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A Day On The Catapults...
- Thread starter k_smittay
- Start date
That made a regular appearance as well.
Gator, when were you on GW? I did my CVW LSO cruise on her. Shooters were a good bunch of guys. They even let me "Shoot" once. (I put it in quotes because I just did motions, deck edge was watching them, not me!)
The only thing about them that pissed me off was that they would not covey launch. They had this "Bow has the lead" "Waist has the lead" bullshit they would do. Kind of defeated the purpose of having 4 cats! They convinced the Boss that to shoot off the bow and waist at the same time was unsafe.
I was TAD to the GW from Mar-Jul 04. I got off at the port visit in Naples and flew back to San Diego. Yeah, it was a good bunch of dudes on GW, and a couple of them were my TACAMO brethren. There was definitely a lot more bubble-to-bubble coordination on GW to prevent covey launches. When Nimitz initially finished her MX availability in Aug 04, the Boss wouldn't let us do covey launches, but he eventually came around as he got more comfortable with all of his shooters.
If the phone is ringing in the bubble, you know the Boss is not calling to see how your day is going. Usually started with WTF? And then come and see me in the tower after the launch. By the time you made it to the O-10, he had usually forgotten why he was yelling at you in the first place, and you'd end up with an atta boy or good job out on deck.
^^ and ^^^
I'd never heard the term "covey" launches. And I worked with the Air Department as an LSO, at least peripherally. Make that directly w/the Air Department for recoveries ... peripherally with the launches.
But in the ol' days .... if you had 4 cats working, you used 4 cats unless it was a unusually "small" launch. No rocket science involved. A BOSS or Skipper who didn't use all available cats would have been .... probably not BOSS or Skipper.
I guess that's the difference between SEA and post-SEA cyclic ops and operations today???
I'd never heard the term "covey" launches. And I worked with the Air Department as an LSO, at least peripherally. Make that directly w/the Air Department for recoveries ... peripherally with the launches.
But in the ol' days .... if you had 4 cats working, you used 4 cats unless it was a unusually "small" launch. No rocket science involved. A BOSS or Skipper who didn't use all available cats would have been .... probably not BOSS or Skipper.
I guess that's the difference between SEA and post-SEA cyclic ops and operations today???
I hadn't either until my boat tour. Some factors you can't control (slow nugget or deck edge operator) to get a covey launch with a plane on the waist launching seconds before the bow in order to reach the bow of the ship at about the same time.
On deployment, we almost always had one of the bow cats stacked. Very rare that enough planes got off deck during a cycle to use all 4 cats.
We did covey launches all the time on TR (Case I of course
) with cats 1 & 3. One of the reasons we enjoyed topside shooting so much. The waist would always try to be a little ahead of the bow when doing a covey. The bow would could call "finger" and both waist and bow shooter would release from the deck at the same time. Obviously a slow deckedge operator could have an impact on the timing, but overall, we became pretty proficient at it. Also, when the bow wasn't stacked, the bow shooter would "double hook" the bow and shoot cat 2 immediately after the covey launch. When you were "good", you could get three A/C in the air within about 10-15 seconds. Good times !!!
This is probably of little interest to most, but it might interest you Air Department types for comparison purposes w/ cyclic ops:
We'd usually launch the tanker and a fighter first off the bow cats #2 and #1 respectively, followed by another fighter and a Hummer off the waist -- i.e., 2 fighters, a tanker, and an AEW now airborne. Then in rapid fire fashion two more fighters off the bow followed by two more fighters off the waist(s) as soon as they were strapped in (F-4's bridles & all).
If this was not the first cycle, the timing with the first tanker and the offgoing tanker was placed at a premium, i.e., the offgoing tanker would "hawk" the oncoming tanker so he could join up ASAP after the launch -- the oncoming tanker usually was the first bird up, like I say -- to check the oncoming "sweet package" and consolidate fuel.
Then it basically boom-boom-boom-boom (no slow Nuggets allowed :icon_wink) as more fighters went off the waists and light/medium attack then VAQ from the bow while the last of the light attack, photo recon, and any VQ-1 birds were going off of the waist cats.
Always variances, to be sure, but this was a "typical" cyclic 20+ bird launch.
Then get ready for the recovery, land 'em, turn downwind, and do it all over again .... for 12-24 hours ....
:sleep_125
phrogpilot73
Well-Known Member
That's the funniest thing I've heard all day...Harrier Dude said:
Harrier Dude
Living the dream
That's a standard "oldy but goody" that happens at least 5 or 6 times every TRACOM CQ det. I'd heard about it many times before my CQ, so I wasn't surprised.
The alternative (besides doing it correctly) is hearing "POWER IN THE WIRES!!!" From either the Boss or Paddles (or both) followed shortly by an ass chewing and a possible DQ.
We were told that if we didn't go to MRT in the wires that they would, at a minimum, give us a cut pass and shut us down for the rest of the day. Not something I wanted to be involved in. Like I said, I was paranoid.
When I CQ'd in the ole -45, we had a dude get a cut pass his first hook down go around. Power in the wires call, etc. He came back and still managed to not only CQ, but we were the first class that they raised the passing GPA on. So it can be done.
And Big Iron, that picture made me throw up in my mouth.
And Big Iron, that picture made me throw up in my mouth.
And that's too bad, 'cause that leaves room for STUD "creativity" which is a bad thing. We were primed and prepped to the N-th degree when I went to the BOAT the second time -- Advanced just prior to Wings -- I didn't trap in Basic, just held overhead until they BINGO'ed us, 'cause the LEX had a STUD/T-2/yellow shirt fatality problem. Actually, a holdback problem .... but ....Harrier Dude said:
CONFUSED??? CONFUSED ??!!??
The first time I CQ'ed was just a blurrrrr-r-r-r-r. Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. That and getting married -- just a blurr.
