A World War Two landing signal officer brings a naval aviator aboard the carrier.
above: A Douglas AD Skyraider in a landing accident aboard a U.S. Navy carrier in the Korean War; below: A Vought Corsair fighter arrives aboard the American aircraft carrier USS Tarawa, an Essex class carrier, in the western Pacific.
In the British Royal Navy he was known as the batsman; in the U.S. Navy he was referred to as the landing signal officer. For a large part of the existence of aircraft carriers he has had responsibility for guiding aviators onto the flight deck to a safe landing or “trap.” Over the years the job and the technology have evolved and in the American navy each squadron in the air wing of each carrier had its own landing signal officer—a fellow pilot—to help his colleagues down the landing approach. When a landing pilot is doing everything correctly, the LSO will keep his communication to a minimum. If corrections are needed he will signal the pilot or talk him down with what the pilots refer to as “candy calls” as the pilot makes the appropriate adjustments to the approach. When a pilot over-corrects, under-corrects, or fails to make the required adjustments in his approach to the deck, he receives a wave-off from the LSO. The wave-off sends the pilot around to rejoin the landing pattern for another try. The wave-off is non-negotiable and must be obeyed.
The aircraft recovery system used on the carriers of the U.S. Navy involves a carrier air traffic control center (CATCC) which guides returning aircraft to the carrier control area around the ship. It clears each aircraft for an approach to a landing at one-minute intervals in various weather conditions. In normal visual landing conditions the skill and experience of the landing signal officer enters the frame. The LSO is a highly experienced naval aviator of exceptional skill as a carrier pilot. He has a proven record, evaluated and well-trained at Landing Signal Officer school and on the carrier. To qualify for the job, he or she has demonstrated sensitivity, the wisdom of experience, and good judgement. The office is a small platform near the landing area, on the aft port side of the carrier flight deck. Using state-of-the-art equipment, with assistants and LSOs in training, he continuously monitored the weather conditions, wind, the motion of the deck, and the characteristics of operating aircraft, in addition to thoughtfully considering the experience level of each approaching pilot.
Under normal visual flying conditions, the carrier-based aircraft return from missions and are sometimes placed in a marshal stack in which flight leaders take their interval on flights at lower altitude levels in the stack. As the mission aircraft approach astern of the carrier, either two- or four-plane formations enter the break for landing, on the same heading and to the starboard side at an altitude of 800 feet. When the flight leader reaches a projected point ahead of the carrier, he breaks left and aligns his airplane on a downwind leg, while descending to 600 feet and completing his landing checklist. On final approach the pilot will rely on the ship’s automatic, gyrostabilized Fresnel lens optical landing system, which is an arrangement of lenses and lights positioned off the port edge of the angled flight deck. Should the carrier be rolling and/or pitching beyond the limitations of the gyrostabilization capability—or if the Fresnel system should fail—a manual optical visual landing system (MOVLAS) can be quickly set up for use. In reasonably good weather conditions, the LSO operates zip-lip, without radio communication.
Typically, the pilot of an F/A-18 Hornet multi-role fighter turns onto his or her final approach to the carrier deck at about 135 knots airspeed. To employ the Fresnel optical landing system, the pilot must locate the array of lights and focus on the amber light or ‘meatball’ in the centre of the mirrored lenses. When he has properly aligned on the glide slope he will see the ball aligned with a horizontal line of green reference lights on either side of the centre lens. If his aircraft is above the glide slope, or too high, the ball will appear to him in one of the lenses above the centre lens. If his aircraft is too low, the ball will show in one of the lower lenses. To achieve an optimal carrier landing, the pilot must visually keep the ball centred all the way down the glide slope to touchdown on the flight deck and then engage the three wire, the third of four heavy cables stretched across the aft area of the flight deck from just ahead of the ramp or rounded aft end of the deck. The pilot must learn to fly the ball. The LSO will help with light signals and/or voice instruction.
Interrogating a U.S. Navy aviator after flying a mission from the carrier USS Enterprise in WW2.
In the landing approach to the deck, the pilot flies his aircraft to a point about three-quarters of a mile from the ship. At that point the ship’s air traffic control centre delegates control of the aircraft to the LSO. It is then that the LSO and his or her half dozen assistants, some of whom are training their binoculars on the incoming jet, checking that the landing gear and flaps are in the proper down position, the airplane is aligned on the centreline of the flight deck, the wings are level, and the plane appears to be descending at a correct rate to catch one of the arresting wires when it slams onto the deck in a few seconds.
To bring a hot, heavy beast like an F/A-18 aboard a carrier is a highly precise, demanding task and there is little room for error. The pilot has to establish the airplane’s position and attitude on the glide slope and then fly it down the slope at an exact three-and-a-half degree angle. When the airplane arrives over the ramp, if the pilot has flown the glide slope perfectly, the tailhook will cross the ramp fourteen feet above it. If the plane is more than a few feet too high, the tailhook will miss the arresting wires, or bounce over them, for what is called a ‘bolter’. Navy procedure requires the pilot to shove the throttle (throttles in the case of a multi-engine aircraft) to full power the instant the airplane contacts the flight deck. When the plane’s tailhook catches an arresting wire, bringing it to an abrupt halt, the pilot immediately retards the throttle and the plane is allowed to roll back a few feet to disengage the tailhook from the wire. The aircraft is then quickly guided away from the active landing area and the arresting gear is reset for the next approaching airplane. If a pilot experiences a bolter and the tailhook fails to catch an arresting wire, the plane’s engine is set at full power and the plane can then get airborne again and go around for another landing attempt.
On every carrier landing approach, the LSO and the deputy LSO each hold an up-raised pickle switch and either of them can use it to activate flashing red lights on the Fresnel array, signalling a wave-off. Every landing approach to the carrier is graded by the LSO, who uses a Trend Analysis form to keep a record of every pilot’s carrier landing performance. After all landings in a flight operation have been completed, members of the LSO team visit the pilots who have just landed, to discuss their grades for the task. Understandably, there are few things more important in the life of a carrier-based naval aviator than these grades. If the pilot cannot consistently and safely bring the airplane aboard the carrier, he or she is virtually worthless to the Navy and will be sent to the beach.
When an LSO gives a landing approach grade, that grade is almost always final and not subject to appeal. The grade range from: OK (a good approach with no problems), to FAIR (a performance with slight deviation from the correct approach, to NO GRADE (an unacceptable deviation from the correct approach, to WAVE-OFF (the approach was too far from correct, was unsafe and had to be aborted), to BOLTER (try again). Among U.S. Navy aviators, competition for good grades is high.
A good approach, when the pilot has done everything well, should result in the tailhook catching either the number two or number three wire; if a bit low or slow it may catch the number one wire. Both numbers one and four are less safe than two and three, three being the most desirable. Landing on a carrier at night, a night trap, is one of the most dangerous things a human being can do. Nothing that a pilot must do requires greater skill, is more demanding or genuinely frightening. Poor performance in night carrier landings is the biggest cause of naval aviators losing their wings. Some naval aviators say that, even after hundreds of night traps, they never get easier, and some feel that the more night landings they do, the more nervous and uneasy they are about them. One F/A-18 pilot commented: “Doing a night trap concentrates the mind wonderfully.” The problem for pilots doing night traps is the lack of visual cues. When landing on a conventional airfield at night, the pilot usually has a whole range of them with which to judge the quality of his or her approach, but nighttime at sea is black on black. Frequently, there is no horizon, making the experience even more disorienting. And just setting up a proper approach can be a waking nightmare. Even so, other pilot believe that a little fear, in combination with intelligence and a high degree of capability in such a demanding situation, can actually be a good thing, one that keeps the pilot sharp and focused.
The problem of bringing an airplane to the carrier in foul weather is dealt with in various ways aboard the big Nimitz class carriers of the U.S. Navy. Aids availible to pilots in such conditions include the instruement landing system (ILS), the tactical air navigation system (TACAN), the carrier-controlled approach (CCA), and the automatic carrier landing system (ACLS) which is capable of bringing the plane to touchdown on the flight deck when the pilot has no visual contact with the ship much less the flight deck. A precise guidance radar in the ship locks on to the automatic pilot in the plane when it is eight miles out from the carrier. Computers in the carrier and in the plane then feed position updates to each other and the system sends signals to the plane’s autopilot which establishes the approach. Using ACLS the autopilot flies the plane to a safe landing on the ship without the pilot having to touch the stick.
above: Helicopter air-sea rescue operations from the Royal Navy carrier HMS Illustrious; below: A Sea Harrier landing aboard the Illustrious.
One of the better books to come out of the Second World War was Daybreak for our Carrier, by Max Miller. In it he effectively described the role of the landing signal officer on one of the fast carriers in that war: “The job aboard a carrier which appears to be the most fun (from a distance and in photographs) is that of the landing signal officer. He is the one so often pictured standing aft by the fantail, colored paddles in each hand, and waving them as if the air were rent with hornets.
“His base of operations is a small grilled platform which swings off the flight deck, and his backdrop is a screen of canvas. He doesn’t stand in front of this backdrop when he is signalling, nor for that matter does he stand on the grilled platform. But they are his base of operations nevertheless, and the screen of canvas also serves as a windbreak.
“There is a slight trace of the bullfighter in a landing signal officer. He not only has to know how to lure ’em on with his colors, but he also has to know how to jump should things get too hot.
“He himself is a carrier-trained pilot. Why he was selected from regular daily flying duty to be a landing signal officer is something he most likely will avoid answering outright. It may be that he really doesn’t know. Or it may be that the powers that be told him they saw in him exactly all the stuff that a landing signal officer should have. And other than that, he had no say in the matter. This is the most likely.
U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet multrole fighters aboard the carrier USS John C. Stennis.
“Planes cannot simply race in and land aboard a carrier without guiding help. They could try it, of course, and supposedly there would be some which would succeed. But on approaching the flight deck for a landing, the pilot encounters a most definite blind spot. He cannot see his own wheels at any time, of course, nor can he see the immediate spot directly beneath him and directly in front of him where his wheels should first touch. The landing signal officer has to be the other pair of eyes.
“That is one reason.
“Another reason is that, with the planes of three squadrons circling the carrier ever lower and lower for their landings, somebody has to be at a conspicuous spot to direct the timing between planes, and to see to it that the flight deck doesn’t become one beautiful mess of tangled-up propellers.
“It must be remembered that a flight deck, though massive both in appearance and in actuality, is nevertheless limited in space where the planes must make their landings. This space aft with its arresting gear and barriers is less than half the deck’s length. To overshoot this space, and to try to make a landing anyway, would mean to crash into the planes already aboard and which have been brought forward beyond the barriers as fast as they can be brought.
“The planes, on their approach ‘in the groove,’ come in at a speed of about seventy or eighty knots. At least this is the speed which is figured on if all is going well. Coupled with this, the ideal head-on wind for landing or launching planes is between thirty and forty knots. This does not mean that the wind itself has to be that strong literally. But the head-on speed of the carrier into the wind is making up for some of it.
“So, when a landing signal officer is standing out there with his colored paddles, and a plane is approaching him for a landing, he has to keep a lot of things in mind, as mentioned, and he also has to keep in mind the condition of the flight deck on his side of the barriers.
“But with his eyes concentrated on the incoming plane, and with the pilot of the plane concentrating in turn on the signal flags, it could all become quite a jumbled-up affair if the signal officer took time off to gaze at the condition of the deck behind him. He does, then, have his assistants, and one of them, an enlisted man, is the ‘talker.’
“The ‘talker’, with earphones and a mouthpiece, squats just over the edge of the flight deck so that his eyes are level with it, and he keeps watching what is occurring to the plane which has just landed a few seconds previously.
“If there is difficultey in getting the plane released from the landing-gear, or if there is difficulty in getting the plane taxied up forward beyond the barriers, the talker’s conversation to the signal officer is all one-sided. It consists of the repetition: Foul—foul—foul—foul—foul—‘ and then possibly a ‘clear.’
“Yet it is at such point as this that a signal officer has to make one of his many split-second decisions. He is as anxious as anybody in the ship to get all the planes aboard as soon as possible. He doesn’t want to give the next incoming pilot the good old ‘wave-off’ anymore than the incoming pilot wants to receive it.
“But if, at that critical moment of timing between speed and distance, the talker is still saying ‘foul’, then aloft go the signal officer’s flags in criss-cross waving fashion. The pilot, in that same split second too, must push on more power to bank-turn over the deck and zoom away.
The Royal Navy carrier HMS Illustrious at sea in wet weather.
“Though pilots are obliged to take a ‘wave-off’ whether they like it or not, unless something devilish is the matter with their plane, they are not obliged to land even after the signal officer signals the ‘cut’ to do so. The signal ‘cut’ means, of course, to cut the motor and let the wheels touch. The signal is indicated by a quick cross whip of the flags down low. It’s then up to the pilot to do the rest. The signal officer is through with him, and now looks for the next incoming plane. The ‘cut’ is the gesture finale with each plane, and with it the plane whirs on past the signal officer onto the deck for better or worse.
“There’s a phrase which is used at times when a pilot, after getting the signal ‘cut’, makes a bad landing through what appears to be his own fault. So dependent has he been on the flags of the signal officer during the past few seconds that now, when suddenly on his own, the phrase is: ‘He stopped flying.’
“Another job of the signal officer, as if his hands weren’t filled enough, is to grade each landing much as a schoolteacher would do. This goes for the approaches as well. The moment the plane is aboard, and before the signal officer has time to forget the mental picture of the approach and of the landing, he quickly rattles off an abbreviated code of his own describing his opinion. An assistant scribbles the letters into a notebook after the pilot’s name or after the number of the pilot’s plane.
“Afterwards, and usually when the pilots are in their ready room getting out of their togs, the signal officer from his notebook will tell them how they did, or what they didn’t do, or what they should have done. All of which can be of help for the next time.
“But the art of signalling planes aboard, and bringing them aboard rapidly with the maximum of safety, is such a complicated art that even when we watch from the island we do not catch the full picture. Or at least we do not catch it in the true perspective. The only place to catch the true perspective actually is right down there next to the signal rack itself.
“From up in the island too, as in the grandstand of any football game, we are tempted each time to be the quarterback. Or in this case, the signal officer. Why doesn’t he give the ‘wave-off?’ Or: Why doesn’t he give the ‘cut’? Or: Why did he give the ‘wave-off?’ It looked all right to me. “Yes, we cannot resist being unofficial signal officers, none of us. All of which adds to the life aboard a carrier, too.
“There’s the story which goes how some new captain on one of the smaller carriers had much the same idea about quarterbacking from high up on his distant bridge. Through the loudspeaker the new captain harassed the signal officer so much during the landings, and began yelling to him so much what to do each time, that the signal officer suddenly had to decide between smashing up the planes or his own Navy career. He was so blindly furious about all the dictation during the height of a landing that, using an artist’s prerogative (and he certainly was an artist), he tossed his signal paddles onto the deck and went below.
“He aimed for the empty wardroom, and stayed there drinking coffee, trying to drown with it what he was thinking. Meanwhile, the remainder of the planes continued circling and circling the ship waiting for the signals, the pilots wondering what the hell.
“Perhaps the end of the story might have been different if competent landing signal officers were something which could just be picked up for the asking. But months of training, and even years of training, have gone into what they do which may appear so easy. And in addition to their training they also have to have that little ‘something else’ besides to be classed in the limited group of the truly top-notchers. Their fame, though not known to the public, is certainly known from carrier to carrier in the Pacific.
“A top-notcher, though he may classify himself as ‘just another one of those plane-bouncers’ is really a gifted personage. It is taken for granted that he can signal the planes on in ‘along the groove,’ that with his paddles he can talk with the pilots continually, that he can tell them they are too low or too high or at too much of an angle or too fast or too slow. It is taken for granted, also, that he is responsible for making sure their wheels and their flaps are down before they come in. All this part of his ordinary work is understood.
“But a true top-notcher is one who can go beyond any of this. He is the one who knows the personal characteristics of the individual flyers aboard. Some of these flyers, he realizes, are better at one type of approach than another, and some are just naturally so good at carrier-landings that he need not worry too much about them, but can concentrate on the others instead.
“If there is to be uniformity in the landings, naturally, it is well for him to see to it that all the flyers behave more or less the same way. But in those cases of emergency, in those cases where planes have to be brought aboard regardless, and brought aboard fast—these are the moments when the artistry of a signal officer really shows, and really pays dividends.
“He knows in a second what allowances to make for one flyer, and what not to allow for another. Some can get by, and skilfully, with something which might cause others to hit the deck too hard. He will recognize the pilot by the number of his plane, or he may recognize the pilot himself as he circles by. And when a plane has signalled the instant need of an emergency landing regardless of anybody or anything, but preferably a landing on deck, all this depends too on the signal officer’s ability. Or when they come in with their big bomb loads still stuck to the plane and unreleasable. Or when they come in with their landing-gear shot away. Or when they come in wounded and bearly able to make it. These are the moments when a true top-notcher, working his most delicate best with the pilot, is surely an artist supreme.
“Anyhow, to return to that story which was started some while back, it was not long before that new captain on the little carrier began imitating the pilots aloft by also wondering what the hell.
“There was no other landing signal officer aboard, so now you know how the story ends. He was summoned from his coffee back up to the flight deck. Nobody coached him over the loudspeaker after that. Nor, according to our version of the story as told to us, did anybody mention court-martial.
“For a landing signal officer is at his best when, along with knowing the rest of his trade, he has the absolute confidence of his flyers—and this one had it. They stuck by him the same as he in turn had stuck by them by not heeding distant advice. If the confidence in a landing signal officer ever has cause to become the least bit wobbly, a pilot consciously or subconsciously may hesitate about the signals at a critically wrong time.
“So all in all a landing signal officer, in his yellow sweater and yellow cloth helmet, may look gaudy out there next to the fantail, and he may look funny waving those colored paddles around his head. But above him there may be as many as sixty pilots and their gunners who would like very much to be able to eat that night. He wants to see to it that they are able.”
Bob Croman was an SBD Dauntless dive-bomber pilot in the South Pacific during the Second World War. He was ordered back to the States in March 1944 to attend Landing Signal Officer school and after graduating he was assigned to Carrier Air Group 19, the first U.S. Navy unit to fly the hot new Grumman F8F Bearcat fighter.
Heavy fog had suddenly formed over the Navy airfield at Santa Rosa, California, on 18 July 1945, and the visibility there was less than a half mile. Bob Croman was the LSO for CAG 19 and the unit was practicing field carrier landings for the first time in their new Bearcats. They were quickly discovering that the aeroplane was extremely powerful and wholly unforgiving. Croman was in his position at the end of the runway and with him were an assistant LSO, an ambulance and its crew.
The impressive Bearcat, with its big Pratt & Whitney engine, and huge propeller, developed a lot of torque; its pilot had to ‘keep ahead’ of the machine or it would get away from him.
The first three planes did well and Croman gave them each a ‘cut’ signal to land. The next pilot was clearly losing control of his plane in the approach and coming in too slowly. The LSO gave him the ‘slow’ signal, but the Bearcat continued lower and slower in the approach. At that point, Croman tried desperately to get the errant pilot back on track as the fighter roared towards him. The pilot added power … too late. Torque pulled the plane to the left, towards where the LSO stood. It hit the runway hard, collapsing the left wing and landing gear, and twisting the big propeller.
Had this happened aboard a carrier, Bob Croman might have been able to throw himself into the safety net adjacent to the LSO platform, but on this airfield there was no escape for him. Screeching towards him, the Bearcat slid and he dove at the area beneath the plane’s right wing and felt a heavy thud. He was lying on his stomach, dazed and unable to move. It seemed to him that he had lain there a very long time. After hitting him, the wrecked Bearcat had continued sliding down the runway, finally coming to a stop. The pilot got out of it without a scratch.
Bob Croman had been flung like a ragdoll by the impact of the plane. He lay on the ground, contorted, his right leg mangled and bleeding profusely. He needed urgent treatment and the other people at the scene rushed to help him. One of them applied a tourniquet and removed Bob’s jacket. An ambulance crew medic quickly gave the LSO a shot of morphine. Until then he had felt almost no pain. The the pain arrived. It was nearly unbearable. But with it, he knew he was not dead. You can’t hurt that bad and be dead, he thought. At Santa Rosa base dispensary, the doctors could stabilize Croman, whose leg had almost been severed about six inches up from the ankle, and was only still attached by bits of flesh. He was soon flown to the Oakland Naval Hospital and rushed to an operating room. There he was met by a Dr McRae whom he had known briefly fifteen months earlier in the South Pacific. The doctor reattached Croman’s leg in an eight-hour surgical procedure.
LSOs at work on the U.S. carrier Coral Sea.
Over the next five years, Bob Croman underwent sixteen additional operations on his damaged leg. His Navy and flying careers had ended with the tragic accident and he never had more than partial use of his ankle and foot, but was forever grateful to the Navy for the treatment he received and to Dr McRae who had been there for him.
top: The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor multi-role vertical take-off and landing aircraft; above: Royal Navy Sea King helicopters aboard a carrier at sea; below: Former SBD dive-bomber pilot Robert Croman, a WW2 landing signal officer, whose right leg was nearly severed when a Bearcat fighter on a landing approach at a Navy airfield near Santa Rosa, California in July 1945, crash-landed striking Croman, who survived thanks to a skilled surgeon at the Oakland Naval Hospital.
