A private and commercial pilot for more than 50 years, Barry Schiff enjoys planning aviation adventures.
The controller at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego cleared us for an extraordinary departure. We had been given a heading that took us over a 120-mile chunk of the Pacific Ocean and into Warning Area W-291 for a rendezvous with the USS Nimitz, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that costarred with Kirk Douglas in the 1980 motion picture Final Countdown.
We left ahead of schedule to ensure being early for our assigned overhead time of 1840 UTC. This would be 10 minutes after some catapult launches had been completed and 10 minutes before the retrieval of F/A-18 Hornets was to begin. If we missed this window, our chances for a carrier landing in a Cessna 172 would be dashed.
There probably aren't many pilots who haven't wondered what it would be like to land a general aviation airplane on an aircraft carrier, and my friend and copilot on this flight, Richard Somers, and I were not exceptions. After years of desire and months of planning, neither of us could believe that our dream was becoming a reality.
After leveling at our assigned altitude of 2,000 feet, we were cleared direct to the projected position of the Nimitz, a waypoint of geographical coordinates that had been calculated and provided to us before departure and then loaded into our handheld GPS receivers. (Although a carrier obviously is a ship, naval aviators call them boats.)
The landing area of the Nimitz is only 600 feet long but would be shortened somewhat by a safety net that would be raised near the end of the canted deck to ensure that we wouldn't roll off the end. We were not equipped with a tailhook and had to land and stop conventionally. If we couldn't stop in the short distance, we were to pull the mixture control and slow the prop before hitting the net.
I mentally reviewed what I had learned when practicing landing on the "carrier box" painted on the Navy's runway at San Clemente Island (southeast of Los Angeles). We needed to pass over the deck's threshold at 7 knots above stall in a slightly nose-high attitude. There was no room for flaring and floating, just a firm touchdown and heavy braking. The four arresting cables (normally elevated 4 inches above the deck) would create problems for a lightplane, so they were stripped away for our landing, a process that takes only a minute for sailors aboard the Nimitz to perform.
Although my landings at San Clemente were made with little wind, the speed of the Nimitz would be adjusted to assure us a 25-kt headwind and no more than a 7-kt crosswind. We had been warned about possible turbulence downwind of the carrier's superstructure.
I had wanted to make this flight in my Citabria, but it was agreed that we would be better off with tricycle gear. Turning crosswind off the canted deck and into tight quarters with a strong wind could pose problems for a taildragger. And the runway might not be long enough for either a wheel landing (because of the extra airspeed) or a flare into a full-stall landing. The Cessna 172 fit the bill nicely.
Navy aircraft locate the Nimitz by tracking toward the ship's TACAN station (tactical air navigation aid — essentially a military VOR). Lacking the necessary avionics, we received only the DME portion of the TACAN, which began indicating when we were 50 miles distant.
In an emergency, we could find the boat by turning until our DME-based groundspeed indication maximized, meaning that we were heading directly toward the Nimitz. But we didn't have to do that. We instead contacted the carrier's approach controllers and were radar identified. We were advised to turn 10 degrees left, maintain 2,000 feet, and enter a holding pattern over the ship. The Nimitz soon came into view, and the 1,092-foot-long vessel looked smaller than expected even as we got closer.
As we approached the carrier, the "air boss" cleared us for a visual approach. We couldn't help noticing the rescue helicopters hovering nearby.
We descended aft of the Nimitz to 800 feet and headed inbound and over the deck at 600 feet and maximum speed. We began the "break" when amidships by making a left turn onto the downwind leg. After passing abeam the "runway threshold," we began a gradually descending one-eighty and lined up on a three-quarter-mile final at an altitude of 250 feet.
"Cessna-Four-Two-Bravo, Skyhawk, has the ball [a VASI-like visual aid that precisely defines the narrow glidepath]."
"Roger, ball," came the reply. We had permission to proceed, but if the landing signal officer activated the bright red lights near the ball, a wave-off (missed approach) would have been mandatory, and we would be called a "bolter." The pitching deck of the boat became more noticeable.
I was awakened from my dream by the words, "Reveille! Reveille!" blaring intrusively from the speaker in our small stateroom aboard the Nimitz. Somers and I had landed (an arrested recovery) on the carrier, but as passengers aboard a Northrop Grumman C-2A Greyhound, a consolation prize that the Navy offered for turning down my numerous requests to land a lightplane on a carrier. The next day we were launched via catapult. During the intervening 24 hours, we were given an incredible tour of what the Navy calls "95,000 tons of diplomacy." We left confident that America is in good hands.
Visit the author's Web site ( www.barryschiff.com).
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