Just now the picture on the monitors was from a camera buried on the landing centerline of the flight deck, which pointed aft up the glide slope. As they watched the officers saw the lights of Jake’s A-6 appear on the center of the screen, in the center of the crosshairs that indicated the proper glide slope and lineup. As the plane closed the ship the lights assumed more definition.
Up in the top of the carrier’s island superstructure was Pri-Fly, the domain of the air boss. His little empire was pretty quiet just now since all the air traffic was being controlled via radar and radio from Air Ops, but two enlisted men behind the boss’s chair were busy. One held a pair of binoculars focused up the glide slope. He saw the approaching Intruder, identified it, and chanted, “Set Three Six Zero, A-6.” Regardless of a plane’s fuel state, the arresting gear was always set at the maximum trap weight, in the case of the A-6, 36,000 pounds.
To his left, the other sailor made a note in his log and repeated into a sound-powered phone that hung from his chest, “Set Three Six Zero, A-6.”
The air boss, a senior commander, sat in a raised easy chair surrounded by large bullet-proof glass windows. He could hear the radio transmissions and the litany of the sailors behind him, and noted subconsciously that they agreed with what his eyes, and the approach controller, were telling him, that there was an A-6 on the ball, an A-6 with a maximum trap weight of 36,000 pounds.
Under the after end of the flight deck in the arresting gear engine rooms, all four of them, sat sailors on the Pri-Fly sound-powered circuit. Each individually spun a wheel to mechanically set the metering orifice of his arresting gear engine to 36,000 pounds, then they sang out in turn, “One set Three Six Zero A-6.” “Two set Three Six Zero A-6,” and so on.
When the fourth and last engine operator had reported his engine set, the talker in Pri-Fly sang out, “All engines set, Three Six Zero A-6,” and the air boss rogered.
On the fantail of the ship directly aft of the island, on the starboard side of the landing area in a catwalk on the edge of the deck, stood the sailor who retracted the arresting gear engines once they had been engaged. He too was on the Pri-Fly sound-powered circuit, and when the fourth engine reported set, he shouted to the arresting gear officer who stood above him on the deck, right on the starboard foul line, “All engines set, Three Six Zero A-6.”
The gear officer looked up the glide slope. Yep, it was an A-6. He glanced forward up the deck. The landing area was clear. No aircraft protruded over the foul lines, there were no people in the landing area, so he squeezed a trigger switch on the pistol grip he held in his right hand.
This switch operated a stop-light affair arranged twenty feet or so aft of the landing signal officer’s platform on the port side of the landing area. The LSO waving tonight, Hugh Skidmore, saw the red light go out and a green light appear.
“Clear deck,” he called, and the other LSOs on the platform echoed the call.
“Clear deck!”
This entire evolution had taken about fifteen seconds. The ship was ready to recover the inbound A-6. Now if Jake Grafton could just fly his plane into that little sliver of sky that would give him a three wire…
He was trying. He was working the stick and throttles, playing them delicately, when he slammed into the burble of air disturbed by the ship’s island. The plane jolted and he jammed on some power, then as quickly pulled it off as he cut through the turbulence into the calm air over the ramp. On he came, aiming for that eighteen-inches-thick window where the third wire waited, coming in at 118 knots in an eighteen-ton plane, the hook dangling down behind the main gear, coming in…
Hugh Skidmore strode about five feet into the landing area, inboard of the LSO’s platform. Against his ear he held a telephonelike radio headset connected with the ship’s radios by a long cord. Forward of the LSO’s platform was a television monitor, the PLAT — pilot landing assistance television — which he checked occasionally to ensure the plane in the groove was properly lined up. He could hear the approach controller and he could hear and talk to Jake Grafton. Yet there was nothing to say. The A-6 was coming in like it was riding rails.
Then it was there, crossing the ramp.
Jake still had a steady centered yellow ball as the wheels smashed home. The ball shot off the top of the lens as he slammed the throttles to the stops and the hook caught, seemingly all at the same time. The deceleration threw the pilot and bombardier forward into their harnesses.
The A-6 Intruder was jerked to a halt in a mere two hundred and sixty feet.
It hung quivering on the end of the arresting gear wire, then Jake got the engines back to idle and the rebound of the wire pulled the plane backward.
The gear runner was already twenty feet out into the landing area signaling the pilot with his wands: hook up. When he saw the aircraft’s tailhook being retracted, the runner waved one of his wands in a huge circle, the signal to the arresting gear operator in the fantail catwalk to retract the engine.
Obediently the operator selected the lever for number-three engine and pulled it down. Since the lever was connected by a wire over three hundred feet long to a hydraulic actuating valve on the engine, this pull took some muscle. When he had the yard-long lever well away from the bulkhead, the sailor leaped on it with his feet and used the entire weight of his body to force the lever down to a ninety-degree angle.
By now the A-6 that had just landed was folding its wings as it taxied out of the landing area. By the time the tail crossed the foul line, the third engine operator said “battery,” and the retract man got off the lever and let it come back to its rest position. As he did he heard the Pri-Fly talker sing out, “Set Two Seven Zero A-7.”
On the LSO platform Hugh Skidmore leaned over to his writer, tonight the Real McCoy. “Give him an OK three. Little lined up left at the start.”
McCoy scribbled the notation in his pocket logbook like this: 511 OK3 (LLATS).
Then both men turned their full attention to the A-7 in the groove as they waited for the clear-deck light to illuminate.
The second cat shot, into a sky as black as the ace of spades, went well. Jake leveled at 1,200 feet and turned downwind, as directed by the controller. He held 250 knots until the controller told him to dirty up, which he did at the same time he told Jake to turn base. So Grafton was turning as he changed configuration — slowing, retrimming and trying to maintain a precise altitude, all at the same time. He lost a hundred feet, a fact that Flap instantly commented upon.
Jake said. nothing, merely kept flying his plane. This is the big leagues. Gotta do it all here and do it well. Flap has a right to comment.
A short, tight pattern left him still searching for a good steady start when he hit the glide slope. The secret to a good pass is a good start, and Jake didn’t have it. He wasn’t carrying enough power and that caused a settle. By the time he was back up to a centered ball he was fast, which he was working off when he hit the burble. He added power. Not quite enough. The ball was a tad low when the wheels hit the deck.
“A fair two-wire,” he told Flap as they rolled out.
Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Equipment) Third Class Johnny Arbogast enjoyed his work. He operated the number-three arresting gear engine, the one that got the most traps and therefore required the most maintenance. Still, Johnny Arbogast loved that engine.
During a slow, rainy day in port this past spring, the gear chief had worked out how much energy an engine absorbed while trapping an F-4 Phantom. The figure was nine million foot-pounds, as Johnny recalled. Nine million of anything is a lot, but man! Those planes make this engine sing.