One of the problems we had to face was the weather. I have never seen 60kt fog before but it happened several times during the conflict. As LB will be attest, moist air over a very cold sea does not for good flying make! On one occasion I returned from a mission and was told that the clobas was “below 100ft”. Since our minimum was 200ft, I told the D to just give me the centreline and I would manage the glide path. Having had a quick skeg with the radar and confirmed no hard metal on the approach, I let down early on the rad alt and saw the sea at about 30ft.
I creamed on in taking more nozzle and slowing to around 100 kts, preparing for a hefty decel to the hover but at 1/2 NM the ship turned hard to stbd. In the mist, I saw what I thought was the wake and aimed for it - only realising very late that it was the bow wave! No sweat, braking stop decel followed by flying under the bow and a quick spot turn to line up alongside the ship on the port side before climbing into cloud and landing on 3 spot.
Apparently the captain stormed into Flyco and asked wings what the hell I was doing as I disappeared underneath the bow. Wings replied “I think he’s crashing Sir!” We did stop flying for a few hours after that, to let the weather improve slightly.
Heady days!
Mog