Flight Deck

Working on the flight deck of a U.S. navy aircraft carrier is classified as one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Not by the navy but by the federal government bureau of labor.

In peacetime as well as wartime, a navy flight deck is a dangerous place to work. No one told me that when I went to sea on the USS Kitty Hawk, working on the flight deck as a 21 year old sailor. Had someone mentioned that I may have been scared, but then at 21, I didn’t give it a thought.

Something should have clicked and given me pause when on my first time at sea we were out off the coast of San Diego running a racetrack pattern up to Los Angeles and then back to San Diego. I was in the cockpit of an E-2A one late afternoon listening to Wolfman Jack playing tunes on the radio as I watched planes land on the deck about 75 feet away from where I was sitting. The last plane to land was another E-2A from my squadron. The co pilot was in control during a qualifying landing aboard the ship. He touched down on the port side (left) of the arresting wire. A plane has to touch down on the centerline of the deck for a successful landing. He did not, so the plane skidded over the deck edge and the wheels were in the steel safety cable. The arresting wire was pulling the plane back on a downward slant, while the first half on the plane was pulling down toward the ocean. The result was the plane cracked in half and fell overboard. Out of five crew members two were saved. Had the co pilot landed to the starboard (right side) of the centerline, I would not be writing this story today. The crash and resulting fire would have taken the entire crew and me with them. That should have been lesson enough for any sane individual, but not me. I continued being in one of the planes all through the cruise and the next cruise.

During the qualifications off San Diego I never carried my flash light up on deck at night (like I was supposed to do) the flight deck still had landing lights and some upper lighting, enough for me to see well and do my work. When we reached yankee station off the coast of Vietnam I went up on deck for an evening launch, just before dark. It was our first operation in the war zone. I was the guy inside the plane to ensure all of the radio and navigation systems were working before take off. If there was a failure I had to run across the deck and swipe a working unit from one of our other planes to install in the plane before they could take off. That launch was ready to go. My last duty was to step out of the door, latch it shut and get out of the way. In the short time I was inside the plane it went from dusk to pitch black and there were no more lights anywhere on the flight deck. There I was on the wrong side of two spinning turboprops and beside our plane there was an old AD-1 attack plane with its giant propellers spinning. I was scared; I could hear the ominous roar of those props and I had to get past them to safety by the Island on the other side of the flight deck. There was a steel safety net just a few feet away, but I could not see it and one misstep and I would be 60 down into the Pacific ocean. I had to make it to the island. The only thing I could think to do was get down into a pushup position and make my way on my hands and toes to the Island. I did so and again had I not done what I did, I would not be writing this today.Those were some, not all of my incidents on the Kitty Hawk.

Now I want to write about the USS Forrestal out at sea on yankee station at the time we were. The ship was preparing for a daytime launch. All of the attack planes were on deck, all fueled, all armed. The investigation into the incident determined that a zuni rocket was tripped and fired by an electrical glitch on deck. The missile shot across the deck to a line of A-4 attack planes loaded with 500 pound bombs. The missile hit an external fuel tank, igniting the fuel. The burning fuel spread across the deck igniting other external tanks and cooking off some of the 500 pound bombs. It was an inferno of death. 132 crewmembers died that day many more were injured. I don’t know if the video of this incident is still on the internet. We saw everything that happened from the flight deck cameras as did every other carrier in the fleet. It was a gruesome thing to watch, guys running in to fight the fire, then an explosion and those guys were vaporized.

The USS Enterprise had a similar incident on Yankee station with similar results. This was before I was onboard. This is why flight decks are dangerous. Out at sea when a fire starts, there is nowhere to run and get away from the fire.

One more thing I’ll write, what happens when an arresting wire snaps and breaks apart. This doesn’t happen too often but when it does, there is a four inch diameter steel cable cracking like a whip across the deck. I have seen videos of this from the navy. One video two sailors were standing by the Island, one saw the cable break and he managed to leap into the air high enough to let the cable pass under him the other sailor didn’t. Imagine this, both ankles cut off by a four inch diameter knife. There was no way to repair what happened to that sailor.