1967-05: Hitting the boat

Time to "hit the boat", in this case USS Forrestal, CVA-59.  Forrestal was the first of the big deck carriers constructed after WWII, and is named for the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal.   For this round of carrier qualification operations, the ship was located in the Virginia Capes operations area, about 150 miles east of the Virginia shoreline.

We (Pilot LCDR Gene Campbell and self) prepositioned from our home base at NAS Sanford, Fl to NAS Oceana the previous day, along with several other RA-5C crews and aircraft.  The flight out to the carrier on the morning of the

Eventually our time came, and we manned up and catapulted off the ship.  Catapult shots were new to me, of course, and it seemed to be almost instantaneous: you're in your seat in a stationary aircraft, both engines howling at maximum thrust. The pilot salutes;  the Cat Officer returns the salute, takes a quick look around, then,  with a flourish, kneels forward and touches the deck.  The actual catpult shooting button is located in the catwalk abeam, tended by the Catpult Petty Officer.  Once the aircraft is set up on the catpult with both bridle and hold back attached, stands at the ready with both arms raised, to ensure no inadvertant firing.  

Catapult shots are not uncomfortable.  and then you're airborne, it seems.  Not uncomfortable since the force pushes you back in youy seat.  In the back seat I monitor the radar altimeter, true airspeed indicator, and viewfinder to ensure we're really flying.  

Once we've established a positive cimb rate, the pilot raises the flaps and brings the landing gear up.  He has waited to raise the gear until then because during retraction, additional doors open for all three wheels to provide clearance, increasing drag for a few seconds.  this could be typical under marginal flying conditions.

Our first task was to carry out a couple of touch and go's, which are just what they sound like.  Leaving the hook up, the pilot flies a normal approach and on touchdown advances throttles to military power, and we take off again.  This does two things:  practice for the approach, and practice a bolter, which is what happens when the hook fails to engage any of the four arresting wires.  I would find out more about bolters.

Then for the real thing: hook down.  We carried out two traps.  Then it began to get dark.

Changing light conditions are difficult to deal with, and the variation in altitude during the approach make the change even more problematic.  For whatever reason, we boltered.  The pressure was on, but we boltered again.  We were burning about 600 pounds of fuel each pass, and were now at "bingo fuel."

The directive to head for the designated land base while you still have enough fuel is called a "bingo."

So we were bingoed to NAS Oceana.  I gave Gene the heading  and we began our climb.  It's a characteristic of turbojet engines that they are much more efficient at altitude, so the bingo profile requires an enroute climb to a specified altitude (depending on bingo range), and then a descent.  These are carefully planned, and any deviation uses more fuel, maybe a lot more.  The bingo fuel profile is planned to put you at the destination with 1500 lb of fuel, which is two passes or so, not accounting for the amount of unavailable trapped fuel in the various fuel tanks.

We're climbing out at military power (100% RPM, no afterburner) through a few thousand feet.  Then Gene on the intercom:  "I don't think the gear doors are closed."  The potential increase in drag was possibly very serious. Any increase in drag would reduce the 1500 lb of fuel reserve, maybe to zero!

Gene had  stopped climbing at the same time.   The nose mounted TV bombsight could be inverted to look aft. I did so, but after a close inspection saw nothing. I let Gene know and returned to getting out the approach plate(see image nearby) for Oceana to review.  Soon we were approaching radio range, so I contacted Oceana for clearance.  I idly