801 Squadron Sea Harrier pilot Peter Wilson aboard the Royal Navy carrier HMS Illustrious.
Rear Admiral Dennis Campbell, RN died on 6 April 2000 at the age of ninety-two. His career as a Fleet Air Arm aviator exposed him to many near misses and close calls. He realized early that one of the main dangers to a naval aviator was the liklihood of a collision with parked aircraft, or with a barrier positioned in front of such aircraft to protect them if his plane should fail to catch an arresting cable in his landing. Campbell had a simple, brilliant idea to solve the problem, the angled flight deck. It allowed carrier pilots to approach the deck at a slight angle to the ship itself. If the pilot failed to catch one of the arresting cables, he could “bolt”, go around and reenter the landing pattern for another approach by applying full power and flying off the clear port bow. His idea was so effective and successful that both the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy adopted it quickly and the majority of large aircraft carriers now have an angled flight deck for the recovery of aircraft. Campbell’s angled deck concept, and the gyro-stabilized mirror landing system which continously signals glide path corrections to the pilot of a landing aircraft, that pilot is today able to make a precise landing approach on a constant speed and direction, and with a clearly defined escape route should his tailhook fail to engage an arresting cable.
A U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat airman suits up for duty at NAS Miramar in the 1980s.
Bill Hannan served on the carrier USS Kearsarge in the Korean War as a jet engine mechanic. “It would be difficult to imagine a more hazardous place to live than an aircraft carrier. Apart from the planes landing, and sometimes crashing, on our roof, the ship carried millions of gallons of flammables, including fuel oil, high-octane gasoline, paints, thinner, as well as tons of bombs, rockets and associated ammunition. And scuttlebutt had it that we were being shadowed by submarines.
“Although much of our maintenance work was performed on the hangar deck, some of it was topside under incredibly harrowing conditions. Imagine working on a wintry night, on a frosty deck in rough seas, close to the edge of the ship. Only dim, red-lens flashlights could be used under blackout conditions. If a man happened to slip over the side into the ocean about eighty feet below, there was little chance of him being missed, let alone rescued. Being assigned to plane-pushing meant long hours of physically hard work in particularly dangerous circumstances. Once during my turn on this dreaded duty, I was well forward on the wet flight deck during a launch operation when I was suddenly blown to the deck. I went sliding rapidly towards the propeller planes poised aft with their engines running. I was desperately clawing at the wooden deck, hoping to grab on to one of the numerous metal tie-down strips, when a huge bruiser of a fellow spotted my predicament and, at considerable risk to himself, literally tackled me and dragged me over the edge of the deck into a catwalk. Probably no one else had even seen me. I was speechless and didn’t even have a chance to thank him before he rushed back to his post … a hero in my view, but probably all in a day’s work on the flight deck for him.
“Oral communication was often difficult on the flight deck, even without aircraft engines running. With jet and prop-plane run-ups, it was almost impossible. The ship’s powerful ‘bull horn’ public address system could sometimes be heard over the din, but even in the absence of noise, the bull horn messages were sometimes garbled or distorted like old-time railroad station announcements. So an elaborate system of hand signals evolved that usually worked to make a point.
“The Kearsarge converted sea water into fresh quite efficiently, but it had to serve many purposes, the first of which was feeding the ship’s thirsty boilers. Conservation measures had to be strictly observed. The shower protocol, for example, was to wet down, turn off the water, soap up, turn on the water, rinse, and turn off the water. Once I had just finished soaping up and was covered with suds, when ‘General Quarters’ was sounded—loud horns over the intercom system, meaning ‘get to your duty station immediately!’ I grabbed a pair of shower sandals and my jockey shorts and rushed up to the hangar deck. A ‘red alert’ was in effect and we could not leave our stations for any reason until the all-clear was sounded. Still covered in soap suds, I was very cold and beginning to itch all over. But it could have been worse. At least I wasn’t up on the flight deck.
“Field Days were clean-up times, and meant hard work to anyone involved. The worst thing about them was the closure of the heads (toilet facilities) for cleaning. Time on the ship for ‘pit stops’ was at a premium there, and often there was little margin for delay in attending to such bodily functions. How frustrating then, after climbing down a deck or two, to find a HEAD SECURED FOR CLEANING sign on the entrance, and either by coincidence or design, any nearby heads were also frequently out of service.
“We headed home at a leisurely pace, probably to reduce wear and tear on the ship’s machinery. As keeping idle hands out of mischief was a foremost consideration in the Navy, all sorts of chores, such as chipping paint from decks and then repainting them, were assigned to anyone who appeared to be unoccupied. In our squadron, the most unsavory of our F9F Panthers was selected to have its paint manually stripped, a dirty, tedious job at best, especially when it was freely admitted that the job didn’t really need doing.”
“Deck landing the Seafire was not too difficult if everything was done properly. The aircraft handled well at low speeds, but I found it necessary to stick my head out over the edge of the cockpit coaming and peering under the exhaust stubs in order to see the batsman’s signals. If you handled the aircraft as directed by the batsman, if the batsman gave you the correct signals—as they usually did—and if the flight deck did not duck or dive, then the landing was usually OK. An unreasonable divergence from any of the above criteria would bring the words of the Form 25 (accident report) song to mind: ‘The batsman says lower, I always go higher, I drift off to starboard and prang my Seafire, The boys in the goofers all think I am green, But I get my commission from Supermarine.’ I flew 200 hours in Seafires and carried out nineteen deck landings without having to sing the song.”
—Alan J. Leahy, former Royal Navy fighter pilot
The Hellcat had a kill ratio of nineteen to one; the P-51 Mustang had a kill ratio of fourteen to one; and the Corsair had a kill ratio of eleven to one. Captain Eric Brown flew all the allied and enemy fighters of the war and said that the Hellcat and the Fw 190 were the two best fighters. I never flew the Fw 190, but flew the Hellcat 396 hours in combat. To say I love the Hellcat is an understatement. Only my family do I love more.
—Richard H. May, former U.S. Navy fighter pilot
above: Illustrious class British Second World War fleet aircraft carrier Indomitable; bottom: HMS Illustrious is dwarfed by the U.S. Nimitz class carrier John C. Stennis.; below: Two views of the Grumman E-2A Hawkeye airborne early warning radar aircraft of the United States Navy.
F6F Hellcat pilots of Fighter Squadron 16 aboard the USS Lexington after their successes against Japanese planes near Tarawa on 23 November 1943.
Mass aircraft production was required in the Second World War, a huge and demanding task. Hundreds of thousands of new workers had to be hired and trained. There was little skilled labour available and as time was critical, round-the-clock workshifts were employed. With so many American men away at war, the nation’s women had to take up the slack and do much of the work building planes and the other military equipment for the U.S. war effort. American industry produced 150 separate types of aircraft during the war and a total of 300,317 aeroplanes.
above: The Royal Navy’s HMS Illustrious was the second of three Invincible class light aircraft carriers built in the 1970s and 1980s. Participating in Operations Southern Watch in Iraq and Deny Flight in Bosnia, as well as Palliser in Sierra Leone, she also came to the aid of UK citizens trapped by the 2006 Lebanon War. With the retirement of her fixedwing Sea Harrier aircraft in 2010, she is currently operated as a helicopter carrier and is expected to be withdrawn from active service in 2014. Illustrious is shown here with a refuelling vessel; below: Northrop-Grumman EA-6B Prowler; below centre: Boeing F/A-18 Hornet multi-role fighter; bottom: U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier jump jets.
Royal Navy Sea Harriers operating on HMS Illustrious in the 1990.s
Catapult crewmen preparing to launch an A-4C Skyhawk from the flight deck of the USS John F. Kennedy in 1968.
A Grumman E-2A Hawkeye in the foreground with a Grumman E-1B Tracer alongside, airborne early warning aircraft of the U.S. Navy.