IT IS DUSK on the aircraft carrier Constellation, making 13 knots into a light wind 80 miles off the California coast. Scuds of cloud 800 to 2,000 feet high shade the purple twilight. The red light of a following frigate glows just at the edge of a horizon that is about to disappear for the half-dozen pilots stacked in a holding pattern 25 miles behind the Connie.
The Navy is waiting for darkness so its flyers can practice what has long been the most dangerous task in aviation: night carrier landings.
Some of the aviators on the U.S.S. Constellation are making their first such touchdowns. Making them successfully is the final, decisive test in the long, expensive process of preparing a U.S. Navy fighter pilot for war.
During the last 40 years, American presidents have deployed aircraft carriers wherever they have wanted to display military power. The Reagan administration has dispatched carriers to the Mediterranean, Grenada and the coasts of Central America. And it plans to increase the number of the carrier task forces, already the most powerful in the world, from 13 to 15 by 1991.
The leading edge of this force is the Navy pilot, celebrated in the book and movie ”The Right Stuff,” as well as in the film ”An Officer and a Gentleman.” But those were nostalgic looks backward. The Navy fighter pilot of today is a different breed, a complex amalgam of old-fashioned independence and space-age technology who flies F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets.
He is more carefully trained–it costs the Navy a million dollars simply to train one jet pilot to get his wings, and more to ready him for combat–and more safety conscious, yet he must also be a competitive, aggressive and courageous man (no women are as yet allowed to fly planes in combat), for he may be the first American involved in military action.
WILL HE MEET the test? Because Navy pilots have seldom seen combat since Vietnam, although they did shoot down two Libyan jets off the coast of Libya in 1981 and lost two planes to Syrian surface-to-air missiles during air strikes in Lebanon last year, no one can know for sure. It is a safe bet, however, that should conflict arise, Navy pilots will be there.
It is carrier landings that separate Navy pilots from their brethren in the Air Force and in commercial aviation. Compared to the long, smooth approaches of most aircraft, a Navy landing is a shock. That is why the keel and landing gear of Navy aircraft are reinforced. The Navy drops its planes
–pounds them down into an area no bigger than the average-size living room
–at a speed of 110 to 135 miles per hour.
Navy aviators talk easily about the danger they routinely face. They like to tell how psychologists measured fear by wiring carrier combat pilots and the radar intercept officers who fly with them with electrodes during the Vietnam war. Dodging surface-to-air missiles and dogfighting with enemy MiGs did not make the needles jump the way night carrier landings did.
Those were experienced, combat-tested aviators. The pilots circling in stacks at 1,000-foot intervals 20 miles from the Constellation are
inexperienced, trying to qualify as Navy fighter pilots. Failure to land successfully could be fatal. Failure to land well could mean the end of a Navy flying career.
ON THE FLIGHT deck, the landing signal officers (LSOs) watch their pilots land. A rescue helicopter hovers on the starboard side. It is dark now. The LSO talks his pilot down through a radio hook-up, always reassuring him while getting across vital information. He tracks the pilot`s landing, watching for tendencies he needs to correct. The best landing gets an OK with no comment. Next is OK with comments, followed by poor grades. Few land with no comments. The scores are posted in color-coded squares on the ”greenie” board in the ready room. It is possible at a glance to see who is doing well and who is not.
When a pilot begins his approach at 10 miles out, he should be at 1,200 feet, aligning his plane in the cross hairs of his instruments. He must resist the temptation to try to verify his position by looking outside. At three miles out, he begins his descent. At three-quarters of a mile, he looks out for the first time to spot the ”drop lights” at the aft end of the ship, which indicate whether he is correctly lined up for a landing. If he is flying his instruments correctly, he should see the ”meatball” on the port side of the carrier, a yellow spotlight reflected through a mirrored lens. If the pilot is too high, the meatball flashes green; if he is low, it turns red.
The instant the Navy pilot lands, he applies full power while waiting for the split second in which his tail hook will grab one of the four steel arresting cables and make a ”trap.” If his landing is good, he catches the third wire, or sometimes the second wire. If he catches the first wire, he was low, a step away from disaster. If he catches the fourth, he was high. If he misses altogether, he ”bolters,” takes off under full power.
THE AMERICAN military philosophy is to win air superiority with a combination of advanced technology and training. Navy fighter pilots are trained to fly in formations of two planes and to be ready to take on an unknown quantity of enemy aircraft. Compared to Soviet tactics, which emphasize superior numbers and strict ground control, American tactics emphasize independence of judgment. The approaches seem to reflect the political and economic philosophies of the two sides.
Navy fighter pilots must undergo continuous practice and evaluation. Despite the routine and scrutiny, the image of the fighter pilot as the fearless, hard-drinking, womanizing adventurer persists. And even in today`s high-tech environment, many pilots still exude a deep-down cockiness that appears to be the result of hard-won experience and genuine self-confidence.
Today, Navy pilots train intensively in air combat. At Miramar, a Navy fighter base north of San Diego, an elaborate multimillion-dollar simulator gives Tomcat aviators a chance to test their skills in a 360-degree environment that is the classiest of video games. The weapons-envelope trainer is a replica of the Tomcat cockpit. A series of projectors gives such a precise illusion of land and sky that some student pilots have gotten airsick. The earphones give a realistic simulation of engine noise, and the only things missing are the G forces.
Pilots maneuver against elusive fighter aircraft controlled by computer operators who fire back at them. When they are in the air for real, flying mock dogfights against the Bandits, the VF-126 squadron of experienced pilots who fly Soviet-style tactics in mock dogfights against Navy pilots over the Arizona desert, every move and weapons firing is recorded by an elaborate computer and radar hook-up. The computer can then play back each second of the dogfight, displaying the position of the planes from all angles.
The days are gone when the first pilot back to the bar won the dogfight. Superior pilots from active squadrons are sent to TOPGUN, the Navy Fighter Weapons School at Miramar, for intensive air-to-air combat training. These pilots also are schooled to become instructors in their respective squadrons. STILL, WHETHER the training is enough has been disputed. William S. Lind, an adviser to Sen. Gary S. Hart (D., Colo.), says that Navy pilots don`t get enough aerial combat training. Pilots on long cruises spend too much time practicing landing and takeoff and not enough time practicing dogfights, he says.
”All Navy fighter pilots have a major problem if you look at what most of their flight time is,” he says. ”It is not tactical. It is driven by the carrier air-operation cycle, not by the need for air-combat maneuvering training. So most of the time when a Navy fighter pilot is getting flight time from a carrier, the flight time has nothing to do with air combat. A great deal of what he is doing is practicing to take off from and land on a carrier.”
Cmdr. Randy Cunningham, another backer of dogfighting training, would like to see more of it. The Navy has recently leased 12 Kfir-Ci fighters from Israel to beef up training against dissimilar aircraft.
In the continual process of training the fighter pilot, the first two years are designed to keep him from getting comfortable. Before he is really at home in the propeller trainer, he is dumped into the simulator of the T-2C Buckeye, a fat, slow, forgiving jet. Just before he becomes accustomed to the Buckeye, he is switched to the TA-4 Skyhawk to learn advanced strike tactics. After qualifying with day carrier landings and getting his wings, the pilot goes to a combat plane, either a Tomcat or Hornet. The process begins again with night carrier landings, mock dogfights and long hours of studying airplanes and a multitude of procedures for a multitude of things that could go wrong. For every hour-and-a-half of flying, the pilot undergoes three to six hours of briefing and debriefing, much of this to reinforce the need for safety.
THE IMPROVEMENT in the Navy`s safety statistics since World War II is impressive. According to a Navy safety publication, ”The term `accident`
implies that a situation could not be avoided. For safety purposes the term
`mishap` is used and implies a mishap is avoidable and a target mishap rate of 0.00 is appropriate.” A severe, ”class A mishap” is defined as an incident involving $500,000 or more of damage–and/or death. The number of Class A mishaps for each 100,000 flight hours has dropped from 13.5 in 1970 to 4.3 in 1983.
Cmdr. Paul Habel, the commanding officer of VT-21, a jet training squadron in Kingsville, Tex., is trying to catch up on paperwork after an afternoon`s flight. He still has on his green flight suit and a red T-shirt emblazoned with a screaming blue bird of prey, its talons extended. Like most Navy pilots, Habel is a salesman for his work. The training, it appears, is too long, too dull, too tiring and too competitive for anyone to go through unless he is highly motivated.
The Navy wants a paradox, a man who is aggressive yet has control and judgment, says Habel. Flouting safety regulations is a quick way to get bounced out of the service.
And not to fly would be a disaster. Flying is a privilege in these pilots` eyes, a privilege to which words cannot do justice. Their training is directed at winning and surviving–inflicting damage and coming back to tell about it.
