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Stupid Questions about Naval Aviation (Part 3)

TheKelso said:
Crunched some quick numbers on this:

6% - Cargo/Aerial Refuel
4% - E-2
2% - E-6/EP-3
6% - Growler
41% - Hornet/Super/JSF
6% - P-3
1% - P-8
36% - Helo

*Rounding was involved*
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Straight aircraft numbers that looks about right but for personnel it would be very different since all helos have two pilots, P-3 and E-6's usually fly with three pilots along with two NFO's and Hornets just have one pilot, and so on.

For curiosity's sake I would love to see the personnel numbers for all the communities but the only two times I have seen those were for an article in Proceedings about 20 years ago and in a Navy Times article about 15 years ago. I really wish we put out an aviation plan like the Marines but I guess NAVAIR has better things to do.
 
Recovering LSO said:
As flash pointed out, the graphic lies. There may appear to be more "jets," but each of the other aircraft require two to three pilots, per sortie.
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The difference between a VQ (EP-3) wardroom and a VFA (C) wardroom are pretty stark, we had about 75-80 officers in my VQ squadron with about 60 aviators (split evenly between pilots and NFO's) while a Charlie Hornet squadron has about 15 or so pilots.
 
Unless I'm mistaken, the real reason that 42 is thrown out as that number is because that's how Deep Thought answered the question of "What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?" in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
 
Flash said:
Straight aircraft numbers that looks about right but for personnel it would be very different since all helos have two pilots, P-3 and E-6's usually fly with three pilots along with two NFO's and Hornets just have one pilot, and so on.
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Plus, at any given time how many "Hornet pilots" or "P-3 NFOs" are actually actively flying their native airframes? How would you count, say, a helo pilot who's flying T-6s in the Tracom? Or a two-star who grew up in Hornets but hasn't actually flown one in ten years?

That's kind of why I was trying to figure out what the OP was trying to get at with his question. It's easier for the Marines to add this stuff up since they have distinct MOS's. I'm not sure how you could add that up for the Navy...look at the AQDs of every 13XX on active duty, I guess?
 
Flash said:
That chart was done by some company called 'Naval Graphics' and is not official. Someone (Navy League or US Naval Institute?) used to put out an almost identical chart for all the ships of the Navy (just like this same company recently did) but I haven't seen a recent version.
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Original link is a French site ( http://cigeography.blogspot.fr/2015/05/USNavy-aircrafts-sheet.html?m=1 ), and it might be NMCI, but the site shows Asian and Russian text as well. Color me suspicious of a cool thing that effectively maps out all of Naval Aviation for a poster.
 
Uncle Fester said:
Plus, at any given time how many "Hornet pilots" or "P-3 NFOs" are actually actively flying their native airframes? How would you count, say, a helo pilot who's flying T-6s in the Tracom? Or a two-star who grew up in Hornets but hasn't actually flown one in ten years?

...I'm not sure how you could add that up for the Navy...look at the AQDs of every 13XX on active duty, I guess?
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It can be done, both the articles I noted had precise total numbers of folks in the respective communities. It is obviously not readily available info but the authors were able to get the numbers for their articles from the Navy, the Proceedings article was about the ratio of Admirals to each aviation community and the Navy Times was about the percentage of women in each community. That is why I like the Marine Aviation Plan, that has definitive numbers and is obviously authoritative instead of just WAG'ing it like we are here.

Even with just the overall numbers though it would still give you a pretty good idea of the size of the respective communities to include those flying operationally.

SynixMan said:
Original link is a French site ( http://cigeography.blogspot.fr/2015/05/USNavy-aircrafts-sheet.html?m=1 ), and it might be NMCI, but the site shows Asian and Russian text as well. Color me suspicious of a cool thing that effectively maps out all of Naval Aviation for a poster.
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Definitely foreign, 'aircrafts' is a dead giveaway.

The chart I am think of that had all the ships was from 20 or so years ago and was at least sorta semi-official, I saw it all over and it was accurate. This site took that idea and is expanding to everything from the Swedish Navy to naval guns, it is almost identical in style to the older posters I remember.
 
Just read Wikipedia. It's not that hard to figure out. You might need some insider info to figure out which squadrons are reserves, but you'd be damn close.
 
Uncle Fester said:
That's some real fine police work there, Lou.

Not sure what you know now that you did that arithmetic, though.
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6bc0c70a08138c0bee95215cad8f83ac359cc5bd06b332b10e09479691e2b2c8.jpg
 
Watched a clip about T-45C doing carrier quals and such posted in one of the other forums here. Anyway, when the studs landed back at K-rock, they got hosed with water. I've also seen this in other places for Naval aviation, but what is the significance? I tried google, but "Pilots Hosing Each Other" turned up some results my wife would find "distasteful", if she looked through the search history.
 
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For last flights guys will get sprayed or doused with water. Like when they finish the advanced syllabus after CQ or take their last flight with a squadron.
 
Here's my stupid question: I know if you lateral move in the Marine Corps to another MOS that you keep your wings. I also know if an officer fails to select for promotion twice that they generally must vacate their commission. Hypothetically, if an officer, Navy or Marine, had to vacate his commission and opted to enlist to finish out his time till retirement, would he keep his wings? Provided he was not FNAEB'd? He wouldn't be able to fly anymore, but I've seen officers PDQ'd keep theirs.
 
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