Carrier Air Wing 11, now ably led by CAPT Brett “Pops” Batchelder – I think I may have flown an instructional hop with him once when he was a lieutenant junior grade in flight school – was my last air wing as a squadron commanding officer, but it took me a while to recognize them: Of the seven permanently assigned squadrons, only HS-6 and VAQ-139 remained intact since 2001. There’s been a lot of churn.
The wing now consists of two Rhino squadrons, VFA-14 and VFA-41, with the former flying the single seat (baby!) FA-18E, and the latter the two-seat Foxtrot. The “legacy” Hornet squadrons were VFA-97 from Lemoore flying Lot XII Charlies, and VFA-86 from the east coast flying (I believe) Lot XV aircraft (at least they had the IFF interrogator blades on the nose).
The VAW-117 Wallbangers provided command and control in their E-2C+ Hawkeye 2000 aircraft – the eight bladed props are supposed to be quieter, more reliable and more efficient than the 4-blade versions I was used to, but taxiing around on deck they made a sound like an angry swarm of bees.
I never did like the notion of walking through a prop arc. Now it’s not even possible.
The Prowler squadron plans to upgrade to the EF-18G Growler over the next couple of years – what work had been performed by four crewmen will now be done by two. That’s going to be one busy ECMO.
HS-6, astute readers will remember, lost an aircraft and five souls just last week. The memorial service had been held a couple of days before we arrived on board. We walked past the closed door to their ready room on a routine basis, and I imagined I could still feel the pain of such a shocking loss emanating from behind that door. Imaginings aside, they flew their assigned missions of search and rescue and anti-submarine warfare day and night while we were aboard. Because that’s the way it’s done.
The wing looked good around the ship, tight formations in the overhead and good intervals between landing aircraft. Never saw a bolter, day or night, and only one foul deck wave-off with the arresting wire coming back. The ship was hosting Admiral Kenny “Pink” Floyd from Commander, Strike Force Training Pacific on board, and the ship and airwing team are by now engaged in a Combat Operations Efficiency evolution graded by CSFTP and intended to certify the team as “Surge Ready” – deployable with minimum risk to any region in the world in 30 days or less.
COE cert’s are all about the safe and expeditious generation of combat power – getting the jets on and off the deck as rapidly as possible in blue water conditions in order to get the carrier out of a predictable course (into the wind) and allowing her to use her prime advantage over hostile submarines; speed and maneuver. Based on what I could observe, they should do fine, but the characteristic SoCal “June Gloom” has precluded the wing from flying much in the way of Case I flight operations – all I saw was Case II and III. With the low overcast, night flight operations were darker than a hat full of a**holes, and I’d be lying to you if I told you I missed that part of the business very much. Still, CVW-11 was putting it down in the spaghetti each and every time, with only a single “taxi” one wire to make things interesting. Welcome aboard, Sparky!
VFA-97, commanded by CDR “Stoner” Preston – an old friend – was a good host to the bloggerrati, with young officers joining us at meals (except, you know: breakfast) and opening up their ready room for a briefing to the DVs. A young lieutenant “from Jersey” y-clept LOFAR was our briefer, and did a great job of it, although perhaps laying it on a little thick at times. If he’s really working 14 hour days routinely as a lieutenant while ashore, kid’s going to have a hell of a time as a department head. The XO I had not met before, but he said he knew of me “by reputation.”
I didn’t do it, I swear, and you can’t prove a thing. The deck was up. The sun was in my eyes. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood.
She said she was 18.
Funny thing about ships and squadrons, though. You can walk aboard a Nimitz-class carrier and feel right at home, even as a guest. The ship is so large, and her complement so many that even an old fart like me can blend into the woodwork. Maybe he’s a DV, maybe he’s a tech rep – who knows?
When you walk into the hermetically sealed culture of a single-seat FA-18 squadron ready room, behind all the welcoming smiles and generous extensions of time and effort, you know this: You are not one of them.
Being one of them means qualification, immersion, hard work, sacrifice and laughter. It also means being night current. It means feeling your heart skip when the director gives the blueshirts the signal to break you down, and take you to the cat. It means sitting at full power on the cat with the engines screaming behind you, a darkness like moist black velvet in front of you, and monstrous forces trembling in the balance. It means hoping for perfection from a thousand different things all chained together, from software loads to aircraft hydraulic systems, from catapult elongation and wind over the deck calculations. It means 19 year old ABE’s in the catapult equipment spaces trying their hardest to stay awake at the end of an 18 hour work day and attending to their duty. It means all of these things, and all of these people working together perfectly. If all those things line up, it means taking the jet back from the flight control computers at the end of a hand’s off cat shot into the inky darkness and climbing her away from an undifferentiated and patient sea.
And an hour and a half later, it’ll mean putting her back down in the spaghetti again. Which in the day time is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. But at night?
It’s harder than Chinese algebra.
Been there, done that.
Got the t-shirt(s).
How many of those t-shirts are worn out by a deployment’s worth of ship’s laundry?
Until you said it, Lex, I had completely forgotten about the “heartskip” when the director’s palm first hits the top of his forearm. Got it sitting on the deck of CVT-16, and every time after that. It’s showtime, baby.
Just looked them up, the CO of VAW-117 is a former RAG student of mine. If you are an “Anti” in the women on the front lines argument, you hope that Val doesn’t come into the conversation, because anything you can propose just doesn’t hold water. In short, she is one of the most capable Naval Officers I ever knowed. Any shortcoming she has can probably be traced back to the fact that I was one of her IPs! Good to see the Navy continues to pick the best and that the kids are doing well.
Nose
Nose/
I’ll rise to the bait and say that there are always exceptional people in every walk of life, but one of the reasons that guys like me counsel rule-by-exception, and lock everybody out (in this case women) rather than deal with each exception on an individual, case by case basis based on the merits, is that we fear the inability to deal with the slippery slope….and with good reason, imho, if one looks at the totality of the effect.
Maybe we should lock out Nose.
Like it or not, the presence of women in combat units is corrosive. It has long ceased to be a questionable assertion. PC is the only thing that keeps it going.
Nose:
Not only can Val kick your ass, so can her old man! Where do you think she learned to do it?
VR,
Comjam
So… ass-kicking is a desirable command qualification in the world of Naval Aviation …? explaination please. Best
The ability to kick a$$ is a desirable command qualification in any community. But you have to know when to employ it, as well as how to do it so that the impacted posterior doesn’t fester.
Other than the delays due to weather, my one regret from my DV was that we never got into the ready rooms nor were ever briefed by a pilot (all our explanation briefs were by the PA people, which was frustrating to me as they never delved any deeper than the fundamental basics I already knew). So jealous of you guys that you got to interact with the pilots!
“… what work had been performed by four crewmen will now be done by two. That’s going to be one busy ECMO.”
Back when men were men the EF-111 had double the speed of a Prowler, an analog nav system, the same ALQ-99 jammer , and one EWO to rule them all.
“… what work had been performed by four crewmen will now be done by two. That’s going to be one busy ECMO.”
Back when men were men the USAF EF-111 had triple the speed and range of a Prowler, an analog nav system, terrain following radar and autopilot, the same ALQ-99 jammer but with twice the power, and one EWO to rule them all (i.e. me).
I suppose with the advanced nav systems in the F-18 it’s barely possible that mere Navy ECMO might be up to the same task.
But if any of these Navy ECMOs have any questions, please have them meet me in the DM boneyard and I’ll give them some pointers.
Kidding aside, it’s really weird that USAF seems to think that support jamming is totally unnecessary, while the Navy is making a huge investment in support jamming. I wonder which service is really correct?
Jim Howard/
You and I both know the AF’s attitude is that of the fox who “didn’t want those grapes anyway.” They/we HAVE to lie to themselves/ourselves because the bean-counters said that the 111’s were to expensive to maintain and that if they were made to go away it would free up $ in the budget for more 22s etc. who don’t “need” ecm support jamming, yada, yada, blah blah. And we see how well all THAT worked out. No 111s for ECM OR Long-range penetration strike capability AND fewer 22s. It’s all a grand rationalization process brought about by the inability of the gutless AF leadership to make it’s case for these wpns systems and allowing themselves to be black-mailed by Gates & Co who in turn have allowed themselves to be black-mailed by the left (with Obama in the lead) in Congress who want all those dollars for the likes of ACORN.
You think not? Go over to “Lawyers, Guns and Money” and listen to the resident lefty mil.blog “expert” argue with me (under “Fighting Fossil” ) that, actually, dollars going to “community organizing” have a more lasting economic multiplier effect than the high salaries paid to aircraft construction workers, parts suppliers, etc, over the lifetime of the airframe; and that the aircraft itself represents a useless long-term utility once it leaves the assembly-line–as opposed to the “lasting” “dynamics” of “organizing.”
I swear to God, these lefty academics actually think this way and they infest all levels of Democratic Congressional staffs and at the Pentagon as well.
Which is why we have a shrinking 22 fleet and no 111s at all.
Happy trails….
A fossil? You, Virgil?
I am sure xairboss can, and will weigh in, but I think this is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison — that is to say, the Spark Vark did have an ALQ-99, but was not a like for like capability swap for the EA-6, ergo, not as many bodies required.
That is the best I remember an explaination over a third bowl of AD one night in the DS.
Scott/
Yeah, I think the 111 was far more automated in the soft-ware pkg allowing for 1-man ops., IIRC. Where are the ex-Raven drivers on this ?
“ALQ-99, but was not a like for like capability swap for the EA-6, ergo, not as many bodies required.”
That’s true, we always flew with 10 jammers, the Prowler usually only had four. The Raven was a far more powerful jammer than the Prowler.
The F-111 is also far more airplane than the Prowler, starting with the fact that our pointy end faced forward.
But OTH the Prowler had HARM and some ELINT and communications capability we did not.
I’ll be honest. Everytime I talked to a Prowler EWO, including many of the USAF EWOs who flew it, nobody could really tell me what there was to keep three busy doing what I did by myself.
Except for playing bridge.
I thought it was a joint mission?
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