Unforgotten in the Gulf of Tonkin by Eileen A. Bjorkman

Author:Eileen A. Bjorkman [Bjorkman, Eileen A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS027070 History / Military / Vietnam War
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

5

Bonnie Dick

Willie caught the three wire on his first landing on the USS Bon Homme Richard. His squadron commander was watching, and Willie knew he would be pleased.

Within a few seconds Willie realized that catching the wire was just the beginning of recovering on an operating carrier. His previous landings had all been on clean decks with little else going on. Landing on the Bon Homme Richard was like dropping into a riot in a construction zone. Bright lights glared, and men dashed about wielding lethal-looking tools. In thirty seconds another aircraft would be trying to slam onto the carrier. Willie needed to move away from the landing area and get past the “foul deck line,” an alternating red and white line that distinguished the landing area from the rest of the carrier. If he didn’t get out of the way, the landing signal officer would call, “Foul deck!” and wave off the next airplane. That airplane then had to go around and rejoin the conga line of other aircraft waiting to get aboard. A waste of gas and time, not to mention the hazard involved in going around.

A Yellow Shirt signaled Willie with a thumbs up into the downward palm of his other hand: raise the tailhook. As the tailhook came up, the cable dropped off and the Yellow Shirt ran a gloved hand along the wire to look for broken strands. Sometimes a cable snagged and refused to come loose from the tailhook; if that happened, another Yellow Shirt darted over to pound the cable loose with a sledgehammer-like tool. Cables can only take a certain number of traps before they have to be replaced, so personnel logged each trap, adding extra landings if the pilot caught the cable off-center or if the airplane weighed more than the cable had been set for. Fortunately, Willie’s first real trap didn’t have any problems.

After dropping the cable, Willie turned right, crossed the foul deck line, and taxied over to the relative sanctuary of the island, a gargantuan tower of “offices” in the middle of the carrier where staff and leadership watched over operations. Willie was lucky to fly the F-8: the little A-4 Skyhawks, sometimes called “Scooters,” didn’t have nosewheel steering to turn the aircraft on the ground. After an A-4 pilot dropped his cable, yet another crewman ran over and attached a tiller bar to the nosewheel to guide the Skyhawk out of the way.

As he passed the island, Willie signaled to the maintenance chief, who waited like an expectant father, that his F-8 was fine. Yet another Yellow Shirt signaled him to move to the front part of the carrier, away from the angled deck. Willie kept following the Yellow Shirt, who moved him closer and closer to the carrier’s edge. He knew that at some point the Yellow Shirt would signal him to make a U-turn so his engine pointed toward the ocean and the nose of the airplane pointed over the flight deck. Willie inched ahead and glanced down.

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