Paddles Passes

How many on this newsgroup ever made paddles passes to aircraft carrier
landings? How many to straight decks and how many to angled decks? On which
carriers did you make them? How many in this newsgroup even know what
paddles passes were?

I'm a bit reluctant to respond because my experience is microscopic
compared to that of Cdr. Kanze, But to answer your question, no one
got a pair of gold wings circa 1950 without qualifying aboard a
carrier. A straight deck carrier with a a guy waving paddles at us.

When I was at that stage, two carrier cruised the Gulf of Mexico off
Pensacola, USS Cabot and USS Wright. CVLs--light carriers.

Let us hear from all you really old, formerly bold pilots!

Well, we're really old, but never bold. Though you may find it hard
to believe, carrier qualification was not especially difficult. The
reason is the excellent training we received.

We flew about eight "field carrier" flights, making about six or eight
passes per flght, before going out to the boat. So we had shot about
50 or 60 "carrier" landings before going out to the boat.

We had about 200 hours by then. That may seem like a small amount,
but every hour counted. We had learned precision maneuvers,
aerobatics, gunnery, ACM, formation, night flying, to rigorous
standards.

For example, we had to fly the "Charlie Pattern," a complicated
series of turns, climbs, descents, under the hood, and stay within 20
feet of altitude during level flight, three degrees of heading, and
three seconds of arrival at destination altitudes. You may find that
hard to believe, and I couldn't possibly come even close to that
today, but that's the kind of discipline we had to maintain. Of
course, we were flying every day, and practice makes perfect.

So when we got to the boat, we were honed to a fine edge. And we had
another advantage: the boat was steaming into the wind, so the
relative speed at which we approached the ramp was noticably less than
we had got used to, shooting field carrier approaches. It was
something like a slow motion movie.

The proof is in the pudding: When the big day arrived, a formation of
six of us flew out to the boat. All six of us got six cuts on six
passes. No wave-offs. Perfect score.

A credit not to us, but to our training.

But it was the most fun I ever had on one day in my life. (Don't tell
my wife I said that.)

Now, I should add, we did that on a nice sunny day, with calm seas; we
did not do it at night, or in minimal viz, or with 30-foot waves. Nor
did we do it in a shot-up bent-wing bird with oil all over the
windshield and an engine cutting out, as many others had to do just a
few years earlier.

"There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there are no old bold
pilots!"

There were large signs proclaiming that everywhere we went during
flight training. They convinced me, and I'm still here.

vince norris