPA will wait until he lands safely of course (it
never occurs to the pilot that he will not land safely) and then there will be
an unseemly scramble to the whiteboard, fighting over free-space and markers as
his best friends in the world twist the blade in his ribs again and again with
their inventive recommendations for a new handle, names like,
“Slick,” and “Slap,” or maybe even “Stone
Hands.” He does not quite blame them for this, knows that it is part of
the tribal culture, that he’d do the same in their shoes with equal glee.
But now it’s time to put that in a box of its own. There will be plenty of
time to rummage around in it later, after this ordeal is done. He still has his
hands full with the jet, which, rather than the silky smooth, cool and
responsive FA-18 Hornet he has come to know and love, is sulky, crank and
cross-grained in the baking Arabian heat combined with the loss of half her
accustomed thrust. There’s the squadron rep on the
radio:
“304, rep, the Boss says
he can take you last, at the end of the recovery. I’m showing you at about
3.0 at that point, do you
concur?”
“Wait
one.” The pilot checks his numbers on the fuel flow, notes how many
aircraft are to launch at 1330, calculates his consumption rate against what
he’s carrying on board, grimaces. “I’m showing about 2.8 at
time 1345, close enough – can I go first?” He knows that this will
be awkward for the flight deck – with his right motor off line, his normal
brakes will be inoperative and he’ll have to leave his tailhook down after
he lands to be towed out of the arresting wires by a tractor driver – that
will take time, precious, irreplaceable time, the most valuable thing in the
world to an aircraft carrier at sea and the fire we all burn
in.
“It’s a small
recovery, just you and your wingman and the overhead tanker, Boss says go for
it,” the rep passes, and the pilot has to concede again that the kid was
doing a pretty good job. Too bad he can’t fly the ball to save his
skin.
By now he’s closing in on
the ship, has changed to Tower frequency and checked in with the Boss. He
watches the second launch make its leisurely way into the sky, the bow cats
firing for the first time that day, both waist cats steadily adding to the flow.
He reflects again upon the dissonance of a launch as it is experienced, and a
launch as it is observed: From up here it looks so peaceful, so quiet, almost
balletic – no hint at all of the shocking noise and violence associated
with hurling 25 ton fighter aircraft into the air one after another, using mere
hundreds of feet steel flight deck and steam powered catapults. As he turns
above the carrier at 1200 feet, he sees the last two fighters headed to the
catapults, one to the waist cat, one to the bow and is not surprised to hear the
Boss on the radio: “304, take it out to five miles, set up for your
approach.”
The pilot does a
last airspeed and angle of attack crosscheck with his wingman alongside. With
the starboard side AOA vane missing, the system is giving spurious inputs and
he’ll have to fly by indicated airspeed alone. He knows how crucial the
correct angle of attack is to a successful landing – everything from the
proper setting of the Fresnel lens glideslope indicator on the ship, linear
response of the remaining engine to his throttle inputs, the separation of his
tailhook from the flight deck as he crosses the ramp, his hook’s ability
to snag a wire, and the wire’s ability to absorb his aircraft’s
kinetic energy for a safe landing are intimately tied to his ability to maintain
proper speed and AOA.
He feels his
heart rate race at this as his stomach tries its best to flip over, but he
struggles to stay in control, to stay on top. Not much longer now, one way or
the other, but there’s no way to escape the fact that he is on the margin
of every performance limit: Useable thrust, available fuel, hot day, density
altitude. A shadow crosses over his canopy, and he looks up in a momentary flash
of alarm, only to relax a bit as he recognizes the FA-18E tanker high and to his
right, coming out of the sun. The tanker is “hawking” him: Makes
sense, he thinks and is grateful to the ship for taking care of this. If he were
to bolter or get waived off for whatever reason, the tanker will be right there
waiting for him, just ahead and to his right with the refueling basket streamed.
It’s a sensible precaution with so little fuel remaining. He looks to his
left, and there's the wingman, stepped up in formation, feathering the
speedbrakes to stay in place, hovering like a guardian
angel.
He starts his turn back in
towards the ship, always turning left, into the good motor. As he rolls out on
extended centerline the second hand starts racing again, his fuel seeming to
evaporate from his internal tanks and the miles flashing by like streetlights on
an interstate. It’s happening faster than he would like and he surges his
mind to catch up with it, to get back into the cockpit, back in control of the
moment. Landing checklist
complete.
The instrument landing
system crosshairs come up in his HUD, and soon it’s time to start down. He
cracks the left throttle back experimentally, feels the jet decelerate and
pressures the stick forward ever so slightly. Three miles. On
speed.
She starts to descend and he
analyzes his rate of descent: 400 feet per minute, not enough, crosschecks the
HUD and ILS needles: Yes, going above glideslope. Another minute reduction of
the throttle, a nervous dance on the rudders, an unaccustomed requirement due to
the asymmetric thrust. Scan the airspeed: Slow. Bunt the nose again, a little
more nose-down trim, check line-up: Lined up right, a little left wing down,
just a little. Two miles. A little
slow.
Rate of descent, 800 FPM. That
should bring us down and yes, approaching glideslope. Now throttle up a bit and
level the wings. A bit more throttle. Ugh – it’s on the firewall now
and a clammy wave of fear threatens to wash over his consciousness, he
can’t slow the rate of descent! A mile and a
half.
He needs burner, maybe just a
squirt (God, let it be just a squirt!) and make sure we’re not slow, no
need to go through that again. Good, that did the trick, in fact we’re
leveling off which won’t do either, crack it back (maybe feather the speed
brake? – HELL no!) a mile and it’s time
to…
“Call the
ball,” says the LSO on the radio, and his voice is startlingly loud
against the sound of his own hoarse breathing, 15 seconds
now.
“304, Hornet ball, 2.7,
single engine,” sounds pretty cool, he thinks, sounds in control. Better
to die than look bad.
“Roger
ball, single engine, you’re just a little
high.”
And so he is, but
he’s been burned before and now he hesitates just a bit to ease any more
throttle and bunts the nose a bit instead, but now he’s fast as well as
being over-powered and the ball is rising, and that won’t do. He thinks, a
bolter would be much worse than a 1-wire with stall and thrust margins so
reduced I might not get her airborne again, don't care what the performance
charts say, and a little voice in the back of his head chips in that a ramp
strike would be worse than either a bolter or the ace, five
seconds.
So he cracks the throttle
back and just the slightest bit of forward pressure on the stick, a little right
wing down, a touch of right rudder and as the ball stops rising but before it
starts to come back down again he jams the throttle to the firewall and hopes
he’s done the right thing. Could go either way. Almost there, three
seconds.
The ball starts falling
towards the center but it’s moving too fast, he’s going to shoot
through the glideslope, he can hear the LSO key the mike, and he knows that
“Paddles” is going to scream for “POWER” so before that
can even happen he plugs the throttle into blower (just a bit? a bit more?
how’s that?) and when the LSO finally does call “POWER!” on
the radio what seems like an eternity later the pilot mentally shrugs, thinks to
himself, you bet, that’s all I’ve got and there’s nothing at
all left over, and he feels strangely calm knowing that he's done what he can do
and there’s no card left to play. The ball sags below the datum lights and
he hears the LSO key the mike
again…
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
