Adventures At Sea (Part 4)
November 11, 2013
Happy Veterans Day to all the Veterans, past, present, and
future that I have the privilege of knowing.
Thank you all so very much for your service and your love for country
and family. Thank you for your sacrifices
and for willingly giving of yourselves so that I might have the freedom to
write on a site like this. Thank you and
God bless you all!
Continued from November 5, 2013
After spending roughly about an hour and a half outside on
the flight deck, we were escorted back inside and given a few minutes to catch
our breath. We began the ten-story climb
up to the Primary Flight Deck. If you
are not in good shape, these steps will get you! They are steep and they are many. The PriFlight deck is the top deck in the
tower of the island. It is basically air
traffic control. They are controlling
the landing and launching of all the aircraft.
We were able to talk with the Air Boss and the Mini Boss while we were
up there for them to explain what they do.
They also have to keep track of what type of aircraft is landing and
communicate that to the sailors in charge of the arresting cables as each one
has to be set for a particular type of plane depending on the weight of the
plane. We were also told of their good
luck disco ball that hangs between the Boss and Mini Boss’ seats. They use it to help the pilots that might be
having a little trouble getting on the deck.
It’s their “talisman.” The view
out over the deck up there is astounding because you can see everything that is
going on down below.
(This is me in the Mini Boss's Seat)
We spent roughly forty-five minutes in PriFlight (time
really had no meaning to us on this trip – we were just so enthralled with
everything we were seeing) and we descended one flight down to the Bridge. Next to the flight deck, this is probably the
second busiest place that we have seen so far.
This is where everything related to the ship runs. The navigation is up here, the Officer of the
Watch – I think that was his title – is in charge of putting the ship into
proper position with his instructions in order to launch or land aircraft. This has to do with speed of the ship itself
and with natural wind direction and ocean movements. It was fascinating to watch and listen to him
call out commands to those in charge of steering the ship and those controlling
speed. The young lady that was steering
the ship was just twenty years old and a tiny little person. She explained to us what she sees on her screen
when she is steering the ship. She also
explained that they usually alternate running of the four 21’ bronze
propellers. Like on Thursday, they were
running propellers 2 and 4 and they would switch over on Friday to propellers 1
and 3. It is not as easy to see out of
the windows from the bridge. The metal
walls go up taller than it did up in PriFlight, so for short people like me,
there are seven wooden boxes to stand up on and see out the windows. Each box had one of the Seven Dwarfs engraved
in it. I found Grumpy and Sneezy while I
was there!
We were able to spend quite a bit of time with the Captain
while we were up here. We even got to
sit in the Captain’s chair and have our pictures made. This was a little daunting with him standing
right there beside of us, but he was very gracious and very humble. After each of us had our turn and our picture
made we watched the next wave of flight operations, launching and landings from
the bridge. The Captain explained to us
what all of the different shirt colors meant on the deck. He explained this as they are preparing to
start launching aircraft. The Red Shirts
are the ones responsible for arming, disarming, and loading weapons on the
aircraft. Yellow Shirts are the Shooters
– they’re the ones responsible for moving the planes into position and then
giving the pilot direction as to when to rev up and finally after all checks
are made, giving the go for them to catapult the aircraft off the deck. The White Shirts are responsible for safety
related jobs including final inspection of the aircraft’s exterior and
movements prior to launching. Green
Shirts are responsible for hooking the planes to the shuttle for the catapult
and are responsible for handling the arresting wires. Blue Shirts operate elevators and drive the
tractors that pull the aircraft or that sweep the deck. Purple Shirts are the ones responsible for
fueling the aircraft (all fuel lines and fuel related rooms and valves
throughout the ship are painted that same bright purple) – they call them “the
grapes”. And finally the Silver Suits,
those are the guys/gals that you don’t want to have to see; they are the ones
that handle fires or crashes. After he explained
to us the shirts and their jobs, he took us through the whole process of how
they hook the planes to the cats and what each person does when they’re doing
that and how the cat has to be set for the correct type of launch – with or
without afterburners – the pilot signed up for.
Due to a pilot error just before his launch – he changed his mind about
wanting the afterburners on just before he launched – there was a huge back up
of planes waiting to launch, so the Captain pulled all waiting aircraft up to
the front of the deck to launch off of catapults 1 and 2 and as soon as they
launched the pilot that had caused the backup, they quickly covered up cats 3
and 4 and started landing aircraft.
Within less than two minutes of launching the last plane off of cat 4,
they had planes landing in that area.
They can actually do that faster and I’m estimating quite long –
remember time didn’t have much meaning to me on this trip! Needless to say, the Captain was not too
happy about the snafu. He didn’t strike
me as a fellow that takes messing up a schedule lightly! They can land a plane every forty-five
seconds! Absolutely AMAZING!
(Me in the Captain's Chair)
(That's the Captain over to the right)
Check back next week for more to this story!
No comments:
Post a Comment