USN Deck Landings
 

The are 10 minutes each and worth watching:



Reminds of my days in Army Aviation, we had a lot of RN aircraft engineers attached and one CPO, 'Doc' Foster, would always be wandering around singing, "And as for deck landings at night in the dark, as I told 'Wings' this morning, fkcuk that for a lark.......... and I still have to fill in my A25"

Excellent stuff. Sounds as though someone was regretting (a bit too late) the decision to train in such extreme conditions...

Night Flying
 

I sat and watched these clips and thought of a time 35 years ago when we used to have that capability ( albeit without the swathes of technology shown here ) on the old Ark - fixed wing night flying recovering to arrestor gear on a pitching deck. I used to go up to the ACR debrief room ( cramped) for 809 recoveries - I'd leave it to the Duty AEO to take the lead on any post recovery debrief - lets face it we weren't turning any aircraft around for a re-launch - next launch would be a 4 around 0700 followed by another 4 about 0800. The aircrew would come in off the deck with exhaustion and stress etched on their faces - Lt Francis would fetch out a cigarette from his immersion suit ( how did he do that ??) and immediately ask " Have you got a light Chief " - no debrief until that action was complete. Robin Kent would come in looking about 20 years older than normal and say " F***k that for a game of soldiers " - he wasn't one for expressing sentiment of that nature at most times.

Memories of a dark night ........
 

Ah, memories of a dark night, non-diversion flying and only one wire (#1) rigged on Ark. Four bolters and a very untidy final arrival.

Never could understand how the USN did it without a couple of stiff drinks afterwards!

Despite the passing years and all that new technology, it obviously has not got any easier.

Character-building stuff.

Thanks for the video clips.

GW

Parabellum, have you another link to these videos. All I get is a large white blank space!

Here are the links to both of them :-

YouTube - PBS: Carrier - Landing on a Pitching Deck Pt. 1
YouTube - PBS: Carrier - Landing on a Pitching Deck Pt. 2

And that is exactly why you cannot just pitch up (scuse the pun) and operate from a deck after months ashore and expect to be operationally capable in a few days!

Just watched the 20 mins of video, absolutely excellent, all kudos to the pilots that fly off the carriers.

Y_G

LowObservable
 

I agree with your post 2#.
But found that whole clip literally awesome. A stunning case of teamwork, and some good leadership (in taking the place of a junior pilot for the tanking flight).
I have never seen a large modern carrier move that much, is it common, and do any of you RN types have experience of flying in those conditions?, I would be fascinated to hear more tales.
The tale of the Sea Vixen landing with zero visibility, striking aircraft/structure on deck, and going on to land safety at a land based station, is one such story I think sums up the naval aviator very well.

I also took note of that. Nice to see a Skipper that leads from the front rather from the desk. The XO seemed a good leader as well.

Those who talk down Dave B should bear this sort of thing in mind.

The complete series from PBS for the tour is available online here:

CARRIER . Full Episodes | PBS

Carrier Landings
 

Morning all,

Are there any British pilots on exchange with the US Navy who fly carrier approaches and landings? (Not AV8B/Harrier).

Scary stuff.

Having nowhere to go other than either onto the carrier or into the oggin must really focus the mind.:eek:

BTW, does anyone know of a site which will allow a UK resident to watch the rest of that Carrier series?

THS - buy the DVD for about $30 from the well-known auction site, or from South American river.com (not .co.uk)

Cheers AA.

There's a USN saying something like, "it wasn't too bad if you can hold the Jack Daniel's steady while filling out the maintenance forms". Yes, US ships are dry, but not always in flying squadrons.

GF

Out of interest was there a specific reason that US ships are dry (such as an embarrassing incident once upon a time) or it is one of those "God hates a drinker" bible bashing things?

The US Navy decided that alchohol and ships don't mix. While I'm partial to a drink now and again, I am forced to agree. There is NO alchohol in US operations, period and, you know what, banning it cut down tremendously on accidents, fights, legal problems with the locals. All stuff that used to be part and parcel of US military deployments.

GF

USN Exchange
 

Dominoe, I believe we may have some 1st tourist RN pilots who failed to make the grade for the Harrier OCU on exchange flying F-18s with the USN (to build up carrier experience before the introduction of Dave). At least that was the plan a few years ago.

I did an exchange with the VF101 back in the 1980’s on the F-14 RAG . It was their equivalent of our Operational Conversion Unit so was land based. I did, however, get to day and night Carrier Qualify – day great fun, night bl**dy frightening:sad:. Not sure that the RAF have any more ‘shoot and trap’ exchange post now that the F-14 has retired.