My FLIGHT Series: Story #3 – I Get To FLY A Navy Jet…Or Not!

In a previous story, I recounted how I became back-seat qualified to fly in an S-3 Viking aircraft.  I have a few stories about some of the things that happened while flying.  This is one of those stories.  It happened while we were deployed to the Mediterranean Sea, and it was an exciting flight in an S-3 Viking..

The Operations Department of the squadron would post the next day’s flight schedule by late afternoon so that everyone scheduled would know who they were flying with and when.  It also gave Maintenance Control the priorities for maintenance that night.  While on deployment I did not fly often, but I did manage to get about two flights per month.

I Get To Fly With The Skipper

One day I saw myself and another maintenance guy, who was also back seat qualed, on the schedule to fly with the Skipper as pilot.  It was fairly rare to have two enlisted guys in the back seats, but we were not going on an assigned mission for this flight.  Basically this was a flight to get two maintainers flight pay for the month and we were just going to bore holes through the air with no real tasking on this flight. 

During our flight brief the Skipper said that during the flight us back-seaters would swap with the co-pilot during the flight and he would let us each fly the jet for a while.  Believe me we were excitedly looking forward to that!  It was a dream come true for me to actually FLY a Navy jet!!

After the brief, we geared up and headed up to the flight deck to man the bird.  Everything was going well and all the startup procedures went as expected.  Soon we were taxiing across the deck.  We were going to launch off catapult number three.  We taxied into position and I could feel the catapult engage and knew we were seconds from launching.  Both engines were at full power and all that was required was for the catapult crew to hit the FIRE button and sling us off the carrier.

Don’t Trust Your “Feeling”

One of the things I had learned while flying was that you cannot trust your brain and sense of balance.  I knew a lot of experienced aviators who often got sick during flights because they sat in the rear of the aircraft. When you have no frame of reference as to what the aircraft is doing in relation to what you are seeing, you can become disoriented.  What I mean is, the back seats of the aircraft were for operating and monitoring equipment so you had multiple displays (TV’s) to watch.  You did not have any flight instruments or windows to speak of, so your eyes were always telling you that you were sitting still, but your inner ear is telling you that you are moving, so your brain gets confused and you get sick.  Pilots do not get sick because they are seeing what their inner ear is telling them (in most cases)

I never became sick on any flight, although I came close one time, but that’s a different story.  I had a trick to keep me from getting too disoriented.  From my back seat, I could see the co-pilots instruments, but most importantly, I could see the Horizontal Situation Indicator.  This instrument tells you what the aircraft is doing in relation to the horizon.  If I started to feel queezy, I would turn the airflow (a little vent just like on a commercial airliner that blows air on you) on full blast towards my face then sit back in the seat and only look at the HSI.  That way my eyes and inner ear would “feel” the same things.

DANGER!!!

During the launch, I would also watch the co-pilot’s instrument panel to get an idea of how everything was working. If there are any problems, there would be lights flashing. Some yellow for a caution, some red for a warning. Right after we shot off the ship, I saw lots of RED warning lights and a big flashing yellow MASTER CAUTION light come on in the cockpit.  I’m thinking, this is not a good thing and was ready to eject if it came to that.  After a few seconds the Skipper told us we lost a generator on one of the engines.  We had to declare an emergency and then come back to land on the ship.  Our entire flight was about 15 minutes long.  I was happy to get back safely on the ship but very disappointed that we did not get to complete the flight.  It was an exciting flight in an S-3 Viking, but not in the way I had hoped!