Revisiting the Past: Carrier Landings

Way back on June 28, 1968, as a student naval aviator, I made my first carrier landings in an old North American T-28C Trojan. 

T-28C Trojan

T-28C Carrier Landing

This morning I collected a few videos (below) which brought back a lot of memories. Flying the T-28 with its big radial engine was like flying an old WW2 fighter. The engine, a Wright R-1820, generated 1,425 hp and gave the T-28C plenty of power. 

Anyway, I thought some of you might like to see what it was like to land on a carrier in those days. It's really not much different today, even in high-performance jets. The carrier landing pattern is pretty much the same, and although the speeds are higher, the modern aircraft have many helpful systems that we certainly lacked. 

Believe me, it was very exciting for the group of us who "carrier qualified" that day. You really didn't feel like a naval aviator until you had made those first carrier landings.

The first video, which two friends pointed out to me a few days ago, is obviously recent and shows a typical F-18 carrier approach pattern and landing. Other than the higher speed and slightly longer final approach, it really isn't much different from the pattern we flew in those old T-28s. After landing the F-18 is then taxied out of the landing/take-off area, maybe to await a catapult launch or simply to shut down. The below diagram shows you the pattern flown by the F-18 in the video:

The second video is a vintage Navy training film of the kind I sat through many times. Don't you just love the opening music! It's a bit longer -- 12+ minutes -- but gives a pretty good picture of what it was like on that day we first landed on an aircraft carrier. It always looked so much easier in the film than it actually was. Fortunately, we had been doing field carrier landing practices (FCLPs) for many weeks before we went out to "hit the boat."  You also get to see the take-off. When you took off from a carrier in the T-28 you didn't catapult off, but performed what was called a deck launch or run -- just flying off by adding full power with, you hoped, lots of wind over the deck.

The third video, made in the 1970s, is a clever and fairly realistic animation and is also a bit longer -- 13+ minutes. It shows a single T-28C aircraft flying out to the carrier from Saufley Field in Pensacola. It makes a single landing and then a non-catapult takeoff.

Deja Vu All Over Again

This morning an old Navy friend (and all my Navy friends are old) directed me to a video on YouTube that brought back a lot of memories of my first carrier landings on June 28, 1968. It's hard to believe this took place almost 50 years ago, but that's one thing about time: it doesn't stand still.

Anyway, back then I was in the midst of my U.S. Navy flight training in Pensacola, Florida. I don't think I exaggerate when I say that all naval aviators consider the day of their first carrier landings among the most memorable of their lives. What a thrill! It was the primary skill that separated all of us naval aviators from the rest of the aviation community.

In those days even flight students who were slated to become helicopter pilots -- and that included me -- first learned to fly fixed-wing aircraft and had to qualify by completing a series of arrested landings on an aircraft carrier. For most flight students that carrier was the USS Lexington (CVT-16), a Pensacola-based ship that functioned as the training command's carrier. But in late June 1968, when I was scheduled for carrier qualification, Lexington was having some work done and she was temporarily replaced by the USS Randolph (CV-15). And so, my landings were on Randolph.

My aircraft for carrier qualification was the T-28C, an absolutely wonderful airplane. Among trainers flown in our armed forces at the time it was about as close to a World War II fighter as you could get. No other trainer could compare. In fact, during the Vietnam conflict the South Vietnamese Air Force (and the CIA) flew the T-28 in combat. I wouldn't be surprised if some countries still fly it in their air forces.

North American T-28C Trojan

The T-28 (the  B and C models we flew in training) was powered by a Wright Cyclone R-1820, a huge radial, 9-cylinder engine, that generated (if I remember correctly) 1,425 horsepower. It was quite a machine. When you strapped into the T-28 and cranked up that engine, you knew you were flying something special. It's cruising speed was about 220 knots and, as I recall, it's maximum speed was almost 300 knots. Despite the noise and the oil leaks and all of its odd little idiosyncrasies, it was a joy to fly.

R-1820 Engine in a T-28 (engine cowl removed)

The first video included below is a Navy training film designed to demonstrate the procedures used for landing a T-28C on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The voice of the narrator is one of the most familiar to anyone who served in the Navy. He must have narrated 1,000 films. 

I have a vague recollection of watching this particular film (or another version) way back when. But no video could replace the hours in the airplane practicing carrier landings at Barin Field in Foley, Alabama. By this time in our training we were already fairly competent T-28 pilots, so the carrier qualification training took only a couple of weeks. But it was a demanding two weeks and included almost 100 field carrier landings or FCLs designed to simulate landing on the carrier. For those of you interested in how naval aviators landed on carriers in the good ol' T-28, here's the training film:

On that very hot June day in 1968 when our flight took off, we joined up in formation and headed South to rendezvous with USS Randolph in the Gulf of Mexico. Then, one after another, we each completed touch-and-go landings, followed by six arrested landings. I've embedded another video (below) that depicts the first carrier landings of a flight of budding naval aviators around that time. It's an amateur video, taken with an 8mm movie camera, and has no audio. The quality is poor, but it depicts touch-and-goes, wave-offs, bolters (that's when you miss the arresting wire), and arrested landings. 

I'll never forget the date (June 28) because that was also my mom's birthday, and that evening I called her to wish her a happy birthday and tell her my exciting news.

That day was eclipsed by only a few others, the foremost being our wedding day four months later on November 2. Then, just two weeks later, on November 15, 1968, I received my Navy wings of gold which were pinned on by my new bride, Dear Diane. This was followed by the days each of our four children were born in 1971, 1972, 1974 and 1977. Twenty years later, on May 24, 1997, I was ordained a permanent deacon and with Diane at my side began this new life journey. Since then God has blessed us with nine wonderful grandchildren; and so the important days continue to add up.

This tremendous wealth of wonderful memories is what makes getting old so downright enjoyable. It's the one thing we have that the young don't.