Successful completion of carrier qualifications,
or CQ, marks a critically important milestone in the career of a student naval
aviator. Landing safely and expeditiously aboard the ship is what distinguishes
the Navy pilot from his more pedestrian, prosaic, even rustic, counterparts in
the Air Force.
My first CQ was aboard the USS LEXINGTON (AVT-16)
in 1984. The
"Lex"
was ancient, even then: First launched in 1942, and weighing in at a mere 42,000
tons (as opposed to over 100k on a NIMITZ class) she seemed impossibly small,
almost fragile to the fleet experienced pilots that would take us out for our
first CQ. She was only 910 feet long, with just more than half of that length on
her angled deck landing area.
But she
was also a living piece of naval aviation history, the "Grey Ghost," thrice
claimed as sunk by the Japanese during World War II, and thrice returned to the
fight. During her long and illustrious career, she fought at Tarawa, Truk,
Kwajalein, the battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf and elsewhere
through the Pacific, earning 11 battle stars. Her final strike into Japan was
ordered to return and jettison their bombs after word was received of the
Japanese surrender.
To generations of
students bound for her overhead marshall stack, she represented an implacable
and unavoidable obstacle on their professional journeys; the path to the Navy
Wings of Gold led through the Lady
Lex.
----------------------------
Before
a student naval aviator will ever test his mettle aboard floating metal, he will
"bounce," or fly dozens of missions whose only purpose is to prepare him for
carrier landings. This is called FCLP, or field carrier landing practice, and
the beginning of a bounce period will for the rest of his career mark the
impending reality of going to sea. On each bounce hop, a landing signal officer,
or LSO will grade each of his landings as well as test his reaction to the
wave-off lights and power or line-up calls. The student must not only be
proficient, he must be predictable, and he must answer to the LSO commands.
Students that don't will not qualify at the field, and thus not join his
classmates overhead the ship. In most cases they will be given a second chance
some weeks later. Should they not field qual on their second try, the will be
encouraged to seek other employment, either within the Navy, or as is more
common recently, elsewhere.
On every
flight you fly in training, you will fly with an instructor in your back seat
until you have demonstrated proficiency, before being sent out on mission solo.
Except for CQ - when you go for carrier qualification for the first time, there
will be no mentor in your back seat whispering guidance on the intercomm, no one
to gently help you bump the stick or throttles into their proper positions.
When you go to the ship for the first
time, you will go alone.
Finally a
morning broke in Pensacola, Florida for me and my band of brothers to test our
skills as countless of our predecessors had. We had received a long,
comprehensive brief on what to expect aboard the ship, including a hair-raising
series of emergency procedures drills - what to do if the brakes or catapult
should fail on deck, for example. When to stay with the aircraft, and when to
eject. The point at which you need no longer bother to eject, just so we'd be
prepared and recognize our impending doom, if ever we came to
it.
The instructor also told us not to
"look at her," when we were holding overhead in formation. We'd get distracted
from our primary task of flying in formation, with potentially disastrous
consequences. Then he looked us all in the eyes one by one, shook our hands, and
wished us luck.
He led us out to the
ship, through the radio shifts and into the orbit overhead. In spite of his
warnings, I had to look down and see her waiting there below. "TOO SMALL!" my
mind screamed, and looking back at my lead I could tell my wingmen had done the
same thing as I had: Our previously beautiful four plane formation became the
shadow of its former self, as wings rocked left and right while student pilots
snuck their peeks at the ship and then back at their
lead.
Our time arrived at last, he
brought us down into the pattern from behind the ship, and we got our first look
at the fantail and landing area from pattern altitude. "TOO SMALL!" but never
mind. My lead broke left into the downwind, and after 15 seconds I joined him.
It was his responsibility to get us
all to a good abeam distance on the downwind leg, and so he did. Landing
checklist complete. Once off the base turn, called "the 180" in naval aviation
since we use a continuous turn to final, we were on our own. Set up on final,
"in the groove," I made my first ever at-sea "ball call" with my side number,
fuel state and name, and received my first ever "Roger, ball" from the LSO - I
was cleared to continue my approach. Hook up for two touch and goes, and after
the first I began to relax. Sure, she was small, but so was my airplane. She was
moving, but I was moving faster. I could do
this.
Then the order from the Air Boss:
"925, hook down." I lowered the tailhook, and started my third approach.
Everything was going so smoothly, I could not believe I had been so concerned a
few moments before. A decent approach to a nice touchdown and WHAM! The arrested
landing felt like a car crash, the jet going from nearly 100 MPH to a shrieking
stop in a few hundred feet. My body surged against the restraint harness and
before I could recover my wits there was a flight deck director, a
"yellowshirt," jumping up and down and making antic gestures which I finally
recognized as "hook up!" The arresting gear engine started its retract, pulling
me backwards a few feet, and I received the "brakes on" signal. Hitting the
breaks, the jet's nose high in the air as the brakes, tailhook and the
retracting cable briefly fought for control of my destiny. The arresting cable
finally dropped away, and a small squad of green-shirted catapult crew ran under
my nose to hook up the tiller bar with which I would be led to the catapult.
Up to the cat, a launch bridle fitted
to my wings, my internal gyros still tumbling from the landing a few moments
before, I was sitting in tension at full power when the "shooter" touched the
deck and "WHAM" I was airborne again. The cat shot was just as violent as the
trap had been, with all forces operating in the opposite direction. My mind
reeled once more.
Three more landings
just like that and I would be done, a qual.
I don't remember any of them. It is
all a blur of violence and noise.
But
that was the point of all the training at the field, the simulators, lectures
and flights. They taught us to be predictable, to listen to the LSO's
unhesitatingly, to operate a high performance jet on an almost instinctual
level, on brain stem power.
But I do
remember hearing four short words just after my last cat shot, and my "bingo" to
the beach: "925 you're a qual."
No
sweeter words were ever heard.
Posted @
06:44 AM
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Credo
"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
