On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 13:21:48 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:
On 2/13/2015 12:58 PM, Abit Loco wrote:
On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 12:30:35 -0500, Wayne.B wrote:
On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 11:02:25 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:
On 2/13/2015 10:53 AM, Wayne.B wrote:
On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 08:48:05 -0500, Abit Loco
wrote:
Now I see why these folks are all chewing gum so hard.
A couple of great videos.
Part One http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=4gGMI8d3vLs
Part Two http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=S0yj70QbBzg
My butt was puckering just watching the videos.
===
Good vids John, thanks for posting.
That has to be one of the scariest jobs in the world. The son of one
of our neighbors was doing it for a while but recently retired. He
was top gun in his training group about the time we moved to Florida
and his parents were justifiably proud.
Interesting when one of the pilots commented that landing on a pitching
deck was more dangerous than flying combat missions.
I'll bet the CO of that carrier was kicking himself for allowing "training".
===
Dangerous as it is they probably feel a need to practice and train for
adverse conditions. After all, you don't get a chance to pick ideal
weather for combat operations. There must be a set of guidelines for
when they can fly
He cut the training short, from what I understood, so the Captain must have realized
he was skating on thin ice.
I think so also. Even when it was called off they had a hell of a time
recovering all the planes and pilots. I'll bet they didn't plan on it
being night ops. Risky things are done at times during warfare but the
risks here were not necessary. How often are you sailing in seas like that?
===
It's easy to understand how a situation like that develops however.
The captain no doubt had orders to go out and conduct practice
excercises. Conditions were probably a bit better when they started
and within training guidelines. No captain wants to abort a mission
that's been ordered from above unless there is a very clear cut reason
to do so. You get ahead in the military by getting things done and
overcoming adversity.
Of course once you send planes up, you've got to get them down and
that's where things started to get hairy. There were repeated "go
arounds" and planes had to be refueled in mid-air. That all takes
extra time and conditions probably deteriorated along the way making
things even worse.