One of the really fun elements of my job is briefing distinguished visitors about the Navy, naval aviation and our carrier force in preparation for their one day visit to one of our carriers. There’s a shine in their eyes as I tell them that the next 24-hours may well be one of the more fascinating and exciting of their lives. They usually laugh with me when I tell them that the 24-hour clock doesn’t start ticking until I stop talking.
But it’s hard to describe what they’re going to see, because all of us that have done it have become so accustomed to it. One of the magical things for us is to see it again through their eyes. PJ O’Rourke is a professional writer and accomplished humorist – as well as also being one of the top six or seven people I’d want on my side for a three-day bender in Vegas. As occasional reader Craig points out in comments, O’Rourke recently got a DV opportunity his own self:
Landing on an aircraft carrier was the most fun I’d ever had with my trousers on. And the 24 hours that I spent aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt–the “Big Stick”–were an equally unalloyed pleasure. I love big, moving machinery. And machinery doesn’t get any bigger, or more moving, than a U.S.-flagged nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that’s longer than the Empire State Building is tall and possesses four acres of flight deck. This four acres, if it were a nation, would have the fifth or sixth largest airforce in the world–86 fixed wing aircraft plus helicopters.
That’s right, dad – four and one-half acres of sovereign territory that can go anywhere it wants to that has 40 feet of wet and is at least 12 miles offshore. Ninety-five thousand tons of diplomacy.
Being a political columnist, O’Rourke dabbles a newly carrier-experienced toe into the electoral waters, and I’ll leave it to you, gentle reader, to discern with what effect. In doing so however, he does come upon a scintillating insight:
Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer’s or a half gallon of Dewar’s.
Yep. That’s about right. Full gallon for the BNs, ECMOs, WSOs and RIOs. And whatever it is those moles in the E-2 trunk or S-3 tube call themselves. After all, if it takes a great deal of skill to land a fast moving aircraft on a heaving, pitching carrier deck – at night – think how much courage it takes to trust that beetle-browed, booger eating, knuckle dragger in the front/left seat to do it right.
Having done so, imagine what further courage is required to taxi around that unlit deck – at night – with your nose wheel going right up against the scupper trusting to the wisdom, judgment and experience of a 20-year old yellow shirt (some of whose erstwhile peers are flipping burgers at McDonalds) standing on the flight deck with legs trembling from exhaustion at the end of an 18-hour work day, paid little better than slave wages and who will, after having put the flight deck to bed some two hours hence, shuffle off to a berthing space that would not meet the hospitality standards of a federal prison.
So, yeah: Full gallon. First round’s on me.
(Link fixed to O’Rourke’s piece)
DV warfare is one of the most fun jobs working aircraft carrier public affairs. Some of them can be douches, but the overwhelming majority come out to the ship and maintain the ‘WOW’ eyes the entire time and then are absolutely and utterly sad that they have to leave. I get to go back to carrier Navy next year and do that again. Fun times.
I never got tired of watching yellow shirts – on the flight deck, or in the hangar bay – plying their trade. Those guys are awesome.
DV, Collateral duties; recalling those two years as VAQ 135 j.o. Legal Officer/PAO, right seater full time, stateroom as an office, whole ship as a playground.
The time I got 1st dibs on Miss World (’76) and Miss Universe (’76) at the Cubi O’Club. USO World Tour. Led them on a two bit tour of RangerBoat. CO and XO were impressed their Black Raven had the sense to share those beauties with the rest of the WardRoom. Wide eyed they were after I followed them up ladders and over knee knockers, all the time restocking my treasured eye candy snaps in time. That all happened 31+ years ago.
Which goes to show, two weeks ago my Brother told me he ran the slideshow to his Church group in Bellingham from Tiger Cruise, the unforgettable 10 days he spent with the World Famous Black Ravens, launches, recoveries, day and nightime, all the mysteries of a short time at Sea. If my dear Brother has such fine memories, it makes me wonder what those two fine Beauties from Down Under are thinking about when they recall their time onboard the USS Ranger. Thank you Lex for jarring those gray boat recollections. v/r jug
“Full gallon for the BNs, ECMOs, WSOs and RIOs. And whatever it is those moles in the E-2 trunk or S-3 tube call themselves.”
Amen to that. In a career that spanned 38 years of pushing throttles for a living, nothing I ever did was as terrifying as riding in the back of a C-1 COD going from Midway to Cubi Point . Except for…………..the return trip.
A full gallon indeed!
Is it possible to provide a link to the original PJ O’Rourke article? I’d love to read it.
You know, in 20+ years of E-2 flying, there never was (to my knowledge) a common name for the CIC compartment of the aircraft. It was not a trunk-that’s for sure!
But you do need that gallon-especially if you had to fly with Nose!
Kristen,
After a bit of reading I was lured to this:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/006dgrlw.asp
which may not be helpful to you since I understand that posting links requires expert user quals that are beyond me.
Nevertheless, if you go to the weekly standard you will find the PJ O’Rourke article.
Curtis,
Many thanks!
I don’t care if that ashtray cost $600 and the Skipper banned smoking in the A/C. Everyone quietly agreed that it’d be best if “Motors” had a cig before the break.
E2-C CIC, front to back:
RIO (or IFT in the day), CICO, ACO
On night approach to the boat:
A weather eye on altimeter and timer set on fuel dump call. Keep left hand resting on the fuel dump tube over the MDU to verify dump off (from cold back to warm). After the mishap on (off) the Midway, ACO pop and stow the aft overhead escape hatch.
Oh, and forget conceiving a son till at least 30 days out of the A/C. No pretty gold canopy between the rotary coupler or frisbee for moles.
AT1 Dwight
EAWS, NAC, IFT
I’ll take the whole gallon but parse it into thirds for the pilot and controlling LSO…
The remaining third I’ll add to the “medicinal” stash in my stateroom…
Love the comments, guys! They almost make up for the agony of reading a post about DVs–Such posts always seem to leave me with this funny green tinge… Know any cure for it, Lex?
It never really dawned on me how cool a job I had until my cousin spent 3 grand for a short notice flight to Hawaii for a 4 day tiger cruise on the Stennis coming home on it’s first cruise. To me it was “normal”. He would have traded his job.
603,
I was in the right seat with one of our pilots coming back to NORVA from a hop on the hummer track. (Squadron was short pilots that day for some reason so they let us go ride co-pilot). Only guy I ever knew who could be lighting up at the intial, smoke through the break, and stub it out as the aircraft crossed the landing threshold.
No smoking 12 hours before a flight and no drinking within 50 feet of the aircraft-old Seabat motto.
To me it was “normal”. He would have traded his job.
Claudio, I nearly traded my job for a short-notice DV last fall… unfortunately, I was destined to have neither. The boss played with me on approving my leave and I lost the DV slot. The next workday after I would’ve been on the DV (but wasn’t), I no longer had a job. Kind of like your friend but all wrong, haha!
I don’t regret having played it straight and gone to work instead of the DV, but the irony was a bit too much.
P.J. O’Rourke is one of my favorite authors, and I admit I have a complete collection of his works in book form, though a few of his Rolling Stone columns still escape me. A conservative with a sense of humor, self-depreciating humor most of the time, is refreshing. Anybody who can coin the phrase “bed-wetting vegetarian bicyclists who bother whales on weekends” is worth purchasing.
I’d thought I was somewhat alone in this idolatry until I was in college, whereupon during an after-class discussion with my Econ 101 prof he mentioned that Eat The Rich was probably the best economics text available but he couldn’t get it past the department head as required reading.
Once I read it, I understood why and even now pass out copies to friends who are unclear on why markets work.
I’ve further discovered that P.J. is a regular guest on the NPR quiz show “Wait wait, don’t tell me” aired out of Chicago. Definately worth spending the time to listen to, even if you’re not normally an NPR listener.
– Max
Hi Lex. Just got my last would be night trap and am headed off to be the CO of VFA 125. I’m not sad to be putting the CVN behind me, at least for a while, but it’s a ridiculous specatacle when you can force yourself to look at it with virgin eyes. The powers that be were kind enough to grant me a waiver for my last trap; brought it at 1 nm aft and 565 knots. My wingman may never forgive me, but man I had fun. I hope you are well. See you about the fleet my friend.
Skippy,
SeaBat? 111?
Of course there was always Ralph Zia’s notorious ceegars to perfume the back end. And “moles” usually worked as a generic reference…
- SJS
127!
111 made a lame attempt to steal the name when the ever so brief life of CVW-10 was going on. That’s what happens when you try horn in on a good thing.
(And yes, yes, I know all the history that says it was theirs to being with….).
111? Puh-leese! Ghey left coast wannabes!
DV warfare was often fought on the LSO platform. I met 2 heads of state, 20+ new flag officers (capstone group), one actor (lame) one actress I had never heard of (hot), one CENTCOM commander, a couple of pro athletes (including Payne Stewart who was completely cool), and Chuck Barris, famous Gong Show host and CIA wet work specialist.
I was on Good Morning America, Inside the PGA Tour, in the background for a lame movie, and on some PBS show. (Never saw the PBS show – but if it was on PBS AND had Moi in it, you know it had to be riveting.
Once I had a group from some Mass or NH congressman’s office. We called them the “Poetry club” VF-102 came raging into the break in an impressively low and fast diamond (actually, at the time, it was just impressive that VF-102 could get 4 jets up at the same time – but they got better) and all the poets cared about was the porpoises flitting about the wake. Sheesh.
Yeah, that’s why I asked. ANYONE could be in 127.
[...] Oh, and Lex – per your query: [...]
Max, do you have his dynamite story?
The one from his hippy period, in which they played with dynamite after having drunk ‘way too much beer and smoked ‘way too much hashish?
You know, the one in which the math prof, having drunk ‘way too much beer and smoked ‘way too much hashish, tried to decide which of the three sticks of dynamite taped together was more central to the other two, so that he could insert the detonator into it? (for symmetry and efficiency)
603,
Actually no-it took cash and a strong liver to be in the 127 wardroom.
“Bunch of refugees from a CAAC ward.”
Entertaining DVs in the tower could be a pain in the backside but having First Lady Nancy Reagan call you “Boss” was kinda nice
Funniest O’Rourke piece I ever read was in Harper’s mag., about a side-splitting regaling of a trip down the Volga in late 70′s with bunch of aging lefty hippies who thought the SU was paradise-on-earth, but brought their own toilet paper, being forewarned of “shortages” in this workers “paradise.” LOL descriptions of reality of CCCP observed v ideological “blinders” of lefty crowd–a bunch so obtusely disgusting that O’Rourk ends spending all his time drinking with the only sane people on board with any sense of humor at all–the Russian crew. A must read!
virgil,
Concur. That piece was anthologized in “Holidays in Hell,” I believe. Which is also a must read. Most of the articles in it are twenty or more years old, so a little dated, but still brilliant. Sort of a compendium of bad places to vacation- like Lebanon, South Africa and Epcot center.
I’m with FbL – though I’m not just a tinge of green – I’m full-blown kelly green ovah heeya.
I read the article and it was great. But as to “Wow” factor, back when NAS Alameda was still open, I and USS DRUM (SSN-677) stopped there during the Fleet Week Festivities in 1991, I believe. We were parked behind USS Texas, which, at the time was a CGN, and across the pier from a carrier, the name of which escapes me right now. But the WOW we most appreciated was from some Blue Angels ground support guys who happend to see our itty-bitty sail poking above the pier, and went and found our submarine tied up next to these hulking grey shapes. We took them through all the spaces save for engineering and they were very impressed and appreciateive of our impromtu tour belowdecks. Top-Gun meets Bottom-Gun as it were. Got autographed pictures and stuff. It was great. Then hordes of people, completing their tour on the carrier, found their way to our submarine. Good lord. All of a sudden, it seemed like USS Drum became part of the tour. Duty section became tour guides as long as people could navigate the access ladders and narrow passageways. It was a headache to sort out but it was rewarding in the end.