“You plugged in?” Jake asked.
“Yep.”
“Thanks for the help.”
“No sweat.”
“Autopilot’s packed it in.”
“I noticed.”
Just like an old married couple, here in the intimacy of a night cockpit. There are worse places, Jake thought, than this world of dials and gauges and glowing little red lights. Worse places…
At exactly seventeen minutes after the hour he hit the fix for the third time, popped the speed brakes and lowered the nose. This was the pushover. The A-7 that had been holding at five thousand feet was inbound in front of them a minute earlier.
Jake keyed the mike: “Five One One is inbound at One Seven, state Seven Point Six.”
“Roger, War Ace Five One One. Continue.”
At five thousand feet Jake shallowed his descent as Flap called on the radio: “Five One One, Platform.”
“Roger, Five One One. Switch button One Seven.”
Flap changed the radio frequency. Jake watched the TACAN needle carefully and made heading corrections as necessary to stay on the final bearing inbound. Soon he was level at 1,200 feet, inbound. At ten miles he dropped the gear and flaps. This slowed the plane still more. He checked the gear and flap indications and soon was stabilized at 120 knots. Flap read the landing checklist and Jake rogered each item.
Seventy-five hundred pounds of fuel. He toggled the main dump and let a thousand pounds bleed overboard into the atmosphere. If this worked out, he should cross the ramp with exactly six thousand pounds remaining, the maximum fuel load for an arrested landing.
Jake adjusted the rheostat on the angle-of-attack indexer, a small arrangement of lights on the left canopy bow in front of him. These lights indicated his airspeed, now a smidgen fast. One hundred eighteen knots was the speed he wanted, so he eased off a touch of throttle, then eased it back on. The indexer came to an on-speed indication. He checked his airspeed indicator. Exactly 118. Okay.
There — way out there — the ship! It appeared in the dark universe as a small collection of white and red lights, not yet distinguishable as to shape. Oh, now he could see the outline of the landing area, and the red drop lights down the stern that gave him his lineup cues. The ball on the left side of the landing area that would give him his glide slope was not yet visible.
The final approach controller was talking: “Five One One, approaching the glide slope, call your needles.”
The needles the controller was referring to were crosshairs in a cockpit instrument that was driven by a computer aboard the ship. The computer contrasted the radar-derived position of the aircraft with the known location of the glide slope and centerline. It then sent a radio signal to a box in the aircraft, which positioned the needles to depict the glideslope and centerline. The system was called ACLS, automatic carrier landing system, and someday it would indeed be automatic. Right now it was just the needles. Jake had to fly the plane.
“Down and right.”
“Disregard. You’re low and slightly left…Five One One, slightly below glide slope, lined up slightly left. Come a little right for lineup, on glide path…on glide path…”
At the on-glide path call Jake squeezed out the speed brakes and concentrated intently on his instruments. He had to set and hold a six-hundred-foot rate of descent, hold heading, hold airspeed, keep the wings level and this plane coming down just so delicately so.
“I’ve got a ball,” Flap told him at two miles.
The controller: “Left of course. Come right.”
The pilot made the correction, then glanced ahead. Yes, he could tell from the drop lights he was left. When he was properly lined up again he took out most of the correction. Still his nose was pointed slightly right of the landing area. This correction was necessary since the wind was not precisely down the angled deck, which was pointed ten degrees left of the ship’s keel. Except for an occasional glance ahead, he stayed on the gauges.
“Five One One, three-quarter mile, call the ball.”
Now Jake glanced out the windshield. There’s the meatball, centered between the green datum lights. Lineup looks good too. Jake keyed the mike and said, “Five One One, Intruder ball, Six Point Oh.”
“Roger, ball. Looking good.” That was the LSO on the fan-tail, Skidmore.
The ball moved in relation to the green reference or datum lights that were arranged in a horizontal line. When the yellow “meatball” in the center moved up, you were above glide path. When it appeared below the reference line, you were low. If you were too low, the ball turned red, blood red, a stark prophecy of your impending doom if you didn’t immediately climb higher on the glide slope. The back end of the ship, the ramp, lurked in red ball country, waiting to smash a plane to bits.
Yet as critical as proper glide slope control was, lineup was even more so. The landing area was 115 feet wide, the wing span of the A-6, 52. The edges of the landing area were defined by foul lines, and aircraft were parked with their noses abutting the foul lines on both sides of the deck. Landing aircraft were literally sinking into a canyon between parked airplanes.
And Jake had to monitor his airspeed carefully. The angle-of-attack indexer helped enormously here, arranged as it was where he could see it as he flew the lineup and glide slope cues. Any deviation from an on-speed indication required his immediate attention because it would quickly affect his descent rate, thereby screwing up his control of the ball. Running out of airspeed at the ramp was a sin that had killed many a naval aviator.
Meatball, lineup, angle-of-attack — as he closed the ship Jake’s eyes were in constant motion checking these three items. Nearing the ship he dropped the angle-of-attack from his scan and concentrated on keeping properly lined up, with a centered ball. As he crossed the ramp he zeroed in on the meatball, flying it to touchdown.
The wheels hit and the nose slammed down. Jake Grafton thumbed the speed brakes in as he smoothly and quickly shoved the throttles forward to the stops. The LSO was on the radio shouting “Bolter, bolter, bolter,” just in case he forgot to advance the throttles or to positively rotate to a flying attitude as he shot off the edge of the angled deck.
Jake didn’t forget. The engines were at full song as the Intruder left the deck behind and leaped back into the blackness of the night. Jake eased the stick back until he had ten degrees nose up and checked for a positive rate of climb. Going up. Gear up. Accelerating through 185 knots, flaps and slats up.
Now to get those six traps.
The radar controller leveled him at 1,200 feet and turned him to the downwind heading, the reciprocal of the ship’s course. He was stable at 220 knots. Jake reached for the hook handle and pulled it. Hook down.
The controller turned him so that he had an eight-mile groove, which was nice. As soon as the wings were level he dropped the gear and flaps. Once again he concentrated intently on airspeed and altitude control, nailing the final bearing on the TACAN, retrimming until the plane flew itself with only the tiniest of inputs to the stick to counter the natural swirls and currents of the air. This was precision flying, where any sloppiness could prove instantly fatal.
“Five One One, approaching glide slope…Five One One, up and on glide slope…three-quarters of a mile, call the ball.”
“Five One One, Intruder ball, Five Point Six.”
Deep in the heart of the ship in Air Ops, a sailor wearing headphones wrote “5.6” in yellow grease pencil on the Plexi-glas board in front of him and the time beside the notation that said “Grafton, 511.” He wrote backward, so the letters and numbers read properly to the air officer, the air wing commander, and the other observers who were sitting silently on the other side of the board watching the television monitors and occasionally glancing at the board.