Flight Decks back in the day

      At sea during 1966-1968 the flight deck was never idle, 24/7 there was something going on and it was always interesting to me. This post begins with WW-2 flight decks and progresses through the seventies.

       Back in WWII all the planes were propeller driven and the flight deck was full of them all jammed together on the aft-end of the deck. There were no catapults, so every launch was a deck launch. They would fill the deck 4 abreast. The flight deck crews had to run the gauntlet around all those spinning props. There are no statistics on how many sailors were killed by spinning propellers, but every contact with a rotating prop results in death. The WWII carrier planes were all tail draggers (no nose wheel, just a small castor-like wheel under the tail) and the pilots could not even see what was in front of them when sitting on the deck. Pilots relied on plane directors to guide them into position to launch. The pilots did not really have any steering like we think of today. If they needed to turn left they stepped on the left brake and the plane’s motion would turn them. A right turn was accomplished by pressing on the right brake. Landing required equal pressure on both brakes. Landing on a carrier, planes had to catch one of the arresting wires. If the pilot missed the wires he would run into a huge net that could twist the plane every-which-way but loose. Sometimes the plane would nose dive in the net. That was never good. The prop would be ruined when it hit the deck, bending or breaking and sending metal flying into the air and endangering everyone on the deck. The sudden stops could cause the engine to stop with force seizing it up which could destroy it and often start an engine fire and spilling high-octane aviation gas to ignite on the deck. In those cases there were deck crewmen who had to push the planes from the landing zone up forward to the bow for storage until all the planes landed. They had to be on the open deck and rush out there to push the planes out of the way so those behind them could land. Most of the times all the planes were low on fuel and could not wait too long before having to ditch in the ocean beside the ship. There were no helicopters then to pluck pilots out of the water, so they had to wait for the destroyer plane guard ship to lumber over and pick them up from the water.

       There were few night landing operations in that war due to the danger of enemy bombers seeing lights and attacking the carriers. There were a few minimal post sunset landings during the battle of Midway, but those were only during desperate times. Pilots were not trained for night carrier landings. The Grumman torpedo bombers (they were more dangerous to pilots than to Japanese ships) were stripped of torpedoes after Midway due to the loss of more than 40 of them (in one day) during the battle and not one hit on a Japanese ship. Later the carriers would launch the Grumman torpedo planes just before dawn to use them as scout planes or as day time bombers.

       During the Vietnam war there were a lot of fires on the flight decks. In every case I have known about a lot of sailors were killed. An aircraft carrier in those days never completely shut down work. We worked 12 hour shifts in the air wing, so half of us were working and half were asleep. The big fires were followed with or started by explosions which blew holes in the deck which allowed burning jet fuel to flow into berthing compartments and those sleeping were consumed by the flames.

       Planes like the AD-1 in the picture above missed WWII, came into service after the end of the war. They were introduced in 1946 and in use into 1980. They were used extensively in Korea and Vietnam. They flew from all navy carriers and air force bases. One little factoid here, all were equipped with a tail hook. The air force had no use for a hook, although I seem to remember reading that one time an air force plane did land on a navy carrier and had to use the tail hook.

      One last thought today about my time working on the flight line ashore or the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. The old timers, mainly mechanics, had a little joke they used to play on new guys. With propeller/prop driven planes, they would send the new guys to supply for a bucket of prop wash. The guys in supply would would get a big laugh out of that, as did the mechanics when the new guy came walking back empty-handed. The fun was in the fact that prop wash is the wind that flows behind a propeller, so there's no way to collect a bucket of it. In the electronics shop, we still used a lot of vacuum tubes in radio and radar equipment. The old salts would be working on some radio and send the new guy for a high voltage output tube and some fallopian tubes. The supply guy would give them the high voltage output tube and then tell the kid they were fresh out of fallopian tubes in supply.

Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.