Lefty Recollects

Yeah. She's a postage stamp out there on the big blue Atlantic Ocean in a cold January. We are wearing our "bags": Navy cold weather survival dry suits that make you look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. This is one of those carrier qualifications (CQs) that ends up lasting six months.

Lefty Recollects

It was a nice sunny day, so going topside made sense as we continued our transit eastward towards the Mediterranean Sea. You can treat a carrier almost like a submarine, in the sense that just about everything can be done without seeing the sun. Thank God we got to fly off the ship, have our fun, and return. Unfortunately, we had to do that at night, too. Ha!

"Spotting" aircraft is essential to placing them in areas that get them out of the way for launches and landings.

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Yep. There are some really neat nicknames for spots on a carrier flight deck. "Six Pack", "Finger"... I need a refresh on them.

Ah. Fo'c'sle Follies. A place for the Air Wing aircrew to hang out together and sing bawdy songs and even put on a skit or two, usually at the expense of other squadrons or the ship. It also is a time to recognize the best pilots for their landing grades and boarding rates for each "line period", about every two months on cruise.

There's some nice Ripper Red in the Top 10 shot. This was for TSTA/C2X 03 (Tailored Ship's Training Availability and Composite Training Unit Exercise, aka COMPTUEX), the training exercises we do to make sure the carrier and air wing are ready for the cruise.

Even better: the Top Hook Squadron for TSTA/C2X 03 was us. The Red Rippers! That ain't the easiest thing to do with the mighty Turk-o-saurus. But it boded well. HERE'S TO US....!

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Well, say hello to my little friends... Our ordnance teams loaded up our jets to keep their hand in and let us make sure we were familiar with how things (we want) to drop off off a jet and go 'splode'.

On the left side of the pic, with my left hand on it, is a GBU-16 Paveway II — a 1,000-pound-class laser-guided bomb, typically based on the Mk 83 general-purpose bomb body.

And beside it is a GBU-31 JDAM — a 2,000-pound-class Joint Direct Attack Munition, GPS/INS-guided. Depending on variant, it can use a Mk 84 bomb body or a BLU-series penetrator warhead.

The LGB is possible only because the F-14s got frickin' lasers, and JDAM with the GPS integration, once the jets got modified with LANTIRN pods — Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night, a targeting pod system that let the Tomcat find, identify, track, and designate targets for precision-guided weapons, including those chunky babies on the belly of the Tom.

Fleet Tomcats first got those sweet LANTIRN pods back in the VF-103 Jolly Rogers for the '96 cruise and pried the premier strike role out of the A-6 Intruders' hands. This cruise, we did a lot of mixed sections with the baby Hornets, where we'd designate with our superior system (and RIOs!) and they'd drop on our cues.

Lefty Recollects

Back in the day - before nice, light LCD monitors, the CRT was the only show in town. Ask me over a beer about the clandestine 'Skynet' wired network we built for some hardcore video game fun. 30 on 30 Call of Duty or Halo? Oh, yeah! And am I a huge nerd? Um.. yeah.

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One of the cool things (there are many) of being in Naval Aviation is getting your name on a jet. The lower the number, the more senior you are, as you go "rocket ripple" by the squadron roster.

Fitz and I were department heads together in the Rippers. I have a almost complete decoder ring of all the jets going up somewhere on this site soon. But I didn't get photos of everything and I haven't found paperwork - yet. It was neat to see when we flew off at the end of the cruise, our full names were on the canopy with the callsigns below, for a little variation.

Souda Bay was a beautiful sight and we had all kinds of shenanigans roaming the Greek island's countryside. There was at least one callsign change from there. Not mine, thankfully.

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IYKYK. We intercepted it from going to Brand X. Had it welded on a wall by a bribed HT before anyone caught on. Heard "The Item" is down at the bottom of the Med somewhere due to a UNREP casualty. Maybe things are better that way. 😉

Lefty Recollects

Oh, yeah! The Landing Signal Officer platform! My home as a squadron LSO my first two cruises and then as an LSO School Instructor and VF-101 instructor. LSOs have kept Naval Aviation far safer than it started out, especially in the 1950s.

The high-falutin' video equipment in one of the photos is VISUAL (Virtual Imaging System for Approach and Landing) and is connected to ILARTS (Integrated Launch and Recovery Television Surveillance System) and part of the whole IFLOLS system.

I was at the LSO Schoolhouse when we got briefed by the VISUAL engineers. They had the "waveoff" button right next to the ON/OFF button. I suggested that was not a good idea. My contribution to Naval Aviation right there.

So, standing right there, in the open, watching your air wing pilots working the landing thing is amazing. You can also see the GW "making her own wind", pulling some of those rods off the nuclear piles and going FAST. You want ~24 knots of wind down the angle. She's creating axial winds right now and even I'm falling asleep typing this...

Lefty Recollects

No-fly days are usually still work days for the maintainers. This was a great group of Americans. Still is. That's what I said.

Lefty Recollects

Normally, the carrier is miles and miles from shore. We have a term, "Blue Water Operations", where there ain't no other place to land EXCEPT the carrier. Or the water. Seeing this much dirt smoothly flowing past each side of this big boat is just plain weird, even on my third cruise.

In fact, it is still so weird, I glommed on to the scenery instead of the American iron on deck. So here below are some of those shots by other U.S. Navy photographers.

Lefty Recollects

The F-14 took two aircrew to wring the most out of her awesome capabilities. Tasks were split, capabilities enhanced - and that made for a great 'wingman' anywhere you flew for some time off. Likewise, there are many photos here shot by RIO friends of mine.

'Stooli' Hocker, one of the Red Rippers' senior RIOs, was our squadron safety officer, and had duty up on the flight deck every so oftern. One of the things that keeps Naval Aviation from being a constant string of accidents is the constant watchful eyes of everyone on the team to spot safety issues and correct them on the spot.

This is actually the second batch of happy-snaps Stooli made with my camera - the first are all videos and will come later. He got some great shots of Ripper maintainers doing the hard work to keep those Tomcats flying, and they did it so very well.

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They never do the sunsets justice. But I wanted to capture whatever I could. The Gulf was like glass.

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'Hanging on the blades' we call it. Maximum conserve of whatever gas we have, just in case we have to go do something fun with it before landing on the boat. Watching the ship turn into the wind and the next launch go, making a ready deck. And then rage into the break and make it all count for the last 15-17 seconds of the flight. C'mon, Paddles! Show me some love!

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Grab a couple of empty toilet paper tubes. Tape them together and stick them in front of your eyes, covering up the gaps to your face with your hands. Now go walking around a little. Yeah, you can see EVERYTHING - sometimes too much - at night. But you have no peripheral vision. And some lights are pretty blinding. And you'll have a night trap waiting for you where you can't use these in the dark. Yuck.

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What was the FITREP/EVAL program we had to use? The database was saved on a floppy, along with all these regular, periodic writeups. How did we fight wars without that leap in technology? I took pleasure in plowing through them and making the records of the service of the enlisted Rippers shine the best I could. And then cramming that pile into the XO's mailbox. Shit hot.

Lefty Recollects

Didn't I warn you, up that-a-way? More big-wing tanker love for you, both KC-10 and KC-135.

By the by... This WHOLE DAMN PHOTO WEBSITE has sprung forth because a friend of mine asked for some Red Ripper Tomcat photos, because he is a world-class model builder (Gunfighter Models on my 'Friends' page). I gave him umpteen of them. He goes and posts that nice shot Dingle got of RIPPER 200, the CAG jet, and people were asking to see more of these photos.

Well... Are you not entertained?!? S.H. Thanks, Brian! Thank you for making me get off my ass.

Lefty Recollects

Night flying always made the world seem pretty alien: instruments, formation lights, the tanker, and whatever you could make out beyond the canopy. Dingle had my camera in the back seat on this one, which means my brain bucket actually shows up in a few pictures for a change. We went from Mouth stone-cold chillin' on the Turkey's turtleback and the Plane Captains getting us ready (some of the hardest working young Americans I have had the pleasure to serve with!), to plugging into a KC-10 over Iraq, to Baghdad spread out underneath us at night. The little Canon did the best it could, but those weren't as big and showy as back home in the States. Somewhere in the middle of all that were the Moon and Venus, above an amazing sunset, because apparently Iraq wasn't dramatic enough already.

Lefty Recollects

Carrier pilots will turn damned near anything into a competition, but landing grades actually matter. Top Hook meant the squadron had earned the best landing grades and boarding rates for the line period (usually about 2 months of flying, a third of a six-month cruise - back then) - and the Rippers had something worth bragging about. Basically, our Nuggets (new pilots) sucked less than their Nuggets. Then there's Kharg Island off Iran. That was a MAJOR no-no for the Air Wing to go near and we'd hear screaming calls from the boat, telling us to run away. Somebody should tell the damn boat not to stack the night recoveries over these little islands, huh?

Lefty Recollects

Spock had the camera in back, and we decided we were going to document half of Iraq. Samarra and the Al-Askari Shrine, Mosul, rivers, roads, fields, airfields - and then back to the reason we were up there in the first place: airplanes. RIPPER 200, Wildcat 406, and a KC-135 with the baskets out. Tomcats and Hornets taking gas together is where "Cats, Bugs, and Iraq" came from, and that stitched panorama of both fighters on the tanker is one of those pictures I'm really glad Spock thought to take. Twenty-two years later, there's an absurd amount of detail in these little snapshots that I had completely forgotten was there. Maybe I'll blend it better someday. Ha!

Lefty Recollects

Sometimes you have to make your own fun on cruise. Fire up that digital camera in sepia tones and get a shot of some warriors like we were back in doubleya doubleya two. Spoiler alert: I cropped it but you can see some light from a fluorescent bulb. This one's on my 'I Love Me' wall. What a great group of heroes with me.

Lefty Recollects

"Where do we get such men?" - Michener, The Bridges at Toko Ri. It was cool flying over country with Eve in his plastic jet. First cruise guy, if my memory serves, with a 'crusty old LCDR' as his lead. Hornet guys generally have to do everything by themselves. My RIO, Stooli, and I got to laugh together at him. He laughs alone. I love giving shit to Hornet guys. Don't talk to me about what happened to me after the Tomcat was retired...

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Mother. Mom. The Boat. Home. An incredible machine of metal and manpower that we in Navy Air wanted to launch from and only return if we are promised a daytime trap-cat-trap. And a 'Barney Clark' slider waiting for us in the dirty shirt. As much as we wanted to be airborne and flying in our Grumman Ironworks machines, you have to sleep somewhere, and if it was easy, we'd let the Air Force do it - like land on runways that don't move.

What a beautiful ship, though. No matter what I say, I miss being aboard - even so I could fly off again.

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Boards Hatcher had the camera in back of our VF-11 F-14B photo bird and the wait for everything to come together was totally worth it. Hitch was in Wildcats Hornet AG-405; Crash was flying Pukin’ Dogs Tomcat AG-103 (BuNo 161421) with some great RIO lost to memory, dammit. The DSCF pictures came from our airplane. Other formation shots catch our Ripper from another aircraft, with the photographer still unidentified.

The photos from this March 30 photo-ex catch Red Ripper and Pukin’ Dogs Tomcats and a Wildcats Hornet sharing the sky with French Rafales and Super Étendards during exercises with the Charles de Gaulle. The French deployment was called Agapanthe 04. Agapanthe is a flower name, from Greek roots for “love” and “flower” — so, literally 'flower of love'. Two carriers and a sky full of fighters. That’s a hell of a love bouquet.

About the “flower of love”

Lefty Recollects

Flying over the Persian Gulf could feel otherworldly. Hazy sunsets, sandstorms, and then nights brilliantly lit by the stars and moon. There was beauty out there, even while we were flying combat missions over Iraq.

I’d been on two cruises before this one. On those, fighting was a possibility. In 2004, we were at war, flying against insurgents in Iraq. And hanging over all of it was another realization: this was the Red Rippers’ final Tomcat cruise, and most likely my last one flying the airplane, too.

On my earlier cruises, I was young and dumb enough to think it would be like that forever. I didn’t take nearly as many photographs. This time, I had a sense of my mortality, my place in history, and the Tomcat’s place in history. I wanted to capture the airplanes, but also the people and the moments we were sharing before they slipped away.

The Tomcat framed perfectly in sunset photograph is the one that brings it all together for me. I was sitting in a spare jet and didn’t go flying, which gave me time to sit there and watch. And bring my finicky camera with a slooooow refresh rate to bear. That's what the extra 'chum' shots display, leading up to the One. True. Shot. A Tomcat coming aboard, perfectly centered on that hazy Gulf sun — and the shutter fired when ready, Gridley. Without that spare assignment, I wouldn’t have been there to take it.

We would later mark the farewell to the Tomcat with a big celebration, called, ISYN, the 'Tomcat Sunset'. But this Tomcat sunset was mine, for that one slice of time. I loved the snap enough that I had to make it the cover of my album, Left Alone.

Nostalgia is probably the word. For the airplane, certainly, but also for the camaraderie and a time that’s passed us all by. Whatever the future might bring, it won’t bring the Tomcat back the way it was for us. Some people will see a pretty jet. I love that, too. These recollections are my chance to share a little of what surrounded it — and tell it true.

Lefty Recollects

The Naval Academy gave us plenty of opportunities to learn the ships and aircraft of the U.S. fleet. Looking at the ship alongside us, I could at least put that education to work: that’s not one of ours.

It was HMS Grafton, one of our Royal Navy coalition partners, and with the Wildcats' pretty CAG bird sitting on Cat Four, its big red tail added some great color to the scene. A nice moment to catch from the flight deck.

Two nations that had once fought each other were now going to war together. Former enemies, current allies. That's quite a bond.

Lefty Recollects

A carrier has to do more than be in the right patch of ocean. For launch and recovery, it needs to get the wind working in its favor. The ship positions itself so it can turn back into the natural wind - or it makes its own by pulling up 'rods' - and give the aircraft the best conditions it can for taking off and coming aboard.

From above, that turn leaves a great big letter C in the water. These photographs catch George Washington drawing one of those Cs. “Charlie” was the call we were waiting for: time to come aboard. That's where the food is, ya know.

Lefty Recollects

As soon as you launch from the carrier, you’re on a fuel ladder: a running plan for how much “liquid dinosaur” you should have left every 15 minute chunk of the flight. Aggressive maneuvering and afterburner would make those dinosaurs disappear considerably faster.

“Hanging on the blades” means conserving gas, keeping the engines doing as little work as practical while staying airborne. Close to Mom — the boat — you kept a good lookout for everyone else doing the same thing.

Below your fuel ladder, you might be asking (begging) for a tanker. The Hornets always seemed to be below ladder. Sometimes, I’d swear, even at takeoff. So, of course, we always gave them a ration of grief about it. "TANKER POSIT!!"

It could get tense. It could also get really boring. “Monotonous tension” is probably the best description: watching your fuel, watching the other airplanes, and waiting for your turn to snag a three wire.

Lefty Recollects

The Red Rippers’ history goes back to 1927 (fight me over it, historian weenies!), and some of our traditions are things you can actually put on. Red coats with red sneakers are one of them, with some jackets passed from earlier Rippers to the junior officers who followed.

Sniff’s farewell was a good excuse to throw those coats on, get together, enjoy some surf and turf, and celebrate his time with the squadron before the Navy shuffled him off to his next assignment.

Sniff was a professional, serious guy. Trying to get him to laugh was part of the fun. A farewell like this gave us a chance to enjoy being Rippers together and send one of our own off to bigger and better things. And eat a meal you don't normally see in the dirty shirt wardroom. Hence the nicer dining quarters.

Lefty Recollects

To get a mission-capable package of airplanes airborne, when you can, you keep a live, turning spare ready to go at a moment’s notice if another jet has a problem. On this occasion, the problem was in mine. I have a photograph of the altimeter reading something like eighty thousand feet while I was still sitting on the flight deck. An impressive altitude for an airplane that hadn’t left the ship.

Our maintainers were awesome. I don’t remember the exact troubleshooting sequence or what they needed me to do, but we had 100% sortie completion rates for that cruise. So they fixed everything we broke and then some. What I remember is having another opportunity to sit there and watch the majesty of flight-deck operations unfold right in front of me. What an amazing system of systems.

Then I could head down to the wardroom and scarf down a slider. From eighty thousand indicated feet to 50' off the sea, to lunch, without ever going flying.

Lefty Recollects

You work with other US Services, you get Joint. You work with other Nations, you get Combined/Coalition. The dudes in white (safety) float coats are from the CAOC. The Combined Air Operations Center. Those bozos help run the air war. Do NOT get me started on the USAF bias they constantly showed to air-to-mud missions.

The other shots are Mom, in all her glory with our dearest friend, the SAR helo, taking station to pluck us up if things go sideways.

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The night shots with the full moon still do not do justice for how black it was on a flight deck. 'You want me to land on WHAT?' Check out my day/night trap count on the main photos page. Each one of those night traps were hard earned. And sucked. And I'd do it all again, damnit.

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Wooo. More tanking. More sunsets. More haze. But it brings me back, so voila!

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Landing Signal Officers. LSOs. Paddles. Been there; done that. That one man, alone, is Weeds. He was one of two CAG Paddles on the Boat. Take an O-4 and give them the ability to tell the Admiral (Carrier Strike Group Commander) politely that the Air Wing ain't goin' flyin' today, and that's probably the most powerful 'Hinge' in the whole damn Navy. 'Safe and expeditious' was their mantra. They were also 'rush chairmen' of the Fleet. Don't take trash, Paddles!

DIM was an awesome RIO, then WSO, then off to even more lofty positions. We were loaded for air-to-air this hop. That's verrry nice.

Lefty Recollects

Look. I get it. Having a jet painted in subdued colors may give you the fractional advantage in a dogfight where you're blending in with clouds or the sea. But the mighty F-14 Tomcat is really, really difficult to hide, no matter what. And looks absolutely beautiful all decked out in the color scheme that one jet in the squadron could display. The Red Rippers CAG Bird exemplifies our squadron motto, in living color. So here are some shots of 200 (aka 'Nuts', for reasons) getting gas and just looking stunning over Iraq.

Lefty Recollects

You can see we managed to hold on to a little more color for the Red Rippers 'Skipper and XO' jet. Just nothing to rival the CAG jet. As I was putting these photos together for Big Fighter Friday, I realized that both colorful Ripper jets were flying as a section, together. That was pretty cool. Also, that's me and Boards Hatcher in 201. Anytime, Baby!