Admiral Johnson: I think that we've touched on the big things already in this interview. One point that I would hope to make is that the capability that CVBGs and the Navy in general give to the country and the world is vital. We've talked a lot about the equipment, and that is vital. But I think more than anything, we've got to really represent all the people in the Navy. That's the story. When you go out and 'tie on' with one of those groups, you'll see that people are the magic that makes it all happen.I'd also like to say that we need to make the American people see the need for maintaining the greatest Navy in the world. There
For the first time in almost a decade, the Navy seems to be on a steady course, with a plan, and with stable leadership to guide it through the uncertain waters between the 20th and 21st centuries. Like the early mariners who navigated from star to star, Admiral Johnson has found a constellation for the Navy to follow to the future. Along the way, he has proven himself a quiet but effective warrior. In a time when the Navy needed a champion and hero for the wars on the banks of the Potomac River, they seem to have found a winner-a steady hand on the helm, to guide the Navy into a new millennium.
Wings of Gold: A Naval Aviator's Life
'Why is America lucky enough to have such men? They leave this tiny ship and fly against the enemy. Then they must seek the ship, lost somewhere on the sea. And when they find it, they have to land on its pitching deck. Where do we get such men?'
When James A. Michener wrote these words almost forty-five years ago, carrier decks were straight and made of wood, and the first generation of jet naval aviators were still learning to fly off them. Carriers, jets, and piloting have changed greatly since then, yet the words ring as true today as they did then.
Naval aviators are a national treasure. They are, first of all, America's front-line combat aviators. Much like their Marine Corps brethren, when there is trouble out there, they expect to be the first called. Though this is an attractive challenge for some people, there is more to the naval aviation profession than just being first in line to be shot at. Flying for the sea services requires unique dedication and skills (such as exceptional eyesight and hand-eye coordination under stress), and demands sacrifices that other military pilots don't even have to imagine-all of which has endowed naval aviation with a (mostly) well-justified mystique.
Flying on and off aircraft carriers is a big part of that mystique. There is an old saying among pilots that flying is not inherently dangerous, just very unforgiving. Though there are no truer words, there are also notable exceptions-'trapping' aboard a rolling and pitching aircraft carrier deck on a stormy night, for instance. It is this skill-landing aboard a moving flight deck in all sorts of conditions-that most clearly differentiates naval aviators from all other pilots. There is simply no way to compare flying from a runway on a land base with the stress and responsibility that sea service pilots have to contend with every time they launch. Every time you take off from a carrier, you leave knowing that you might not find your way back onto the 'boat' and will have to eject into a hostile ocean. Clearly, there is more at stake than just a $50 million airplane (and a career). Mastering the stress and responsibility of such flying requires a special kind of flier.
Fortunately for Navy fliers, achieving that mastery is not laid solely on their shoulders. They don't have to do it alone. Since naval aviation is only a fraction of the size of the U.S. Air Force, everyone knows everyone else-and pays attention to everyone else. It's a lot like being part of a college fraternity (for good and for bad). Or-to put it more precisely-U.S. Naval aviation is a collection of small communities (F-14, F/A-18, EA-6B, etc.) in which an aviator spends his or her life for upwards of two decades. The good news here is that there's lots of support. The bad news is that aviators are hugely competitive. Your peers are always keeping score.
Such a world creates larger-than-life personalities-powerfully evolved human beings at the top of the food chain. To succeed you need a cast-iron ego, a lightning intellect, an excess of ambition, and fluent social skills. And the most successful have the ability to spread all this to others in their profession.
A Navy pilot (in legend, at any rate) began shouting, ' I've got a MiG at zero! A MiG at zero!' — meaning that it had maneuvered in behind him and was locked in on his tail. An irritated voice cut in and said, 'Shut up and die like an aviator.' One had to be a Navy pilot to appreciate the final nuance. A good Navy pilot was a real aviator; in the Air Force they merely had pilots and not precisely the proper stuff.
The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe, 1979)
The Navy likes to train its air crews hard. Frankly, they train the hell out of them. While other services emphasize providing officers with a 'well-rounded' career, naval aviators in front-line units focus on getting ready for battle. This is not to say that Navy fliers are liberated from down-to-earth duties. They do paperwork like anybody else. Rather, the forward-deployed focus of the Navy requires more emphasis on combat training than usually is provided for the 'garrison' units of the Army and USAF. An average naval aviator will spend fully half of his time getting ready to fight and staying proficient. While naval aviators fly about the same number of hours every month as their USAF counterparts, how and when they fly is vastly different. More of their flying is focused on actual combat and tactical training. And there is an almost manic devotion to flight safety, requiring extraordinary amounts of study and practice.
When a carrier air wing (CVW) is preparing to deploy, the air crews spend fully six months training and qualifying to prove their readiness for the job. This is concentrated training, with the entire CVW deploying to a special air warfare training center at Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon, Nevada, for several weeks to learn composite strike warfare. Just before their deployment, they fly in a series of joint war games, which normally have higher operations tempos (Optempos) than actual warfare. Thus, by the time a naval aviator heads out to the carrier to begin his six-month overseas deployment, he is one of the best-prepared combat aviators in the world. That is not bragging. Consider, for instance, that no U.S. naval aviator has been shot down in air-to-air combat since 1972, and that in a generation of combat from Vietnam to Desert Storm, naval aviators have accumulated an average kill-loss ratio in the neighborhood of 17:1.
Along with the dangerous flying, the life of a naval aviator brings with it the expectation of long overseas deployments, usually lasting six months or more. A 'normal' twenty-year career might send an officer on eight or ten of these 'cruises.' Once a carrier group is forward-deployed, even in relatively 'friendly' waters like the western Pacific or the Mediterranean, the aircraft always (even when training) fly with live ordnance loaded. This means that when you are on cruise, the only difference between peacetime and combat flying is the position of the Master Arm switch on the control panel in front of you. As a result, national leaders have to put a lot of trust in individual naval aviators. With only the judgment of a young pilot between the President and a potential act of war, you can understand why they are trained so hard, and held to such exacting standards.
Naval Aviation Culture
Though I've met fighter pilots that enjoy getting shot at and being missed (they love living at that high pitch of excitement), by any true measure, no war is a good war. War is in no way 'fun.' Still, for the young men who served in it, World War II was the best of wars. They had good airplanes to fly, enemies to fight who were
