Post by Dave Homewood on Jun 21, 2019 15:31:23 GMT 12
The following article appeared in the New Zealand Herald on the 17th of February 1945. It's quite interesting.
AT SEA ABOARD AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER
By WILLIAM MARIEN, War Correspondent in the Central Pacific
It was just on dusk as the launch drew alongside the United States carrier in which I was to go to sea. Pitching at the bottom of the gangway, trying to handle baggage as though my feet suddenly had been transformed into eccentric cam wheels, I could not help but be amazed at the sheer bulk of the floating airport. The ship's sides towered up and over us, cutting off our sight of the sky. We came aboard on the hangar deck. There, with their wings folded like beetles ready to fly, were row after row of the famed Grumman Hellcats, Curtis dive-bombers and more Grumman torpedo-bombers.
Under way next morning the flight and hangar decks came alive. The fliers were to have a morning and afternoon of practice to rub off the rust which always comes after a spell at anchor. For, you see, flying carrier planes is an occupation which demands a keen edge from a pilot, and the slightest break in regular flying dulls that edge. Launching planes from a carrier is not the coldly mechanical thing to which progress has reduced a take-off from a land platform. It is something much more vital, which requires the co-operation first of all of the ship itself, which must head into the wind at sufficient speed to give the planes take-off speed. It requires precision work on the navigation bridge. It requires split-second timing between the hangar deck and the flight deck to ensure that each of the strategically placed elevators can deliver a plane to the flight deck and return for another at the precisely correct moment. It requires that the tractor drivers on both decks know immediately into what special deck space they must tow the planes. It requires skill and caution on the part of the plane handlers to avoid the spinning propellers. It requires daring, and the finest of judgment, from the man who gives the pilot the signal to roar his motor at full take-off power. And the pilot himself must be iron-conditioned, iron-nerved, so as to thrash a machine that in just a few hundred feet its speed moves from nothing to 90 miles an hour. There are lots of other requirements, I have no doubt.
Landing a plane is even more of an event. Given the signal to come in, the planes, fighters, torpedo-bombers, dive-bombers — and there may be a hundred of them in the air — circle the mother ship in low sweeps. Port side, on a small signal island built over the fantail, stands the flight receiving officer. He has two red signal paddles, unlimited nerve, a violently acrobatic temperament, and one of the least envied jobs on the ship. He dips the paddles, waves them, swings them. He has all the gyrations of an Indian club fanatic, but every move he makes conveys an urgent message to the pilot of the plane approaching him at 100 miles an hour. Should the pilot be a few feet off course in his landing the signal officer must not hesitate in becoming a trapeze artist and leaping overboard into a net slung for just that purpose.
The pilot, before he commences his run toward the flight deck, has ejected his landing hook, lowered his undercarriage, crossed his fingers, and put his faith in the signal officer. Immediately he sees the two red paddles drop so does he, and if all goes well, as it does with monotonous regularity, he lands, and with a jolt comes to a dead stop from 100 miles an hour in a few yards.
Once on deck the pilot is taken over by the plane handlers. Dressed in vivid yellow shirts, yellow goggles wrapped round a yellow skull-fitting helmet, their arm movements are more expressive by far than Pavlova's were, or an Auckland policeman's on a busy intersection before petrol and rubber were rationed. In fact, in the urgency of their hand and body signals to the taxi-ing pilot, who is blind without them, in their bizarre, ultra-visible dress, in their backward and sideways leaps, the line of plane handlers, whose job is to direct the incoming planes to the elevators, are vividly reminiscent of a futuristic Fokine ballet.
But even in practice there is danger. I was on the navigation bridge watching the planes take off. The powerful engines, opened to full revolutions, drove the propellers with such fury that they whipped the moisture from the humid air, vapourised it to a momentary, dancing halo. Immediately the brake were released the plane leapt forward, and as the pilot passed the island bridge there would be a smile and a thumbs up. One such plane was a torpedo bomber, which carries two crew men besides the pilot. It made a good takeoff and I turned to watch other planes which were still taking off. A few minutes later a cry went up. I looked and saw the plane in a spin. It hit the water in a cloud of spray, steam and smoke. A few minutes later the look-out reported three men getting out of the plane. A destroyer raced up and took them aboard. The clear speech short range inter-ship radio spoke up mechanically. "Code Name (1) to Code Name (2), We have your torpedo bomber crew. When do you want them? Over."
The men were brought alongside the carrier about dusk and taken aboard in a breeches buoy. For them the carrier paid out a ransom of 25 gallons of ice cream.
The captain pays destroyers 25 gallons of ice cream for every rescue they make of fliers from his ship. The offer stands unconditionally, but he offers only 10 gallons for Marines. Apparently at this exchange rate should any Army personnel get aboard a go overboard and be picked up by a destroyer, they would stand a good chance of being thrown back.
AT SEA ABOARD AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER
By WILLIAM MARIEN, War Correspondent in the Central Pacific
It was just on dusk as the launch drew alongside the United States carrier in which I was to go to sea. Pitching at the bottom of the gangway, trying to handle baggage as though my feet suddenly had been transformed into eccentric cam wheels, I could not help but be amazed at the sheer bulk of the floating airport. The ship's sides towered up and over us, cutting off our sight of the sky. We came aboard on the hangar deck. There, with their wings folded like beetles ready to fly, were row after row of the famed Grumman Hellcats, Curtis dive-bombers and more Grumman torpedo-bombers.
Under way next morning the flight and hangar decks came alive. The fliers were to have a morning and afternoon of practice to rub off the rust which always comes after a spell at anchor. For, you see, flying carrier planes is an occupation which demands a keen edge from a pilot, and the slightest break in regular flying dulls that edge. Launching planes from a carrier is not the coldly mechanical thing to which progress has reduced a take-off from a land platform. It is something much more vital, which requires the co-operation first of all of the ship itself, which must head into the wind at sufficient speed to give the planes take-off speed. It requires precision work on the navigation bridge. It requires split-second timing between the hangar deck and the flight deck to ensure that each of the strategically placed elevators can deliver a plane to the flight deck and return for another at the precisely correct moment. It requires that the tractor drivers on both decks know immediately into what special deck space they must tow the planes. It requires skill and caution on the part of the plane handlers to avoid the spinning propellers. It requires daring, and the finest of judgment, from the man who gives the pilot the signal to roar his motor at full take-off power. And the pilot himself must be iron-conditioned, iron-nerved, so as to thrash a machine that in just a few hundred feet its speed moves from nothing to 90 miles an hour. There are lots of other requirements, I have no doubt.
Landing a plane is even more of an event. Given the signal to come in, the planes, fighters, torpedo-bombers, dive-bombers — and there may be a hundred of them in the air — circle the mother ship in low sweeps. Port side, on a small signal island built over the fantail, stands the flight receiving officer. He has two red signal paddles, unlimited nerve, a violently acrobatic temperament, and one of the least envied jobs on the ship. He dips the paddles, waves them, swings them. He has all the gyrations of an Indian club fanatic, but every move he makes conveys an urgent message to the pilot of the plane approaching him at 100 miles an hour. Should the pilot be a few feet off course in his landing the signal officer must not hesitate in becoming a trapeze artist and leaping overboard into a net slung for just that purpose.
The pilot, before he commences his run toward the flight deck, has ejected his landing hook, lowered his undercarriage, crossed his fingers, and put his faith in the signal officer. Immediately he sees the two red paddles drop so does he, and if all goes well, as it does with monotonous regularity, he lands, and with a jolt comes to a dead stop from 100 miles an hour in a few yards.
Once on deck the pilot is taken over by the plane handlers. Dressed in vivid yellow shirts, yellow goggles wrapped round a yellow skull-fitting helmet, their arm movements are more expressive by far than Pavlova's were, or an Auckland policeman's on a busy intersection before petrol and rubber were rationed. In fact, in the urgency of their hand and body signals to the taxi-ing pilot, who is blind without them, in their bizarre, ultra-visible dress, in their backward and sideways leaps, the line of plane handlers, whose job is to direct the incoming planes to the elevators, are vividly reminiscent of a futuristic Fokine ballet.
But even in practice there is danger. I was on the navigation bridge watching the planes take off. The powerful engines, opened to full revolutions, drove the propellers with such fury that they whipped the moisture from the humid air, vapourised it to a momentary, dancing halo. Immediately the brake were released the plane leapt forward, and as the pilot passed the island bridge there would be a smile and a thumbs up. One such plane was a torpedo bomber, which carries two crew men besides the pilot. It made a good takeoff and I turned to watch other planes which were still taking off. A few minutes later a cry went up. I looked and saw the plane in a spin. It hit the water in a cloud of spray, steam and smoke. A few minutes later the look-out reported three men getting out of the plane. A destroyer raced up and took them aboard. The clear speech short range inter-ship radio spoke up mechanically. "Code Name (1) to Code Name (2), We have your torpedo bomber crew. When do you want them? Over."
The men were brought alongside the carrier about dusk and taken aboard in a breeches buoy. For them the carrier paid out a ransom of 25 gallons of ice cream.
The captain pays destroyers 25 gallons of ice cream for every rescue they make of fliers from his ship. The offer stands unconditionally, but he offers only 10 gallons for Marines. Apparently at this exchange rate should any Army personnel get aboard a go overboard and be picked up by a destroyer, they would stand a good chance of being thrown back.
