144 – Flying from Aircraft Carriers
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This is the long-awaited episode on flying from aircraft carriers. Our guest is Scotty Bates who flew from US carriers in the 70s. We discuss all aspects of carrier aviation including training, cat shots, arrested landing, pattern work and how all of it changes at night or in bad weather. Scotty had a few additional remarks/corrections after the recording:
- Some Navy aircraft do have self or onboard starting capability. I know the T-45 Goshawk does but I don’t know about any other carrier aircraft that may also have that capability.
- Ordnance safety pins are pulled just prior to spotting the aircraft on the catapult, not before.
- Communications: the sound attenuators worn by the flight deck personnel actually contain radio sets, not sound-powered phones.
- Catapult shots take somewhere between 2-3 seconds but closer to 2.
- During day ops each squadron has a rep in Pri-Fly just as they do for night ops in CATCC
- ACLS mode 1A approaches can be decoupled by the pilot as well
- Alternative “needles” approach system is not a radar, it is more like an ILS
- LSOs can also call Left for Lineup
- While aircraft with a total engine failure is not allowed to land, it is occasionally possible for a multi-engine aircraft with one good engine to land if there is sufficient wind
Here are the regular links:
- Modern US Carrier Ops (WP)
- HowStuffWorks: Catapults
- LINGO – Navy pilot terms and slang – Blue Ridge Journal
- Carrier Landing Mishaps
- Vought F-8 Crusader (WP)
- McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II (WP)
- Landing Signal Officer (WP)
- USS Ranger (CV-61) (WP)
- Carrier Air Wing 2 (WP)
- USS Midway (WP)
- McDonnell Douglas T-45 Goshawk (WP)
- Optical landing system (WP)
- Air Boss (WP)
- Ground support equipment (WP)
- Catapult (WP)
- Jet Blast Deflector (WP)
- Hold Back Bar
- Sound Powered Telephone (WP)
- McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet (WP)
- Foxtrott Corpen
- The Island
- Air Traffic Control aboard Aircraft Carriers
- IFF (WP)
- Tactical air navigation system (WP)
- Tailhook (WP)
- ADF (WP)
- Visual flight rules (WP)
- VMC (WP)
- Meatball (WP)
- Optical landing system (WP)
- Fresnel lens (WP)
- North American A-5 Vigilante (WP)
- Autothrottle (WP)
- Automatic Carrier Landing System (ACLS)
- E-2 Hawkeye(WP)
- Natops manual (WP)
- Arresting gear (WP)
- Bolter (WP)
- cat II (WP)
- CAT III (WP)
- USS Ranger (CV-61) (WP)
- Fleet Replacement Squadron (WP)
- Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler (WP)
- Boeing EA-18G Growler (WP)
- Lockheed S-3 Viking (WP)
- Grumman C-2 Greyhound (WP)
- BAE Hawk (WP)
- T-45 Goshawk (WP)
- Lockheed F-104 Starfighter (WP)
- Lockheed T-33 (WP)
- Fast Carrier Task Force (WP)
- Underway replenishment (WP)
… and the two Stephen Coonts Audiobooks:
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Fantastic episode! I loved every minute of it. I once watched a documentary about landing on pitching decks and wanted to hear about it from a pilot ever since. Thank you for that.
Thanks Roberto, glad you liked it :-)
Wow! What a fascinating episode. Very interesting to hear all the day-to-day details of carrier flying and your questions raised issues that I had never thought about – for example, how to avoid a traffic jam on the flight deck! Well done Markus and thank you Scott for your time.
Thanks Robert :-)
It must be such a privilege and honor to take off, fly and land a n y plane, but navy aircraft….definitely HAIRBALL !!!
Intense stuff…….Thoroughly enjoyed this interview Mr. Bates and Marcus….Thank you!
Oooops…sorry I misspelled
your name Markus. ;P
I feel the same way. Yesterday I watched one of these GoPro Cockpit videos (this time from an F-15: http://vimeo.com/93790719) and it had shots of the guys flying low through glaciers and high between the clouds. I know that flying for an air force isn’t *just* fun, but it sure looks like it *also* is a lot of fun. And it must feel great to be handed this x-million $ plane and be told “go out and play with it” (even though the mission order will read different, of course). I remember when I had my glider license as a 17 year old, and I was first allowed to take the plane to different airfields and stuff. It really felt great. The glider was “just” 120,000 EUR, but as a 17 year old, it feels like a lot to be trusted with the airplane by your buddies from the club. In any case…. thanks for the comment :-)
Spectacular, eye-candy video! (Thanks for posting that link.) I don’t know how you pilots can just get back in a car after that and drive around like a normal person.
Great episode!
One question though: Are those navigation beacons and landing aids used during combat engagements?
You do want to tell your planes where the carrier is and help them with (night) landing, but you certainly don’t want to provide navigational aid for enemy planes or missiles.
Is a carrier just “too big to hide” anyways so you don’t care about everybody knowing where you are?
I think they are turned on during combat ops, probably for as short a time as possible. I think that carriers should be defended at a greater range, and the lights should not matter anymore. But that’s just my 2 cents.
This was a riveting episode, just as the Stephen Coonts books I read afterwards.