One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

by Smith, Douglas V.

  Man-Machine Interface

  Cockpit design—the arrangement of gauges and controls—has always been an issue of intense interest to designers and aircrew. Prior to the introduction of jet fighters, the cockpits of Navy aircraft were relatively simple, consisting of sufficient gauges to exert basic control, and in some cases to “fly blind” in clouds and bad weather. Navigation was generally via a compass and a map. As jets were introduced, so were more advanced electronics systems such as radar, weapons control, and eventually electronic navigation. The operation of these systems required quite a bit of attention and effort by the pilot; so much so that pilot distraction caused more than a few accidents. This was exacerbated by the introduction of surface-to-air missiles, which forced attack aircraft to adopt the tactic of low-level approach to their target. Flying a jet at high speed, close to the ground required intense concentration and a highly disciplined approach to using the various electronic systems. If the pilot spent just a little too much time focused inside the cockpit trying to update his navigation system or change channels on his radio, he could be annihilated in a cloud of fire and dirt as his airplane hit the ground at high speed. This was the fate of perhaps dozens or scores of aircrew over the years as they struggled to carry out their missions using cockpit systems that required lots of attention. One fix for this problem was to insert another crewmember (Radar Intercept Officer, Bombardier-Navigator, etc.) whose whole job was to manage aircraft systems. While the “crew concept” did indeed improve the operational effectiveness of aircraft with complex systems, it did not eliminate the problem of aircrew distraction altogether.

  Perhaps the most demanding environment was the low level nuclear mission, which had to be carried out day or night and in almost any kind of weather. While early jets simply could not operate at low level at night or in bad weather, the introduction of both the A-6 Intruder and the A-7 Corsair was supposed to open up this regime to naval aviation. Crews were forced to train in these conditions, and defects in man-machine interfaces soon produced a number of crashes and fatalities, especially in mountainous terrain, where the planes’ radars were supposed to alert the pilot of impending obstacles. The A-6 system proved reasonably effective at keeping the plane from hitting mountains, but less so at avoiding power lines. The A-7 system was judged unsuitable after several fatal crashes in which the pilot under instruction was head down under a view-blocking canopy and chased—for safety—by an instructor in another aircraft. Apparently the terrain following radar did not generate a climb signal in time and the instructor pilot’s warning came just a little too late.

  Nor was low altitude, high-speed navigation the only regime in which systems design flaws proved fatal. In the age before computers, many basic “housekeeping” tasks had to be handled by the aircrew. Fuel management was a constant source of problems and indeed contributed to the deaths of some early jet test pilots. In most Navy jets from FH-1 Phantom to the A-7 Corsair II, the crew either had to take some action to get fuel to transfer in the right sequence from each of the plane’s tanks, or had to go through some sequence of switch flipping if the automatic fuel transfer sequence did not occur correctly. Complicated relay logic and cockpit switch sequences caused any number of jets to quit running with plenty of fuel still aboard. Fuel management headaches were multiplied by the introduction of mid-air refueling. In the A-7 for instance, if the refueling probe was bent, and this was not an uncommon result of trying to get fuel from an Air Force KC-135, fuel transfer from the drop tanks was inhibited, so the Corsair driver could have four-thousand pounds or more of unusable fuel hanging from his jet. Because most jets required hydraulically boosted flight controls to compensate for transonic shockwaves, unreliable hydraulic systems posed similar problems. Thus most jets were equipped with multiple hydraulic systems that commonly required somewhat complicated “switchology” drills if one or more failed. Again, many airplanes were lost when pilots flipped the switches in the wrong order.

  Armed with this mini-education about the hazards of flying swept-wing jets, we can go on to review with greater insight and appreciation the transition from straight-wing piston-engine propeller planes to swept-wing jets on board the Navy’s aircraft carriers.

  GETTING ON AND OFF THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER WITH JETS

  By the end of World War II, the U.S. Navy had become very adept at operating aircraft carriers. It had an extensive cadre of highly experienced pilots that provided leadership in the air wings and squadrons and excellent instruction in the training command, and it knew how to get the air wings on and off the carriers. In the 1920s and 1930s naval aviation had developed technologies that allowed the carriers to operate sixty or more aircraft. Of course, a key technology was the arresting wires stretched across the flight deck of the carrier and the arresting hook attached to the tail of the airplane. However, the real key to operating large numbers of aircraft was the midship barrier, a series of elevated wires that would catch the landing gear of any aircraft that happened to miss the arresting wires or whose hook bounced over them or perhaps just broke. This allowed the ship to park aircraft up on the bow for refueling and rearming without having to send them down to the hangar deck. In addition, naval aviators had devised a circling landing approach that allowed the pilot to observe the LSO who was standing on a small platform well aft on the flight deck on the port side of the ship. Armed with two paddles, the LSO would let the pilot know if he was too high or too low, and gave him a “cut” signal to reduce power to idle when he had the deck made. This whole system worked well for propeller aircraft, with their relatively low approach speeds, light weight, and instant power response.

  The first jets had straight wings and were relatively light, so their approach speeds weren’t that much different from props. However, given jet engine lag, pilots had to be careful not to pull off too much power when they got a little high on the glide slope. A number of ramp strikes occurred when they did. Conversely, if the pilot jammed on too much power to correct for a low, the jet engine also took its time spooling down, and there were cases, as previously mentioned, of the jet floating over the barrier and crashing into the “pack” of parked aircraft with catastrophic results. The Navy understood that bringing swept-wing jets into the picture would only exacerbate the problems and so delayed the fleet introduction of these machines until several years after they became operational in the Air Force. When the F9F-6 Cougar, a modification of the straight-winged Panther, showed up in squadrons in November 1952, the difficulties of getting it aboard safely were magnified. If a swept wing is dicey to handle at slow speed and wings level, it’s doubly so in an approach turn. In order to make the approach a bit easier for the pilot, the pattern was extended a bit to give him more wings level time in the “groove.” However, this made it harder for the pilot to see the LSO.

  Two pieces of British technology came to the rescue for the Navy. The first was the angled flight deck. The flight deck was widened amidships, allowing the landing area to be canted about 10 degrees to port. This permitted aircraft that missed the wires or bounced to add power and go around for another try without crashing into the barrier or the pack of parked airplanes; equally important, it allowed jet pilots to fly a power-on, constant angle of attack approach all the way to touchdown. That way, with the engine already at a relatively high power setting, the lag to attain full power if the wires were missed was minimal. In fact, standard procedure quickly became adding full power immediately on touchdown, arrested stop or not. If the plane caught the wire, the jet would just sit there momentarily at full power, held stationary by the hook. Once stopped, the pilot would reduce power and taxi out of the landing area. USS Antietam, an Essex-class carrier, was the first to receive this modification and returned to the fleet in 1953. In 1955, USS Forrestal, the Navy’s first super carrier, expressly designed to accommodate the heavier swept-wing jets, was commissioned with an angled deck. In 1955 another British invention, the optical mirror landing system, was introduced aboard U.S. carriers.
This apparatus allowed the pilot to see clearly whether he was on glideslope or not from over a mile behind the ship. Later, the mirror was replaced with a series of Fresnel lenses that performed the same function of providing a visual indication of glideslope, but using much less space. The influence these innovations had on the safety and operational efficiency of aircraft carriers was dramatic: the carrier embarked accident rate per ten thousand landings dropped from thirty-five in 1954 to seven in 1957.9

  Jets also had to get off the carrier, and this required a third British invention, the steam catapult. The Navy had been using catapults since the early days of naval aviation. Initially run by compressed air, ungainly looking catapults were installed on cruisers and battleships to launch their scout floatplanes. The Navy subsequently developed hydraulic catapults prior to World War II, but the fast carriers operated almost exclusively using free deck rolls because the Hellcats, Dauntlesses, and Avengers didn’t need them. However, the hydraulic catapults were a necessity on the smaller light and escort carriers. It soon became clear that jets could not use free roll takeoffs due to their higher minimum flying speeds, and so the hydraulic catapults were used initially. However, as the jets got heavier and required yet greater launch speeds, the need for better catapults became manifest. The Royal Navy came to the rescue again with the steam-powered catapult. The steam catapult used steam from the ship’s propulsion plant, could be built with a much longer power stroke, and was considerably lighter than a comparable hydraulic unit. These three innovations, the angled deck, the optical landing system, and the steam catapult set the stage for the effective operation of supersonic swept-wing jets at sea.

  GETTING OUT

  In propeller aircraft, if the engine quit or the plane caught fire, the pilot and any crew could “bail out,” that is, open the canopy, door, or hatch and just jump, pulling the rip cord on the parachute once clear of the plane. Moreover, one could reasonably think about ditching a prop; pancaking down on the water at 80 knots or so was eminently survivable. All of this changed with jets. At 300 or 400 knots, trying to bail out in a traditional manner was impossible. At jet landing speeds, ditching a swept-wing fighter was almost certain suicide. The answer was the ejection seat. Initially powered by a small explosive charge, seats were later equipped with a rocket engine under the seat pan and had provisions for restraining the pilot’s arms and legs in the brutal blast of air that was encountered when ejecting from airplane at high speed. The ejection seat was supposed to be the pilot’s savior, and indeed it was—sort of. The first successful ejection from a Navy aircraft was in 1949 when the pilot of a Banshee was forced to eject over South Carolina at 597 knots.

  As with the jets themselves, ejection seats went through a development process, with early seats being less sophisticated and capable than later ones. An ejection seat can be characterized by its capability in two modes: low speed and close to the ground and high speed and high altitude. Once introduced, the ejection seat generated an interesting dilemma for the pilot and crew—when do they pull the handle? The author of this chapter had an introduction to swept-wing jets that was marred by two accidents illustrating the problem. In advanced flight training using the TA-4J Skyhawk, an instructor and fellow student were killed when they ejected too late after their engine failed on takeoff. The instructor was apparently trying to get the aircraft turned around to execute an emergency landing. It was later learned in the accident investigation that he had been fudging his logbook with instrument time so that he would not lose his instrument rating. We surmised that fear of this coming to light if he ejected caused him to delay pulling the handle. The second incident was an A-7 pilot (another fellow student on his first A-7 flight—solo) that ejected late after his engine quit after a touch-and-go landing. He survived, but was so injured he never flew again. Although a qualified aviator, he had not yet developed the reactions and instincts to handle an engine failure at such a critical juncture on his first Corsair flight.

  These gruesome anecdotes illustrate a phenomenon with ejection seats. Despite the progressively increased capability of the ejection seats in each new type of aircraft, the survival rate of ejections did not rise the way you would expect. Many aviators believed this was because (a) there were sometimes external mental or emotional factors that caused pilots to delay their ejection, (b) pilots would ascribe too much capability to the seat and thereby delay pulling the handle, and (c) things happened too damned fast.

  Interestingly, in the first decade of the jet era, the number of crew fatalities was significantly less than the number of lost aircraft. After that the two statistics gradually match up, with the number of fatalities becoming equal to or exceeding the number of aircraft lost. Part of this is undoubtedly due to the residual propeller aircraft in the fleet, including the F4U Corsair and the A-1 Skyraider. But it may also be due to the number of straight-wing jets that could be ditched with reasonable hope of crew survival. The arrival of crewed aircraft also meant that a fatal accident produced multiple deaths for the loss of a single aircraft.

  KEEPING THEM FLYING

  Just as flying was considered an art born of individual experience in the piston-engine years of naval aviation, so was maintenance. The aircraft, except for the engines, were relatively simple and maintenance was mostly a matter of senior petty officers handing down their knowledge and wisdom to the new “airdales” (sailors in naval aviation ratings). Piston engines were complex machines, but by the 1940s were pretty reliable. The introduction of jets changed things. To start with, the early jet engines had a very limited service life. Whereas an air-cooled radial piston engine might run for several thousand hours before needing to be replaced, a jet engine would require replacement after only several hundred. As jets got faster, they required more complex hydraulic and electrical systems, including such exotic (for the time) accessories as yaw dampers, cockpit pressurization, and ejection seats. The old ways of maintenance came under extreme pressure. To quote a Naval Aviation News article from 1961: “Compared to the fighters of 1940, the fighters of today are five times as heavy, have six times as many inspection items, ten times as many switches, twenty times as many valves, sixty times as many electron tubes, require ten times as many items of support equipment, and cost about eighty times as much.”10

  The Naval Aviation Maintenance Program (NAMP) was established in 1960 to standardize maintenance practices and improve aviation logistics. The idea was to standardize both terminology and procedures so that a maintenanceman would be instantly familiar with maintenance and repair procedures regardless of what ship, air station, or squadron he was assigned. Moreover such a system required extensive documentation, and naval aviation produced progressively more sophisticated methods over the years.

  However, change has always come hard to the Navy and the imposition of standardized maintenance methods was no exception. To quote from the same Naval Aviation News article: “While it is hard to find anyone in our time who does not appreciate the value of interchangeable parts in machines, it is not so generally recognized that the same principles apply in human organizations.”11 The effective transition from aviation maintenance as an individual art to a formalized human-machine system took years, and many jets were lost, even through the 1980s, to maintenance errors resulting from squadron maintenance chiefs “doing their own thing” and subverting the system in various ways. The informality of naval aviation maintenance was nowhere more evident than in the cases where naval aviators undertook to fix their own aircraft on a cross-country flight. If a starter, hydraulic pump, or similar part failed, it was not uncommon for the pilot to call back to the squadron and have a new part sent out in another jet toting a “blivet,” an external fuel tank modified with a door and shelves to carry cargo. The sight of a Navy pilot taking a wrench to his own airplane always shocked and dismayed Air Force personnel (if it took place at an Air Force base) who witnessed it, as the Air Force had a much more disciplined and structured system. This practice continued at least into t
he 1980s.

  Naval aviation maintenance is a highly challenging business even under the best of circumstances. Squadrons must regularly move their operations from a shore base to an aircraft carrier and back again, sometimes splitting up into small detachments. Moreover, airdales must perform maintenance on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, at night and in some miserable weather conditions. As if that were not enough, they have to be ready to scurry out to the middle of a flight deck during launch operations to try and fix a jet that developed a problem after start-up. Although the dangers of whirling propellers and jet engines that could blow a man over the side or suck him into the intake were well appreciated, over the years a steady stream of aviation sailors were lost or injured to these hazards. As with aircrew, airdales who could not maintain their composure in the rapid-fire and dangerous environment they faced were weeded out by death or injury, or if they could not deal with the fear and strain, left the business. Those who remained were tough and savvy and they made naval aviation a success.

  NAVAL AVIATION CULTURE AND THE TRANSITION TO JETS

  In order to understand the catastrophic price the Navy paid in its march to operate swept-wing jets from aircraft carriers, we must look at the organizational culture onto which this new technology was grafted. After all, the majority of the mishaps that occurred were due to aircrew error of some sort, whether it was precipitated or exacerbated by the design problems previously identified—or gross error, negligence, or irresponsibility not connected with them.