Aw ****s and Bravo Zulus

Everyone knows that one wipes out a career full of attaboys. What is your
favorite non-fatal "aw ****" story? I thought we could also make a thread and
tell about the best flying each of us encountered.

On Ike in 1980, we had Whales. Either one or two of the massive things, but
they were infrequent visitors and our flight deck crew adapted to their
periodic arrivals and departures. On one of the evolutions where the A-3 was
aboard, the poderous thing trundled over to the port bow cat and got ready to
go, but went down for a black box. The "board guy" (never knew what they
called the man that held up the board telling both the pilot and the catapault
crew how much that particular aircraft weighed) did his thing but the launch
didn't happen. The director taxiied the giant clear of the cat, allowing the
A-7 waiting behind the JBD to slide up and take its place. The A-3 cleared the
area with some difficulty (manuevering a bull in a china shop is a good mental
picture of the situation), and all I can think of is that this unfamiliar sight
temporarily distracted the cat crew. At any rate, the A-7, weighing probably
about 1/3rd of that flying brontosaurus, was now sitting on a cat set to launch
something two thirds larger than himself. The mistake was not caught and in a
flash, literally, the A-7 was flung skyward with quite a bit more oomph than
was necessary - in fact, it looked like it was shot out of a cannon! The force
was enough to detach the extremely large belly pan underneath the Corsair and
several panels came off in the slipstream. The pilot, pinned backwards in his
seat, must have wondered what hit him, but he kept the flailing A-7 out of the
water and made one of the quickest patterns I've seen, bringing it straight
back around to land, approximately three to five minutes after launch. Hitting
the deck loosened up other panels and left a trail of zeus fittings and other
hardware bouncing down the deck. The pilot, glaring, stomped off the deck to
find a Cat&Arresting Gear officer to have for lunch...

Now, for Bravo Zulus, I have to mention HSL-33's LCDR Steele - flying off the
coast of San Diego, he had a rotor blade come apart, slinging parts in all
directions and creating such massive vibrations that the crewman was nearly
knocked out by his own helmet. The copilot was thrown up and down so heavily
that he could not maintain grasp on the controls. As the crippled H-2 fell out
of the sky, two out of the three man crew knew they were about to die. But
LCDR John Steele, Man of Action, grabbed the 'snake by the balls and guided it
down safely to a "Look Mom!" landing in the middle of hundreds of scantily clad
beach-goers on Silver Strand beach. No injuries, helo intact. Try that, only
using four out of five rotor blades! (I don't know about the other pilots, but
Steele never had to beg for a crewman to ride with him again!) Later, this
same magnificent aviator guided an H-46 down onto the deck of a passing ship (I
think USS Reid?) thousands of feet below him after his Seaknight nearly broke
in half in flight. Again, no deaths. On the pilot scale (1 being Lt.
"Iiiiii've g-g-g-got c-c-control" McDonald and 10 being Bill Dana), Commander
Steele was up there with CDR John Gana at about an 8.5. Steele wasn't lucky -
just very well equipped mentally for just about any emergency. My kind of
pilot!

v/r
Gordon