nt (Gordon) wrote in message ...
(snip)
During workups in 1980, we had a former F-4 RIO sitting behind an F-14 pilot
trying to come aboard IKE under severely glassy conditions off Florida, en
route to Gitmo. After the first bolter, the pilot tried a more aggressive
approach and hit the deck pretty solidly on his second pass, but he failed to
grab a wire and let his frustration get the best of him. As he hopped back off
the deck, he hauled back on the stick, giving all of us deck apes a lovely view
of his burners as he pointed the nose upward. Lots of "WOWWWS!" going on,
followed by a pair of loud "pops", and both crewmen shot out of the canopy of
their suddenly unmanned jet. It flew off toward Cuba, requiring someone else
from our airwing to go out to shoot it down, but later it succumbed on its own
accord. What we heard later was that the F-4 RIO had a bad experience in his
past and even though he transitioned to F-14s, he still had that old memory
screwing with him - when the pilot boltered and went clawing for the sky, the
RIO blew them both out. The two were rescued immediately, but were not exactly
"ok" - the pilot was about ready to rip the former RIO apart, even as they were
brought back aboard. Talk about a grand mal faux pas! If I recall correctly,
the man was flown off the ship within a day or two of this career suicide.

To Will Dossel - any other good Ike stories you can remember...?


OK -- I'll bite

1) Workups on IKE, again, but later (1981?) F-14 bolters, *big*
settle off the ramp and crew ejects -- in the meantime, all us PLAT
fliers are up in Ready #2 doing some fancy hand flying as we watch the
PLAT camera follow the curving upward flight of the Tomcat
ASCM...until we all (PLAT cameraman and Ready @ fliers) figured out
about the same time that the path was taking the Tomcat back at IKE
and all sought deep (very deep) shelter, very quickly I might add...
Tomcat ended up a couple hundred yards of the port bow.

2) Nugget ACO (rear most seat in E-2C, right under the ditching
hatch) on my 20th flight in the squadron on workups...CICO (center
position and mission commander) is an AWACS exchange/senior O-3 type.
Two senior first tour O-3's up front, beautiful CAT-1 type day. I'm
looking out the window waiting to see steel (water, water,
steel...we're home) when I hear a "power, Power, POWER!" call, but it
didn't sound like it came over the radio. Being a nugget I didn't say
anything as power was applied and we began climbing out to re-enter
the pattern. On the climb, the LSO comes up and asks why we added
power -- long pause and front end replied that tey thought the call
had come from the LSO, which was followed by a prompt "Negative"
Longer pause...CICO chimes in on the ICS that he thought we were low
and needed power. Let me hit the Pause button and 'splain a few
things re. the Hawkeye:
- The view out the backend windows is marginally worse than that
from a passenger jet, and that's from the ACO's view. It gets
progressively worse as you move up to the CICO and finally RO
positions...from the CICO position you will see a good bit of the
inboard starboard Nacelle (good for checking the gear down and locked
and any oil leaks -- another story) and, well, water (or wake) as one
drills in on approach.
- We are on "Hot mic" for launch and recovery, such that the ICS is
voice activated rather than a push-to-talk "Cold mic" setup for
obvious safety reasons

Back to the story -- CICO claims he could tell we were dangersously
low by "the size of the bubbles in the wake" Dead silence on the
ICS...I'm sitting there wondering what the UCMJ penalites are for
watching a homicide take place and not intervening, because for sure,
that was going to happen on landing. And if it didn't come from the
front, the RO (one of the last of the VAW Flight Techs) and I probably
would have done it ourselves (is that pre-meditated?) Well, several
much senior (and burlier) folks met us on landing and placed
themselves between the potential belligerents, escorting them (via
separate ways) below -- mission debiref was short and noteable by the
absence of the CICO and pilots...long story short, he wasn't around
much longer as the blue suiters took him back to AWACS-land. While no
official beatings were administered or logged, I understand there may
have been a blanket party involved....

Will Dossel
Last of the Steeljaws (VAW-122)