Nimitz Class Read Online Free PDF Page B

away.
    Suddenly there was pandemonium, as the deck crews raced out to haul the Hawkeye into its parking place. Jim Adams shouted into the phone to change the settings on the hydraulics, the LSO’s were getting into position, one of them talking to the first Tomcat pilot, very carefully: “Okay one-zero-six, come on in—winds gusting at thirty-five, check your approach line, looks fine from here…flaps down…hook down…gotcha…you’re all set.”
    Lieutenant William R. Howell was back in the game, with a new RIO, and a big plaster over his eyebrow. His pal Jim Adams was double-checking everything, as always. One by one he shouted his commands: “ Groove…Short…Ramp!” —until Billy-Ray was down, to universal shouts of “Good job!” “Let’s go, Billy-Ray!” It was always a little tense on the first landing for a crashed aviator. Up in the control tower, Freddie Larsen was permitted to stand and watch, and if his arm had not hurt so badly he too would have clapped when Billy-Ray hit the deck safely. “That’s my guy,” he yelled without thinking. “Okay, Billy-Ray!” Even the Thomas Jefferson’s commanding officer, Captain Rheinegen, himself a former aviator like all carrier commanders, allowed himself a cautious grin.
    And now, with a night exercise coming up, there was a change of deck crew. The launch men were moving into position, and aircraft were moving up from the hangars below on the huge elevators. All around, there were young officers checking over the fighter bombers, pilots climbing aboard, another group of engines screaming; uniformed men, many on their first tours of duty, were on their stations. The first of the Hornets was ready for takeoff. The red light on the island signaled “Four minutes to launch.”
    Two minutes later the light blinked to amber. A crewman, crouching next to the fighter’s nose wheels, signaled the aircraft forward, and locked on the catapult wire.
    The light turned green. Lieutenant Skip Martin, the “shooter,” pointed his right hand at the pilot, raised his left hand, and extended two fingers…“Go to full power.” Then palm out…“Hit the afterburners…” The pilot saluted formally and leaned forward, tensing for the impact of the catapult shot.
    The shooter, his eyes glued on the cockpit, saluted, bending his knees and touching two fingers of his left hand onto the deck. Skip Martin gestured: “Forward.” A crewman, kneeling in the catwalk narrowly to the left of the big fighter jet, hit the button on catapult three, and ducked as the outrageous hydraulic mechanism hurled the Hornet on its way, screaming down the deck, its engines roaring flat out, leaving an atomic blast of air in its wake. Everyone watched, even veterans almost holding their breath, as the aircraft rocketed off the carrier and out over the water, climbing away to port. “Tower to Hornet one-six-zero, nice job there…course 054, speed 400, go to 8,000.”
    “Hornet one-six-zero, roger that.”
281835APR02. 35N, 21E.
Course 270. Speed 5.
    “Ben, we got rattle. Up for’ard.”
    “Damn! We’ll have to stop, right away, fix it. We can’t afford to travel one more mile with that.”
    “No problem. I will fix. Soon as it’s dark. Very quiet here anyway.”
290523APR02.
    “At least the rattle’s gone. But I really am very sad about your man. It sounds heartless. I don’t mean it to be so. But I just hope they never find his body.”
    “No time look anymore. Not blame anyone. Just freak wave. I seen it before. Now we say good Catholic prayer for him.”
    “I should like to join you in that.”
041900MAY02. 7S, 72E.
Course 270. Speed 10.
    Inside the mess room of the Thomas Jefferson , still off Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, big Jim Adams was giving a party in one of the ward rooms. Four hours earlier he had received a message that his wife Carole had given birth to their first son—a nine-pound boy, whose name would be Carl Theodore Adams. This, Jim explained, had been