The Sentinel News Navy Edition 200417

The Sentinel All the news that's fit to print and some that's not.
Working on a Flight Deck All of my three cruises were aboard aircraft carriers. The first two I worked on the flight deck. I enjoyed it because there was always something happening. Launching and recovering aircraft was a myriad of tasks going on all at once. The flight deck on board ship is a risky job. More accidents happen up there than anywhere else on the ship. On launch you need a swivel on your head because jets are on the move constantly. Having one turn on you can put you in a jet blast that can knock you over and singe your face and arms. On recovery, an arresting cable can snap and whip across the deck taking off an ankle or both. A plane landing off center can send it right or left. Right it goes careening into planes parked by the superstructure. Left sends the plane over the side and when an arresting wire breaks the plane usually goes rolling down the angled deck and drops over the front edge and into the water.	The Biggest Danger Below are pictures of the USS Forestal when it caught fire in 1967.These are still pictures. On cruise that year we got to see the direct video from their flight deck cameras. It was horrific! Guys running over to put out fires and get pilots out of planes were vaporized when some of the bombs exploded on deck. 134 men died that day and the next. The scenes above can happen any day of operations. One day off the coast of Vietnam we had an A-4 land with an armed 500 pound bomb that was hung up and would not release over its target. when it caught the arresting wire and shuddered to a quick stop, the bomb broke loose and slid all the way down the angled deck and dropped into the water. Every one that saw it held their breath hoping it wouldn't explode on deck or under the ship breathed a sigh of relief after the bomb was well aft of the ship. My first time aboard ship off San Diego we had a plane land too far off center of the arresting wire and went right off the deck across from where I was working. 3 crew members died.	61 days on the line I had a friend on the 1966-1967 cruise whose name should perhaps be changed to protect the non innocent. I’ll call him Bud. He had the bunk above me on the Kitty Hawk. He was a tall thin Sailor and was an aircrew radar tech. I met him on the cruise and he seemed to be a nice easy going, and peaceful character. I didn’t know he was an alcoholic. He worked and acted completely normal. The aircrew job required brains and ability to think fast under pressure. I knew he was a liberty hound, but most of those guys were. It was the sixties and for many it was their first time away from home and the continental U.S. We were out on station, bombing the snot out of North Vietnam when the bad news came in, our relief carrier the USS Constellation had blown a boiler and would be in port at Cubi Point until the boiler was repaired, so we would be stuck on line until such time as they could repair the boiler and be seaworthy. It turned out our normal 30 days on station at sea extended to 61 days of combat air operations. 12 hours on and 12 hours off, 7 days a week at sea, so 61 days at sea meant 61 straight days of work, all 12 hours a day. Tempers would flare on short notice, but Bud went completely bonkers! I discovered that he had run out of booze right after the extension began. Our relief showed up on the 62nd day and we finally headed into port. One night in town and Bud was back to a decent human being once more.