Within minutes the engines were started, the weapons systems were up and running, and the aircraft was ready to go. Any thoughts of blue water operations and launching off an aircraft carrier with no divert airfields available were quickly replaced with doing my job and getting all the systems online and ready to launch. Man and machine were one, and I was ready for my training mission. That being said, I had spent significant time with 301 and when I strapped in that night, I felt like the aircraft was an extension of my body. In fact, it was normal to fly a different aircraft in the squadron almost every day based on the maintenance requirements, which seemed endless. While some may think that we only flew the aircraft with our name on the side, that was not the case. I really enjoyed flying aircraft 301 and had spent quite a bit of time with it the previous few weeks. He had plans to make this flight anything but routine. Murphy of Murphy’s Law, where everything that can go wrong will go wrong, had climbed aboard while I wasn’t looking.
While the F/A-18C is a single seat aircraft, I guess Mr. The fuel we launched with was all we had until we wrestled the plane back onto the relative safety of the carrier.Īfter conducting a thorough exterior preflight, I climbed into the cockpit of aircraft 301 for another routine flight…or so I thought. On all of my previous deployments in the E-2C Hawkeye this was never an option. Blue water ops had become the norm, and while I had been here before, I took some comfort in the fact that tonight I was flying the F/A-18C Hornet aircraft that had the ability to conduct air to air refueling if for some reason I could not land back on the flight deck. Typical operations at this point as the Stennis and Airwing Nine were on deployment and in the middle of the Pacific Ocean making our way to the Persian Gulf. Without that light I could barely see past the nose on my face. Inching across the flight deck of the USS Stennis aircraft carrier, I searched my path with my flashlight in hopes that I would not trip and fall or run into anything. Darker than a moonless night with no ambient light from land and just miles and miles of pitch black. It was one of those dark nights that only aviators who fly off of aircraft carriers have experienced. Critical decisions make the difference between life and death.
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