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1987, first deployment, North Arabian Sea. I'm a
raw nugget (new guy), flying maybe my fourth or fifth fleet night flight. An air
intercept control mission - fleet air
defense.
We're miles from nowhere, no
diverts are available. When the shooter pulls the trigger on the catapult,
you're either landing on the ship or in the water. Those are the only options
available. And it's darker than a hat full of a**holes.
Twenty or thirty minutes into the
flight, I notice that the jet needs progressively more and more lateral trim to
fight a tendency of the left wing to drop - there's a "coolie hat" on the
control stick which relieves control forces in flight. Now, the FA-18
automatically trims to 1g flight in pitch with the flaps in "auto," in other
words, during normal flight. Re-trimming is required in the landing
configuration, but rarely when cruising around with the flaps up. A little bit
of lateral trim if the aircraft is carrying an asymmetric external load. Perhaps
a twitch of longitudinal (rudder) trim from time to
time.
But she keeps wanting to wing
drop to the left, and I keep trimming it out. Which is strange, because I'm
symmetrically loaded. Eventually a light bulb goes off in the brain housing
unit, and I check the external fuel quantities. At sea, the FA-18 normally
carries two external fuel tanks, each carrying a little over 2000 pounds (nearly
seven hundred gallons) of fuel. They normally transfer to the fuselage tanks as
those empty. One of my two external tanks was empty. The other was still full. A
transfer failure. Two thousand pounds of gas seven feet displaced from the
longitudinal axis of the jet. Fourteen thousand foot-pounds of lateral
asymmetry.
The FA-18 doesn't carry a
lot of gas, for a fighter. At sea, you're always watching the fuel gauges,
making sure that your usage rates will not deplete your available fuel faster
than the recovery time permits. Because in cyclic operations, you can't come
back and land just any old time. You come back and land on schedule. If you're
early, you'll find the deck clobbered with the next launch - the landing area
will not be open - and nothing can be done. And you have to bring enough gas
home to allow yourself a few attempts at the deck, in case you bolter or are
waved off - either for technique (translation: You suck) or a foul deck
(translation: The guy in front of you got stuck in the wires - he
sucks).
So it was a little
disconcerting to realize that I had 2000 pounds less gas available than I would
otherwise have been entitled to.
I
called my flight lead, and together we went through the various trouble shooting
steps, trying to un-stick the transfer valve. Positive and negative g are
applied. I've cycled the arresting hook and refueling probe. Nothing seemed to
work as the fuel in my left tank stayed stubbornly full.
Decision time - a full external tank
is a liability. Merely carrying its weight around uses gas that you no longer
have available. But, jettisoning the tank into the sea comes with a certain
amount of baggage as well, they're not
cheap.
The decision is made to bring me
aboard first, at the beginning of the recovery, with all the trapped gas. First
I've got to go to the tanker to take a little gas into my right external, to
keep me inside asymmetric landing weight limits. Then I have to turn the
external transfer switches off - I'm not allowed to use that gas, otherwise the
jet is out of limits again.
Because of
weight limitations on landing, the combination of the trapped fuel in my left
tank, and the "saved" fuel in my right, I've only got about 2500 pounds
available to me for landing the
jet.
That's not a lot.
In the daytime, an experienced pilot
might elect to land with 3500 pounds. At night, because it's harder (oh my God,
it's so much harder), he's expected to save 4500 pounds. The wise man will
recover with over 5000 pounds. Because things could happen, down there. You
never know. Best to be safe.
With 2500
pounds, if I bolter I've got to find the tanker, plug in and start transfer
within about 3-5 minutes. Any less, and I'll be at a barricade fuel state. And
you don't want to barricade. It makes a mess of the jet, and it carries a
significant risk of failure (read: We hardly ever do it. You might easily die).
Too, a barricade approach is very highly demanding. The ship's captain would
rather stand on his head naked in a hailstorm than barricade a nugget.
Which means this: Find the tanker in
the 3-5 minutes, get plugged and receiving, or go for a swim. In the North
Arabian Sea, miles from nowhere. If you had to eject, there's every chance they
might find you, before the parachute dragged you under. It could
happen.
Or, you could land on the first
try.
I thought I'd try and do that.
That would be good.
So I'm on the
approach, working my butt off, trying to set myself up for success. The time
comes to call the ball, and I'm looking good. Not a lot of experience yet, so
I'm still stuffing demon doubt into his little jack-in-the-box, where he
will
still keep trying to pop out, saying, "Impossible! Can't be
done!"
The time comes when I'm sure
I've got the ramp made. I ease power a bit, thinking, "If CNO didn't want you to
catch the 1-wire from time to time, he wouldn't have put it
there."
Thing is, there's a lot of
water between the jet and the ramp at the point the pilot thinks he has the ramp
made. It's one thing to land early. It's a whole 'nother thing to smack into the
back of the ship. The Landing Signal Officers are explicitly chartered to ensure
you don't "hit the ramp," among other
things.
So my squadron mate, "Booter,"
gives me a "Power" call. Not screaming, but not whispering either. He's saying
to me, "Not yet, Lex. You aren't home yet. Keep flying the jet."
So I bump the throttles up a bit.
There, that should satisfy him. And then, because I really don't want to bolter,
and see if I can find that tanker in less than 3-5 minutes, I ease them back
again.
"POWER!" he shouts, almost
instantly. So I run the throttles up a little further, and scanning the
meatball, which is now heading down below the datums like an elevator at a
resort hotel, I bump them up a little further. In fact, I bump them up to the
stops. And a moment or two later, I'm in the wires, safely stopped, engines
screaming, lights flashing.
The Air
Boss tells me to throttle back, throttle back, they've got
me.
And the reply that formed in my
mind, which thankfully doesn't leave my lips, is "Boss, do I bother you when
you're taking a sh*t?"
But I learned to
trust the LSO.
Thanks,
Booter.
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