Action. Nothing was ever going to be the same. Danger. If I slip up if I turn my
eye for just one second someone could get the drop on me. Adventure. The Amazon
River they have a version of everything in North America except bigger and scarier.
You're listening to Sea Story.
Episode 37 "Take Flight."
My name is Doug Bea I'm from Prosper, Texas and I'm a Rear Admiral in the US
Navy and this is my Sea Story. Chapter One: Flying Blind. I've been a naval aviator
for 32 years now I have 3500 flight hours in Navy aircraft. I have flown both
the A-6 Intruder and the F-18 Hornet. The Intruder and the Hornet were completely
different airplanes. The intruder was 1960s and 70s technology that was packed
into an airplane with a lot of strap on aftermarket automation. So, that airplane
was old technology and we used to say it was an analog airplane because really
most of it was analog the mission computer in it for instance was probably
less powerful than the watch I'm wearing on my wrist right now. It was really that
rudimentary, it even had electromechanical dials like the
old-fashioned cash registers that would flip and roll and give you different
digits encoded Binns than the Bombardier the navigator would have to interpret and
then tell me what he saw that they were saying. So everything in the aircraft was
analog everything in the aircraft was old-fashioned it was almost romantic to
be able to do something in that airplane that was so complex like flying it down low.
When I was a brand-new A-6 intruder pilot that was an aircraft that was a
medium attack bomber and it was an all-weather attack aircraft, it was
Vietnam-era at the time it was getting ready to be phased out as I was flying
the aircraft in its twilight years but when I learned to fly that aircraft you
have to go through the school of course you have to learn how to fly it
and one of the things they do is they put you out on your first-night mission
down low. At first, it's very disorienting nobody wants to trust your instruments
your inner ear tells you lies about where the aircraft is and what attitude
you're in. After a while, you realize if you just play the video game if you just
do what the screen tells you you should be doing and ignore the sensations in
your inner ear that tells you might be upside down or that tell you
maybe in a turn even though you're straight and level just do what the
instruments say you start to realize okay I got this. Flying during the day
your primary sensor is your eye everything we do when we walk around is
all about what your eye sees that's about 80 percent of what gives you
equilibrium. Your inner ear is that sort of lag mechanism that keeps you upright
when your eyes are closed it's not always accurate so flying during the
daytime comes very naturally flying at night you got to train yourself to do
that and you have to train yourself to ignore that 20% sensation from your
inner ear. I found myself flying through the Cascade Mountains in western
Washington on a military training route Low altitude 500 feet at night.
The aircraft had a bit of a video game system in it, if you will, you would
literally, fly a cartoon airplane down a cartoon mountain range on the screen in
front of you the only difference between it and a real video game is that you
don't just lose a quarter if you crash the video game but after a while you
start to get comfortable with it and I had an instructor Bombardier navigator
sitting next to me and I'm the pilot doing this for the very first time at
night in the weather with no night vision goggles nothing like that just
flying off the system. It was an interesting moment when I finally got
the courage to sort of peek away from the display in front of me and to see am
I really doing this and to see the shadows of these looming peaks on either
side of me probably three to four thousand feet higher than me with the
moonlighting them up and casting a shadow. It was quite a moment and I
realized oh my goodness I'm doing this for real I better not look at the
mountains anymore I better look at my display keep flying the aircraft.
Everyday that I got to fly that airplane was a reward just getting it right just
doing it and it was addictive it was something that when you did it once you
wanted to do it again because you realized oh my goodness I did this once
how good can I get at it and that was really the exciting part of it.
Chapter Two: The Platform. Summer of 1990 I joined the USS Carl Vinson in the middle
of her western Pacific deployment. She was steaming around in the Indian Ocean
between India and Australia and the ship was in rough seas probably ten to twelve
foot seas I had never seen rough seas like this I was a relatively new aviator.
The ship was bouncing pretty big I didn't realize until that moment that
aircraft carriers could actually move like that, ninety-five thousand tons of
aircraft carrier 1,000 feet long floating around in the Indian Ocean and
bobbing like a cork in high winds and high seas so much so that when the ship
pitches up it gives you a nice planform view of the landing area. The 600 foot
long runway that's on it and you get to see the runway in all its detail and
glory as it faces you and then when the bow comes down and the stern comes up
then that runway literally disappears for a moment as the runway tilts away
from you. So when you're a pilot you're trying to chase that thing down in your
aircraft because you're trying to land on,
The first thing that happens is you come into the overhead so you're going to fly
overhead the ship with the gear up in a clean configuration at 800 feet you go
about a mile upwind and you do a high G turn to turn downwind to set yourself up
for a final turn that will put you three-quarters of a mile on final for
about 15 to 18 seconds of Groove length looking at that landing area. That's the
whole setup in the meantime you're also slowing from about 400 knots to about
140 knots which is our landing speed. You get flaps out of gear now and make sure
it goes down because without a hook you're not gonna stop so you do all
those sorts of things as I roll across the wake and through my last 45 degrees
of turn I should be lined up with the landing area or if I can average out the
movement of the landing area lined up with what I would think is the final and
then at that point it's just trying to fly the visual landing aid which is
called the meatball. So, I'm flying meatball line up and I'm referencing my
angle of attack on the aircraft air speed high concentration, not a lot of
time for any other thoughts as opposed to what you might have seen in Top Gun.
We don't carry around family pictures in the cockpit that we look at when we're
landing the aircraft we are out there outside looking at the meatball line up
angle of attack realizing that if we let any of those three things drop out of
our scan we may be going around and trying to begin. That very landing my
Bombardier navigator after we touched down said "hey woody
did you see the screws come out of the water that time" and what he meant was
the propellers the four propellers that are normal
the ship was bouncing so much that all four of them had come out of the water
and were spinning before his eyes. In naval aviation that's what separates us
from Air Force pilots, from airline pilot,s from airshow aerobatic stunt
pilots. Off the coast of somewhere there's a carrier doing that very thing.
My favorite part about flying is I don't think I could break it down into
one specific part that's like asking somebody what's the favorite part of
somebody you love. All of us get into naval aviation because it looks fun and
it is you're flying at the edge of the envelope you're really trying to hone
your skills but you're also doing because it's for taking an F-18 and
getting the opportunity to plug in the afterburners and go straight up and then
when it slows down as you get to the higher altitudes to pull it over the top
and drop the nose and point straight down flying formation going out with a
squadron mate and doing basic fighter manoeuvring and pulling lead on that
individual and shooting them with pretend bullets from your computer
generated gun sight that is the best part about flying.
I think naval aviation is a calling I think aviation itself is a calling if
you feel called to do it if there's something that's eating away at the
inside of you, that tells you that all you will be happy doing is flying then
it's definitely for you!
If you want to hear more stories like mine subscribe to Ses Story today.
Coming next, this Marine helicopter landed aboard
with a bunch of planners that came in and told us we were gonna go do a very
important operation that was gonna get national attention. Sea Story brought
to you by America's Navy. Learn more at Navy.com.