Members of the 16-strong the ”Fist of the Fleet” squadron are spending yet more hours airborne, honing their flying skills in their deadly gunbattle grey F/A-18C Hornets south of Iraq.
Lieutenant Anton Orr, who goes by the call name of ”Gasm”, said he will spend around two hours a day in the cockpit, seven days a week, for his six-month deployment on board the gigantic USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) aircraft carrier, currently sailing in the northern Arabian Sea.
”We fly around every day,” said the 28-year-old pilot, a member of the ”Fist of the Fleet” VFA-25 squadron based in Lemoore, California.
”We’re always at work. We never leave it. We average between 30 and 50 hours a month at the seat of the Hornet, and a working day of up to 16 hours, seven days a week for six months.”
Brought up to the scorching, greasy deck of the carrier by aircraft elevators from the enormous hangar bays below, the Hornets are quickly and efficiently lined up.
The 1,8-hectare deck of the nuclear-powered carrier is continuously awash with around 300 of the 5,500-crew, the
Hornets and some of the 60 or so other F-14D Tomcats, S-3B Vikings and EA-6B Prowlers.
Crews dressed in filthy red polar necks, life jackets and helmets quickly wheel over trolleys loaded with guided missiles and thousands of rounds of ammunition to each plane, and painstakingly arm it while technicians give one last check of the bodies and electrics of the Hornets.
After being pulled into position, the catapult and arrest crew, in yellow tops, execute a carefully choreographed sequence of signals with the pilot as the engines’ thrust builds up against a retractable four-panelled wall.
With a final salute from the pilot, the Hornets are dispatched by a powerful steam catapult that accelerates the 37-ton jet from zero to 290 kilometres per hour in less than three seconds while travelling the length of a football pitch.
”Taking off is good fun. It’s like riding a rollercoaster,” said Orr, a native of Las Vegas, Nevada.
”But the pilot doesn’t really contribute much to the take-off process. You just have to hold on. It’s pretty awesome.”
Landing however is another issue, according to Orr. Pilots use a system of lenses to guide the warplanes ”down the slope”, or the correct path for landing, an often perilous task, especially when the carrier is pitching.
Four two-inch-thick arresting cable wires connected to hydraulic rams below deck snag the arresting hook of the aircraft, stopping it from 240 kilometres per hour to zero in less than 120 metres.
”Landing on a ship is easily the most challenging thing for any aviator to do,” Orr said.
Missions, he said, were currently short enough for pilots not to worry about food and drink whilst airborne.
”Even if it is a longer flight, I’d only normally take a power snack bar or fruit,” Orr said. ”Just remember that if it falls, it stays where it is because you’re strapped in so tight.”
The cockpit was also surprisingly comfortable, he added, with airconditioning and heating.
With the Abraham Lincoln heading for Gulf waters, Orr’s time in the sky might increase, depending on developments in the current standoff between Washington and Baghdad.
”We’ll carry on doing whatever we’ve been cast to do by our national command authorities,” Orr said. – Sapa-AFP