The picture below is an F-14 in afterburner racing across an evening sky.
I watched the movie "Top Gun" again last night. I am not a Tom Cruise fan, but that movie is a great one! It like many movies had a tough time getting to the silver screen and very nearly never got made.
The movie takes me back to my days working on planes on the Flight deck of the Kitty Hawk. I loved being in a flight crew for a year as a radar operator, but working on a flight deck for 2 cruises was an exciting thing too. There was always something happening and it always seemed exciting. F-4 Phantoms taking off from the flight deck at night with the twin afterburners spewing fire as the catapult shot them into the sky and watching them disappear into the night was never boring. I remember running back and forth across the deck with jets and propellers roaring as they wait in line to launch while I was trying to change out a faulty navigation or radio device exchanged so we wouldn't have to scratch a launch was exhilarating. Going back and forth along the catwalks where the steel grates beneath my feet let me see the ocean rushing by 80 feet below while I was trying to balance a heavy piece of equipment on my shoulder was never commonplace or uninteresting. Watching the ordinance men straining as they lifted and attached bombs under the wings of attack planes was interesting and made me happy that it wasn't me doing that job. The least fun job was doing a FOD (foreign object damage) walk down. Picture men shoulder to shoulder across a 250 feet wide deck walking from the round down (back end of the deck) down the deck all the way forward to the end of the flight deck looking for any tiny piece of wire or debris that could ruin a jet engine. Looking over the forward end of the flight deck and looking down at the water below was scary even back then. There is no steel netting at the forward edge of the flight deck. Sometimes a heavily loaded jet can drop the edge when their airspeed is not high enough to lift off the deck and a net would snag the wheels and flip the plane upside down and toss it into the water below. I have seen planes go off the deck and drop out of sight and then slowly appear a mile or more forward still trying to gain altitude. I cannot imagine what fear those pilots had those short minutes wondering if they would ever gain enough speed and air under the wings to lift them to altitude. I saw planes go over the front edge of the deck and drop until they hit the water due to a faulty catapult launch and then see part of the plane come floating by where I was about to start working. That is why the rescue helicopter is always in the air and ready to recover a pilot that ends up in the water be it takeoff or landing.
I could't do that today and would't even want to, but the memories are still wonderful and I hope I never forget those memories.
Today's song in my head is a Randy Rogers song "Standards."
The movie takes me back to my days working on planes on the Flight deck of the Kitty Hawk. I loved being in a flight crew for a year as a radar operator, but working on a flight deck for 2 cruises was an exciting thing too. There was always something happening and it always seemed exciting. F-4 Phantoms taking off from the flight deck at night with the twin afterburners spewing fire as the catapult shot them into the sky and watching them disappear into the night was never boring. I remember running back and forth across the deck with jets and propellers roaring as they wait in line to launch while I was trying to change out a faulty navigation or radio device exchanged so we wouldn't have to scratch a launch was exhilarating. Going back and forth along the catwalks where the steel grates beneath my feet let me see the ocean rushing by 80 feet below while I was trying to balance a heavy piece of equipment on my shoulder was never commonplace or uninteresting. Watching the ordinance men straining as they lifted and attached bombs under the wings of attack planes was interesting and made me happy that it wasn't me doing that job. The least fun job was doing a FOD (foreign object damage) walk down. Picture men shoulder to shoulder across a 250 feet wide deck walking from the round down (back end of the deck) down the deck all the way forward to the end of the flight deck looking for any tiny piece of wire or debris that could ruin a jet engine. Looking over the forward end of the flight deck and looking down at the water below was scary even back then. There is no steel netting at the forward edge of the flight deck. Sometimes a heavily loaded jet can drop the edge when their airspeed is not high enough to lift off the deck and a net would snag the wheels and flip the plane upside down and toss it into the water below. I have seen planes go off the deck and drop out of sight and then slowly appear a mile or more forward still trying to gain altitude. I cannot imagine what fear those pilots had those short minutes wondering if they would ever gain enough speed and air under the wings to lift them to altitude. I saw planes go over the front edge of the deck and drop until they hit the water due to a faulty catapult launch and then see part of the plane come floating by where I was about to start working. That is why the rescue helicopter is always in the air and ready to recover a pilot that ends up in the water be it takeoff or landing.
I could't do that today and would't even want to, but the memories are still wonderful and I hope I never forget those memories.
Today's song in my head is a Randy Rogers song "Standards."
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