Lundeen stayed right with him through the transition to landing configuration. “Just like the Blue Angels,” he told Marty with a hint of pride in his voice, which did not escape the bombardier. A successful pilot who would be any pilot still alive-found satisfaction in the smallest things: a good rendezvous, a well-flown instrument approach, a smooth configuration change while flying on instruments. Flight instructors nurtured this tendency from the first day the fledgling pilot crawled into the cockpit by criticizing and advising on every detail of the flyer’s art. Marty Greve had once witnessed a ten-minute conversation on the best technique of bringing a taxiing aircraft smoothly to a stop.
The turbulence was not doing Lundeen’s equilibrium any good at all. He no longer knew if his wings were level or whether he was in a turn or dive. The only points of reference were the tanker’s wing and ghostly fuselage. More rain than ever streamed along his canopy.
The tanker crew tuned the backup radio to the LSO’s second frequency in time to hear Cowboy Parker trap aboard. Alternate landing frequencies were assigned to minimize the danger that the landing signal officer’s comments to the pilot on final approach would be misconstrued by the pilot immediately behind to be for him. Jake heard the second F-4 bolter and be given a downwind heading. Every plane that boltered was vectored downwind and turned into the landing pattern again with at least a five-mile straightaway on final approach. On a bad night with, say, twenty planes trying to get aboard, the bolter pattern could become jammed, the frequencies would be crammed with instructions, and the LSO would have to fight to edge in a word of advice to the pilots on the band. Fortunately only a few planes were recovering tonight. Now he heard the E A-6B successfully trap.
Jake slowed to 116 knots. The angle-of-attack needed and the indexer-a stoplight arrangement on the windscreen rail he could see as he looked toward the landing area showed he was fast. He elected to stay fast, to counteract sudden drops in airspeed caused by turbulence, until he was on the glide slope.
They were still in thick clouds. “Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path. Begin descent.”
Jake brought the power back and saw the rate-of-descent needle sag.
“Five Two Two, you are up and on the glide path.” Jake clicked the mike. “Five Two Two, call needles.”
Jake glanced at the automatic carrier landing system or A C L S , which provided a glide slope and azim display from information data-linked with a computer aboard the ship. “Needles right and centered,” he responded, which meant the instrument crosshairs showed he was slightly left of the center line but on the glide path.
“Disregard your needles. You are slightly high and right. Come left and increase your rate of descent.” Apparently the two planes in formation were descending *** the shipboard computer. Jake concentrated on instruments, scanning the heading, the rate of descent the indexer. His eyes roved constantly over the panel. They swept every instrument, taking in the information that constantly had to be correlated with the reality descending on a 3.5-degree glide slope in a sensitive machine in unstable air. Now he took off some power and trimmed the nose up a click to get to 112 knots the on-speed indication on the indexer. Then he checked the pressure altimeter and matched it with the radar altimeter. “You are on glide path and on centerline. Come right two.”
Grafton obeyed.
The LSO spoke to the Phantom ahead. “Deck heaving, keep it coming … a little power … not too much! … bolter, bolter, bolter!”
“Five Two Two is on glide path, slightly left of centerLine.” Jake dipped the right wing to correct. He was passing 500 feet. How low does this stuff go? “Five Two Two, on glide path, on centerline.”
They broke out of the clouds at 300 feet. “Ball,” Razor told him.
“Five Two Two, three-quarters of a mile. Five Oh Six, call the ball.”
Marty Greve keyed his mike. “Five Oh Six, Intruder ball, three point three.” Sammy Lundeen kept his eyes on the tanker until he saw Grafton retract his speed brakes, add power, and break away to the left. He heard his roommate tell Approach, “Five Two Two breaking away,” and heard the instruction in reply for Grafton to climb to 1200 feet and turn downwind.
Lundeen looked forward. There was the ship. He saw the ball on the left side of the landing area, the white centerline lights, and the red drop lights. These drop lights traveled down the back of the ship to the water and provided a three-dimensional reference. Instead of a windshield wiper, the A-6 used bleed air from the engines to clear rainwater from the windshield, and Greve already had it on. The indexer showed the plane was on-speed, and the ball told Lundeen he was slightly low. He made the correction.
“I’ve got vertigo,” he told Marty. He involuntarily took his eyes from the ball and glanced at the visual display indicator to reassure himself that the wings were level. He felt as though he were in a left turn and had to resist the urge to lower the right wing to correct. Even his eyes told him he was wings level, so his instincts were lying.
“Wings level,” Greve shouted. Lundeen tore his eyes back to the ball and the landing area. The ball was seesawing between the reference lights, revealing the ship’s up and down motion in the sea. He fought the nausea that came with spatial disorientation and the impulse to correct to every twitch of the glide slope indicator light, the “ball.” Out of instinct he nudge the throttles forward slightly.
“Too much power,” the LSO advised.
“Wings level,” Marty reassured him again. Lundeen jammed on the power as they sank in the turbulence created by the ship’s island, then jerked it off as they reached smoother air.
Then he crossed the ramp. Miraculously, the ball was dropping, which meant the deck was coming up toward the descending plane. The wheels smashed into the steel, the nose pitched forward, and Sammy Lundeen thrust the throttles to the firewall and automatically thumbed the speed brakes closed. He felt the welcome jolt as the aircraft began a rapid deceleration. He jerked the throttles back to idle, and the muscles in his body began to relax. “Hot damn,” he told Marty.
Carrier landings were no more than controlled crashes. On the downwind leg Jake Grafton knew Lundeen had trapped because there had been no bolter call. His attention turned to the Phantom wingman whose fuel state was becoming critical.
The wingman had bolters twice, while the lead trapped on his second attempt. Built for supersonic flight, the fighters had flight characteristics that were a result of design compromises. Their approach speeds were thirty knots faster than the A-6’s, and they were harder to handle at landing speeds. At low altitudes with their gear down the engines drank fuel at a gluttonous rate.
As Jake turned to the final bearing the lone F-4 stayed in the air, Stagecoach 203, called the ball with four thousand pounds. “Why don’t they send him to Da Nang or up to tank?” Razor asked on the ICS.
“I dunno,” Grafton replied as he dropped the gear and flaps for his approach. “They know what they’re doing.” Maybe, he added to himself.
As he slowed to an on-speed indication on the indexer he heard the tanker that had just launched check in on one of the landing frequencies. “He must have problems,” Jake said to Razor.
Now there were no “sweet” tankers–tankers capable of transferring fueling in the air. Undoubtedly, Jake thought, the ship would soon shoot the manned spare sitting on deck. If they waited much longer the lone fighter still trying to get aboard would not have enough fuel to reach an altitude at which he could rendezvous with the tanker. The fighter pilot on the ball surely knew that, too, and that knowledge would not help his concentration.
“Bolter, bolter, bolter!” the LSO shouted over the air. The frustration could be heard in his voice. “Two Oh Three, you are overcorrecting. You are trying to chase the ball. Just average it out and be smooth.”
“Be smooth” was the universal admonishment for every piloting sin. Play the stick and throttles , as if he could have fiddled in a jolting jet beating through turbulent air with rain soaking up all the light.
“Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path begin your descent…. Five Two Two, up and on the glide path…. Five Two Two, call your needles.”
“Up and right.”
“Concur. fly the needles.”
Jake Grafton concentrated on the ACLS gauge, which meant he looked at it about half the time and the altimeter, angle-of-attack, rate of descent, and gyro the other half. Flying the needles was much easier than flying the ball since the carrier’s computer stabilized the electronic glide slope regardless of the ship’s motion in the heavy swells. The optical landing system was stabilized in pitch and roll, that is, in the horizontal plane, but it could not compensate instability in the vertical plane, the up-and-down motion of the ship known as heave.
As he descended he heard the pilot of the Phantom inquire about tanking or diverting to Da Nang, the nearest jet base ashore. “Da Nang is closed temporarily due to a rocket attack and the tanker is dry. We’ll get some gas in the air shortly.”
