USAF: Attempt Carrier Landing or Eject Nearby?

As an old guy :biggrin:, the Navy did this horrible experiment years ago flying COD's at night from the boat and unfortunately I was part of that! I remember being shot off cat 4 at night on the Connie. Cats 3/4 were a bit rough, especially when heavy, as 3/4 were the short cats...I think 4 was the shortest. We had a large cargo load and were being shot off to Bahrain. It was such a violent cat shot, we saw 165 KIAS off the end and our gyro's rolled instantly. IMO, it was the darkest night I've been launched into and was glad to be co-pilot that flight. My hat's off to our tactical guys, past and present who carry the fight to the bad guy's and have to bring the planes back on board at night. For me personally, landing on the boat at night is the toughest thing I've done in an aircraft. I'm talking those dark nights, no horizon, maybe some choppy seas. I've only got about 75 from the left seat and another 80 or so from the right. I know some guys have 500 at night!!!
 
bunk22 said:
As an old guy :biggrin:, the Navy did this horrible experiment years ago flying COD's at night from the boat and unfortunately I was part of that! I remember being shot off cat 4 at night on the Connie. Cats 3/4 were a bit rough, especially when heavy, as 3/4 were the short cats...I think 4 was the shortest. We had a large cargo load and were being shot off to Bahrain. It was such a violent cat shot, we saw 165 KIAS off the end and our gyro's rolled instantly. IMO, it was the darkest night I've been launched into and was glad to be co-pilot that flight. My hat's off to our tactical guys, past and present who carry the fight to the bad guy's and have to bring the planes back on board at night.
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How about the A-3 guys, or the RA-5C guys? I couldn't imagine bringing those large things aboard.

You mentioned if briefly before in this thread, and if I'm not mistaken, it was an EA-3 onboard the Nimitz that had the accident in the '80s with catching the top of the barrier net and going overboard?
 
MikeD said:
I remember one day when I was SOF, we had an emergency divert KC-135 come in with brake/hydro problems, and they didn't even have the numbers to be able to safely stop on RW 7/25. So they landed 5 miles west at Space Harbor instead on the hard-dirt runway. Pretty cool watching that.
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That would've been cool to see! Was this after they extended 25 to include taxiway f? When I was there 25 was around 6200 and F was another 5000ish feet that was approved for the F117/large class, but not for a heavy... I was only at HMN tower for a couple months and transferred to RADAR...
 
MikeD said:
How about the A-3 guys, or the RA-5C guys? I couldn't imagine bringing those large things aboard.

You mentioned if briefly before in this thread, and if I'm not mistaken, it was an EA-3 onboard the Nimitz that had the accident in the '80s with catching the top of the barrier net and going overboard?
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Yeah, EA-3 Skywarrior and I too couldn't imagine bringing those large aircraft on board. Us E-2/C-2 guys have 2' on either side of the wings when on center line. But we have instantaneous thrust with props operating at 100% RPM. Those jets did not have that ability, get behind the power curve and things get nasty. No ejection seats in the Skywarrior either!

 
bkey79 said:
That would've been cool to see! Was this after they extended 25 to include taxiway f? When I was there 25 was around 6200 and F was another 5000ish feet that was approved for the F117/large class, but not for a heavy... I was only at HMN tower for a couple months and transferred to RADAR...
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Yeah, past F....what became taxiway G, was pretty much the overrun for 25, with a BAK-15 at the departure end. Still had the restriction for heavies because the middle 75' only was concrete. As I remember, 4/22 was the only one used for heavies. We normally departed on 25, recovered on 16/34 or occasionally 22. Only a couple of times have I landed on 4 or 7, or departed from same.
 
And this is the Skywarrior video mentioned above. Don't pay attention to the idiotic government tried to cover up BS.

 
MikeD said:
Yeah, past F....what became taxiway G, was pretty much the overrun for 25, with a BAK-15 at the departure end. Still had the restriction for heavies because the middle 75' only was concrete. As I remember, 4/22 was the only one used for heavies. We normally departed on 25, recovered on 16/34 or occasionally 22. Only a couple of times have I landed on 4 or 7, or departed from same.
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Oh I got into it with a couple pilots wanting 4.... WSMR would call up NASA airspace and we'd be toast on what we could do with the arrivals... Still to this day I laugh at having to give F117's traffic calls on the MVA asking if they could make the climb to Cloud... The hotter summer days we'd have cancel automatics with tower because of F117's having to do 360's for the climb... Probably one of the most disliked planes through the eye's of a controller!
 
Yeah, departing off of 22 or 25, I remember we had to make the left turnout fairly quick in order to avoid WSMR airspace on our way to Cloud Believe it was within 3 miles or so, when at 350 on the climbout, came quick.
 
Yeah bunk, I took my first cat shot of the night on my last evening of RAG CQ from the waist cat....that was a pretty intense ride, can't imagine what a combat shot on cat 4 must be like! Old man of a squadron matte flew a3s before his prowler transition and that thing sounds crazy. Heard the throttles were overhead too, as if the whole deal wasn't bad enough already
 
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