Hello From the Boat!

Here's an e-mail I sent to my Mom at probably 2am from the USS George H.W. Bush where I spent 6 days underway serving my squadron as a duty officer in the Ready Room on the boat while guys a lot further ahead of me in the program did their Carrier Quals in the E-2C and the C-2.
We flew down to Jax (er, Jacksonville, FL) in a COD, helped get things set up, bought snack food to bring to the guys on the boat and enjoyed the warm weather. On the boat we did 8 hour shifts at the duty desk and 5 hour shifts up in the tower. There were only 4 of us and the tower shift ran from noon to five every day while the duty desk shifts were continuous. It was a little rough but we got a lot of time off (I worked out every day, it was great). Anyways, without further ado, here are my thoughts on boat life as it happened:

Hello from the boat!

This is my last night on this floating maze of loud noises and hard
objects. We'll take the last COD off of my haze gray Spring Break cruise
ship at 1pm-ish tomorrow.

It's been a nice little escape from the tedium of life on land. We did
in fact find that storm [we hit some bad weather] and I learned that aircraft carriers are, in fact, boats. They rock, they roll, they pitch and they heave, who knew? Of course all that weather was outside and I was inside and my only real
indication was when my rolly chair (and I) would roll into the wall or
desk.

The other indication, of course, was the PLAT camera (the television
channel that plays the video feed from the flight deck landing area),
you could see the cross hairs move against the horizon. It wasn't
"pitching deck" but it was close and it definitely was tough for the
guys out there [pilots trying to Qual], especially when the sun went down.

I was pretty busy doing 8 hour shifts on the duty desk (which I am
currently occupying) and one 5 hour shift in PRIFLY (in the tower
coordinating things for the guy coordinating things for my squadron).
However, in the off time, I was able to do some exploring. I actually
know my way around maybe 1/3 of the ship now? [yeah, right... pretty sure I forgot how big the thing looks from the outside when I wrote that] At least I can get from
my state room to the workout machines, hangar deck, wardroom, ready room
and up the island to PRIFLY (the tower).

I haven't been below deck 3? Well 2 decks below the hangar deck and
I've heard that there are at least 7. I really wanted to go to "Shaft
Alley" which is where the prop shafts go into the stuffing box, but with
the cruise director's heavy schedule of leisure er watch-standing
activities, I just couldn't fit it in. I saw the Bridge, but did not go
in... I could have and maybe I'll check it out next time but it's pretty
heavy SWO territory there [gotta watch out for those "Black Shoes", yikes!]. PRIFLY, on the other hand, which has a better view and is located on the highest deck was much more my speed.

I checked out the "Flag Bridge" which was basically just an enclosed and
very narrow gallery over the flight deck... couldn't find any admirals, so not much going on there, but it had a good view. I worked out every day and got every penny's worth of the $9.25 I was charged to eat in the wardroom. I might finally have a chance of getting back to my pre-SERE weight.

Tonight I saw the LSO platform. In retrospect, I'm not sure how much of a good idea going out on the platform for the first time in pitch black darkness was, but since I'm here writing about it, it ended well... Seriously though, there were a
lot of unmarked places I could've wandered into that would've resulted
in myself tumbling into the infinite abyss of the gulf stream 60' below.
Essentially, there are no handicap ramps on an aircraft carrier.

It was pretty awesome watching the planes fly the pattern and come down
onto the deck. They were stacked up like jets on approach to JFK,
except our runway at 400' is roughly 1/20th the size. When they came in
they "Called the Ball" or checked in with the LSO's on the platform at
3/4 of a mile from the ramp. Then they flew the ball down with LSO
guidance to touchdown. I can see how some people would think such an
exercise might not be so hard, I mean there's nothing else to look at
but the Landing Area lights and the Ball. However, there's a lot more
to it. The planes are using all the instruments in their cockpits to
line up on a bearing from the carrier and fly a set of perpendicular
needles into that 3/4 of a mile position. At that point, less than a
minute from touchdown, they have to drop the instruments and look
outside. This usually pushes them up and away from where they were
lined up. So they have to correct that, factor in the angled deck
moving away from them and any wave motion and you've got a pretty good
challenge, but that's not all. As was explained and demonstrated to me
tonight, the ship doesn't look like much more than a mere collection of
lights against the black until the plane is pretty much over the ramp or
roughly 5 seconds from touchdown. As before when the ship suddenly
looks like a ship, the pilot will tend to pull away at the last second
which can lead to a bolter. Of course that's better than being sucked
into the burble (wind pattern at the back of the ship, like wake on a
boat) and landing low and short or worse.

In the end, everyone did a pretty good job, the Hornet guys came out and
I got to watch a friend of mine from Connecticut do his first night carrier landing. It was impressive and I definitely have a lot of respect for those guys having to do it all by themselves. They have a lot of advantages built into
the their plane though. We, with the best of 1960s era Grumman
production, have to control a pretty challenging rudder set up (we have
three) without the help of a flight computer to a landing no more than 4
feet off centerline. I can't wait.

I also can't wait to get off this bateau and onto dry land. I'm pretty
exhausted and, go figure, trying to sleep directly underneath a catapult
is actually quite the challenge. It has been a great experience though,
but I'm not sad that I'll have to wait a few years before my first
cruise. That being said, the Bush is still the best aircraft carrier
I've ever landed on... Everything is new, they have flat screen TVs
all over the place and the food is actually pretty tasty. 'Hope all's well back
on land!

Love, Jamie