In October of 1966. I was out on my second “Carrier Qualification” off San Diego and the old salts did their best to give us new guys all the training we needed before going on a WESPAC cruise. I worked the day shift during the first qualification, but was changed to nights for the second outing. The first thing we were told was, “never go up on the flight deck at night without your flashlight!” Well I was just a lad of 21 and took a lot of things the old guys said with a grain of salt.
We had air operations up on the flight deck that week and even though it was the middle of the night, there seemed to be more than adequate lighting. I was assigned to the launch crew. As the communication and navigation tech, my job was to enter the plane once it was on the catapult and after the crew was in place. I then checked with the pilot and co-pilot to make sure the radios and navigation equipment were working properly. If there was a problem, I had minutes to diagnose the failure, run out of the plane and over to one of the other planes to remove a radio, navigation unit or an internal communication box and swap it with the defective one on the plane to be launched. If everything was okay the pilot would give me thumbs up and I’d exit the plane, close and latch the door, then get out of the way so the planes could launch. We still had the old AD-5 four seat attack aircraft that had been modified for electronic jamming missions during that carrier qualification and cruise. The setup was always the same, our E-2 radar planes were on the outboard waist catapult, and the AD-5 was on the inboard waist cat. So when I left the plane, I had to walk out under the wing, avoid the spinning propeller, cross in front of the plane, avoid two spinning props, and then pass in front of the rotating prop on the AD-5 to get to safety by the island. I have to admit, for a kid like me, this was pretty exciting stuff. There was a ballet going on up there, technicians, plane captains, plane pushers, flight deck officers, dozens of people up there dancing and darting between planes, huffers (tractors with a small jet built in to start jet planes on deck) moving about starting the engines on fighters and attack planes and no one bumping into each other. It was a choreography any Broadway producer would be happy to show. Our plane and the AD-5 would launch first because they had more fuel, could stay up longer and because once we were on station, our plane directed air strikes and the AD-5 would be up in front of the strike to jam North Vietnamese missile radar. Once the plane was in the air I could go back to the shop for a smoke and a cup of coffee.
The picture below is what the flight deck looked like when we were on station off Vietnam.
When we arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin, we went right to work. I was up on deck in the twilight on the first evening and went to the plane, which was hooked up to the outboard cat just like in training. The plane was all aglow inside with red lights and indicators everywhere. The ship turned into the wind, the plane’s engines fired up and I got thumbs up from the pilot. I glanced at the tech in back and he signaled okay, so I stepped out of the plane, shut the door, and then realized it was pitch black out there! We were in a war zone now and all the lights were out. I couldn’t see the propellers; I couldn’t see anything. I was screwed. I knew I could walk straight out along the wing tip, but didn’t know how far it was to the steel safety net lying horizontal at the deck edge. If I tripped it was 80 feet to the water and I couldn’t just stay at the edge of the deck, we were launching 60 or so planes. My only option was to guess how far forward I had to go to get completely in front of the props and then cross in front of our plane and the AD-5’s spinning propellers on the inside catapult. I got down into a push up position, as low as I could be and crawled out past the prop and the cat rigging, then got up and made my way across the deck, hoping Joyce wouldn’t be a widow come morning. There were some dim red flashlights on deck. Everybody but me had one, but while they produced enough light for those people to see what they were doing, there wasn’t enough light for me to see and get away. By that time there were dozens of planes producing tremendous noise so I could yell all I wanted and no one would hear me. That was the last time I ever went on deck at night without my flashlight.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
We had air operations up on the flight deck that week and even though it was the middle of the night, there seemed to be more than adequate lighting. I was assigned to the launch crew. As the communication and navigation tech, my job was to enter the plane once it was on the catapult and after the crew was in place. I then checked with the pilot and co-pilot to make sure the radios and navigation equipment were working properly. If there was a problem, I had minutes to diagnose the failure, run out of the plane and over to one of the other planes to remove a radio, navigation unit or an internal communication box and swap it with the defective one on the plane to be launched. If everything was okay the pilot would give me thumbs up and I’d exit the plane, close and latch the door, then get out of the way so the planes could launch. We still had the old AD-5 four seat attack aircraft that had been modified for electronic jamming missions during that carrier qualification and cruise. The setup was always the same, our E-2 radar planes were on the outboard waist catapult, and the AD-5 was on the inboard waist cat. So when I left the plane, I had to walk out under the wing, avoid the spinning propeller, cross in front of the plane, avoid two spinning props, and then pass in front of the rotating prop on the AD-5 to get to safety by the island. I have to admit, for a kid like me, this was pretty exciting stuff. There was a ballet going on up there, technicians, plane captains, plane pushers, flight deck officers, dozens of people up there dancing and darting between planes, huffers (tractors with a small jet built in to start jet planes on deck) moving about starting the engines on fighters and attack planes and no one bumping into each other. It was a choreography any Broadway producer would be happy to show. Our plane and the AD-5 would launch first because they had more fuel, could stay up longer and because once we were on station, our plane directed air strikes and the AD-5 would be up in front of the strike to jam North Vietnamese missile radar. Once the plane was in the air I could go back to the shop for a smoke and a cup of coffee.
The picture below is what the flight deck looked like when we were on station off Vietnam.
When we arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin, we went right to work. I was up on deck in the twilight on the first evening and went to the plane, which was hooked up to the outboard cat just like in training. The plane was all aglow inside with red lights and indicators everywhere. The ship turned into the wind, the plane’s engines fired up and I got thumbs up from the pilot. I glanced at the tech in back and he signaled okay, so I stepped out of the plane, shut the door, and then realized it was pitch black out there! We were in a war zone now and all the lights were out. I couldn’t see the propellers; I couldn’t see anything. I was screwed. I knew I could walk straight out along the wing tip, but didn’t know how far it was to the steel safety net lying horizontal at the deck edge. If I tripped it was 80 feet to the water and I couldn’t just stay at the edge of the deck, we were launching 60 or so planes. My only option was to guess how far forward I had to go to get completely in front of the props and then cross in front of our plane and the AD-5’s spinning propellers on the inside catapult. I got down into a push up position, as low as I could be and crawled out past the prop and the cat rigging, then got up and made my way across the deck, hoping Joyce wouldn’t be a widow come morning. There were some dim red flashlights on deck. Everybody but me had one, but while they produced enough light for those people to see what they were doing, there wasn’t enough light for me to see and get away. By that time there were dozens of planes producing tremendous noise so I could yell all I wanted and no one would hear me. That was the last time I ever went on deck at night without my flashlight.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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