Carriers

IOC enables VMFA-314 to deploy the F-35C onto aircraft carriers where they will be able to support combat operations anywhere in the world.

In a time characterized by rapidly evolving tactics and modernized equipment, the Marine Corps has taken the next step in maintaining air superiority as Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 314 declares its initial operational capability (IOC) for the F-35C Lightning II.

As told by 1st Lt. Charles Allen, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing in the article 3rd MAW advances air superiority with F-35C, initial operational capability declaration marks a significant accomplishment for 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW), enabling VMFA-314 to deploy the F-35C onto aircraft carriers where they will be able to support combat operations anywhere in the world.

“The F-35 is an expeditionary platform that extends the reach of our Marines and machines, and increases our ability to support joint and allied partners at a moment’s notice,” said Maj. Gen. Christopher Mahoney, 3rd MAW commanding general. “By effectively employing the F-35, MAGTF [Marine Air-Ground Task Force] commanders have the potential to dominate our adversaries in a joint battlespace, in the air and out at sea.”

Having the most advanced stealth fighter jets the world has ever seen is only the beginning. A strategic and tactical understanding of how to operate and properly maintain the F-35 and its advanced capabilities is essential to its employment in an increasingly non-permissive maritime domain.

To receive this qualification, squadrons must meet the Headquarters Marine Corps standards, which define the minimum number of trained Marines, mission-ready aircraft, and trained pilots needed in order for a squadron to become IOC complete.

“Our maintenance department was critical to the success of IOC. In addition to accepting and inspecting the multiple aircraft that arrived throughout the year, the Marines maintained a high level of aircraft readiness,” said Lt. Col. Duncan French, VMFA-314 executive officer. “Those mission capable aircraft allowed the pilots to train in the appropriate missions required of IOC, as well as contributed towards the readiness metrics of IOC.”

The F-35’s ability to combine advanced stealth capabilities, integrated avionics, and the most powerful sensor package the Department of Defense has ever seen allow it to operate in contested areas and gives the Marine Corps an unparalleled ability to maintain air superiority in dynamic, unpredictable, and competitive environments.

French continued, “VMFA-314’s declaration of IOC is a significant milestone not only for 3rd MAW but also the Marine Corps. VMFA-314 is the first F-35C squadron in the Marine Corps. The F-35C’s unique capabilities, compared to the F-35B and legacy aircraft, provide the Marine Corps with a complementary increase in combat projection and the ability to operate from the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers.”

Photo by Lance Cpl. Juan Anaya / U.S. Marine Corps

The photos of this famous F-8 crash landing on the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt prove that an angled deck is better than the straight one.

Taken on Oct. 21, 1961, the photos in this post show a Vought F-8 Crusader from the Red Rippers of Fighter Squadron 11 (VF-11) snapping a main gear strut while landing aboard the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42). The magnesium strut ignited and the jet rolled off the end of the angled deck, but the pilot ejected at the last second using his Martin Baker F5A ejection seat and survived the mishap uninjured.

Martin Baker used these photos in a very successful campaign.

Noteworthy these well-known photos show why the angled deck is better than the straight one.

The angled deck was one of the three improvements to aircraft carrier design conceived by the Royal Navy that made fast-jet operations both possible and safe. The idea of canting or skewing the landing area to port of the ship’s centreline had evolved from experiments with a rubber deck and Sea Vampire fighters without undercarriages in HMS Warrior in 1948. According to the Royal Australian Navy website, although the rubber deck itself proved impractical, the ‘skewed deck’ as it was called at first was seen as a very effective way of making arrested landings safer on existing, relatively small, flight decks.

The generation of jets planned for the 1950s was much heavier than their predecessors, had higher landing speeds, and would have needed most of the deck available to complete an arrested landing. The standard technique of centreline landings with a barrier to protect the deck park forward from aircraft that missed the wires was no longer tenable and, with little or no room for the deck park, the number of aircraft that could be operated was small.

Worse still; if the whole deck had to be clear for every landing, the number of aircraft operated at any one time would be low and the speed with which they could be recovered would be slow. The angled deck solved this dilemma by providing a landing runway that was longer than the portion of the deck aft of the existing barriers. The sum of the lengths of the landing and launch/parking areas was `greater than the length of the ship. Trials were carried out on an angled deck painted on HMS Triumph, on USS Antietam the first carrier actually fitted with a full-angled deck in 1953, and on HMS Centaur the first British angled deck carrier in 1954.

The trials were successful, so successful that every carrier navy moved to copy the idea quickly, led by the USN. Not only did the angled deck provide a longer runway in which the arrester wires could be moved nearer the center of the pitch to make landing easier in bad weather but other advantages soon became apparent. There was no longer a need for a barrier since, with clear deck space ahead of the wires, an aircraft that missed the wires, known as a ‘bolter’, could open the throttle to go round for another circuit.

The area to the starboard runway gave clear parking space for a number of aircraft, allowing rapid multiple aircraft recoveries and a deck park for refueling and re-arming.

Although simple in concept, the conversion of existing carriers to have angled decks involved structural alterations, loss of the armament, and aerials mounted on the port beam. The arrester wire machinery had to be re-aligned to lie athwart the angled deck. Once the new structure was installed, it provided useful volume for mess decks and machinery.

Three new aircraft carriers joined their respective fleets in 1955 with all three British improvements to carrier flying. They were HMS Ark Royal in February, USS Forrestal in October, and HMAS Melbourne (II) in November.

Photo by PH2 L. J. Cera / U.S. Navy

The future wing would still feature 44 strike fighters as it does now, but the mix of Block 4 F-35C Lightning II fighters and Block III F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters changes from 10 and 34, respectively, to 16 and 28.

The US Navy revealed its carrier air wings’ future configuration during the Virtual Hook convention webinar of the Tailhook Association held on Sep. 11, 2020.

During the convention, Rear Adm. Gregory N. Harris, director of Air Warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, specified the numbers and types of aircraft in the future air wing envisioned by the end of the 2020s.  

As reported by Sea Power Magazine, the future wing would still feature 44 strike fighters as it does now, but the mix of Block 4 F-35C Lightning II fighters and Block III F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters changes from 10 and 34, respectively, to 16 and 28. One 16-aircraft F-35C squadron and three F/A-18E/F squadrons totaling 28 Super Hornets will equip the carrier air wing.   

The wing will also include five-to-seven EA-18G Growler electronic combat aircraft, five E-2D Advanced Hawkeye command-and-control aircraft, six-to-ten MH-60 Seahawk helicopters, three CMV-22B Osprey carrier-onboard delivery (COD) aircraft, and five-to-nine MQ-25 Stingray aerial tanker unmanned aircraft.   

An anonymous source also told Sea Power Magazine that in 2021, USS Carl Vinson will deploy, taking a 10-aircraft F-35C squadron (Strike Fighter Squadron 147) on the aircraft’s first carrier deployment. The ship also will carry two 10-aircraft F/A-18E squadrons and one 14-aircraft F/A-18F squadron.  

The deployment also will mark the first for the CMV-22B.   

The second carrier deployment of the F-35C is scheduled for 2022 by Marine Fighter Attack 314 (VMFA-314).   

As already reported, last June Maj. Derek Heinz and Lt. William Goodwin have been the first two F-35C Lightning II pilots to graduate from the 13-week Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor (SFTI) course, otherwise known as Topgun.

Instructors at Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center (NAWDC) gradually develop the curriculum for F-35C by integrating the stealth fighter’s tactics into the training curriculum for previous classes.

For the first time in US naval aviation history, radar-evading stealth capability comes to the carrier deck. The F-35C carrier variant sets new standards in weapon system integration, lethality, maintainability, combat radius, and payload that bring true multimission power projection capability from the sea.

Photo by U.S. Navy

No one in the E-2C Hawkeye or on the deck was injured in the mishap.

On Aug. 23, 2020, a US Navy E-2C Hawkeye command and control aircraft hit a captive air training AIM-9X missile attached to a parked F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighter while landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

According to Lt. Cmdr. Liza Dougherty, a Carrier Strike Group 11 spokeswoman, no one in the Hawkeye or on the deck was injured in the mishap.

As reported by Navy Times, it happened after the Hawkeye experienced a “hook-skip bolter,” where the hook of an aircraft landing on a carrier fails to catch the runway wires that stop the plane.

Dougherty said in an email that the mishap took place at about 4:30 p.m. local time while the carrier was underway in the Middle Eastern waters of the U.S. 5th Fleet.

The incident remains under investigation and the damage to both aircraft was “minor,” she said.

Dougherty added that the damage “is currently being repaired in order to return the aircraft to full mission readiness.”

“While the aircraft in question did sustain damage during the incident, Carrier Air Wing 17 and the Nimitz Strike Group remains fully mission capable,” she said.

The Naval Safety Center classified the incident as a “Class A” mishap, which involves more than $1 million in damages.

That botched landing is at least the second Class A mishap involving a Hawkeye in recent weeks.

As we have previously reported in fact, on Aug. 31 an E-2C assigned to Airborne Command & Control Squadron (VAW) 120 Fleet Replacement Squadron on board Naval Station Norfolk, crashed during a training flight in Accomack County in Virginia, near the NASA flight center on Wallops Island.

The two pilots and two crew members bailed out of the aircraft safely through the main cabin door.

Another incident involving a US Navy Hawkeye took place on Aug. 9, 2019, when an E-2D struck two F/A-18 Super Hornet and sent debris flying into two other F/A-18s on the flight deck while attempting to land aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea.

No personnel was injured in that mishap.

Photo by U.S. Navy

The ship’s crew takes advantage of the pilot’s navigational error and makes sure their mistake does not go unnoticed by properly branding the visiting aircraft before departure.

Actually, quite a few pilots have landed on the wrong carrier. It’s not that hard to do. When that happens, US Naval tradition dictates that the crew members do their absolute best to remain discreet and not embarrass the pilot. But what actually happens is the ship’s crew takes advantage of the pilot’s navigational error and makes sure their mistake does not go unnoticed by properly branding the visiting aircraft before departure. Imagine returning to your Boat with all the markings of your misadventure displayed on your aircraft.

This is exactly what happened to an A-7 Corsair II from USS Kitty Hawk that in the 1970s mistakenly landed on USS Hancock.

‘During a tour of duty on Yankee Station in the 1970s, an A-7 pilot from one of the KITTY HAWK’s air wing entered the landing pattern of HANCOCK, a much smaller ship with different types of aircraft than KITTY HAWK embarked,’ recalls Doug Connell, former Captain, Air Wing Commander, Fleet Chief of Staff at United States Navy (1969-1997), on Quora. ‘All calls from HANCOCK on its frequency went unanswered by the A-7, which was still on KITTY HAWK frequency. The Air Boss on HANCOCK assumed that the A-7 was battle-damaged and unable to communicate on HANCOCK’s radio frequency. The arresting gear and optical landing system (meatball) were set for the A-7, which landed safely and taxied out of the arresting gear without incident. Then the fun started.

‘While the visiting A-7 pilot was being interviewed by the Air Boss and Captain aboard HANCOCK, the A-7 received a customized paint job, was then refueled, and sent on its way to KITTYHAWK, where the squadron commander, air wing commander, and ship’s commanding officer eagerly awaited their own interview.

‘Following the squadron’s return from the combat cruise, the errant pilot decided to become a real estate agent.’

These other aircraft that mistakenly landed on the wrong carrier suffered a similar fate to that of the A-7 Corsair II of the story told by Connell.

Photo by U.S. Navy and Crown Copyright

‘It was a visual aid for the Landing Signal Officers, aka “Paddles,” pilots who are trained to observe and grade landing passes,’ Andy Burns, Flight Officer / Aviator at United States Navy.

Derived from the EA-6A “Electronic Intruder,” a relatively straight-forward modification of the A-6 Intruder, the EA-6B Prowler was a more advanced and significant redesign, making it a highly capable, long-range, all-weather electronic warfare aircraft. EA-6Bs became operational in the final years of the Vietnam War, and developed into the foremost electronic attack platform in the U.S. military arsenal, supporting combat missions over Iraq, Bosnia, and Afghanistan and in other crises around the world.  The Prowler later underwent a number of upgrade programs, enhancing its ability to block enemy communications and sensors.

As shown by the main image of this post, the EA-6B had a very distinctive feature: “nuclear trefoil” painted on its nose.

Why did the Prowler have it?

‘It was a visual aid for the Landing Signal Officers (LSOs), aka “Paddles,” pilots who are trained to observe and grade landing passes,’ Andy Burns, Flight Officer / Aviator at United States Navy (1995-present), explains on Quora.

‘‘One of Paddles’ functions is to safety-check that the aircraft actually “in the groove” (on final approach) is the same type that the ship thinks it is. The type and fuel on board determine the weight settings for the arresting gear. The Prowler was developed from the A-6 Intruder and they appeared similar from a nose-on perspective, especially from a distance, but the EA-6B was much larger and heavier than the A-6 and thus needed a different weight setting.

‘The “trefoil” helped Paddles confirm visually whether it was a Prowler or Intruder in the groove.

‘Other aircraft used similar markings for the same reason, like different versions of the E-2 Hawkeye.

‘Once the A-6s were retired in the mid-90s there was no need for the marking on the EA-6s anymore, and most squadrons discontinued using it (as you can see in the pic below). But some continued to just out of tradition.’

Burns concludes:

‘If you’re asking why the “nuke” symbol, in particular, was used: the Prowler’s mission was an electronic attack, i.e., jamming radar and radios. You do that by pumping out a lot of electronic energy, which is after all just another form of radiation.’

Photo by U.S. Navy

‘I thought I was going to be caught in the middle of a flight deck fire that night. It was pretty scary,’ Robbie Emberson, former Flight Deck ABH aboard USS Ronald Reagan.

Modern US Navy aircraft carrier air operations include the operation of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft on and around an aircraft carrier for the performance of combat or noncombat missions.

On an aircraft carrier flight deck, a specialized crew is employed for the different roles utilized in managing air operations. The different flight deck crews wear colored jerseys to visually distinguish their functions:

• Yellow: Aircraft handling officer
• Green: Catapult and arresting gear crew
• Red: Ordnance handler
• Purple: Aviation fuel handler
• Blue: Trainee plane handler
• Brown: Air wing plane captain
• White: Quality Assurance

‘The flight deck is an exciting place to work,’ says Robbie Emberson, former Flight Deck Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) (ABH) aboard USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) on Quora. ‘During flight ops turning propellers can cut you thinner than sliced bread, jet intakes and exhaust can burn you crispier than well-done steak, or one wrong step can send you plunging 134ft down into the frigid water below. But none of these things happened to me.

‘The flight deck is separated into three work centers for V-1 (flight deck ABHs), FLY 1 is responsible for the bow, FLY 2 is responsible for the middle, and FLY 3 is responsible for the fantail.

‘This is a basic sketch of how the FLY’s are separated but there are a number of exceptions. For example, a FLY 3 yellow shirt will stand up in FLY 1 during recovery to “catch” birds when they land. Meaning, he will signal to the pilot to let off the brakes after the wires stop the plane’s forward momentum, when the wire has separated from his aircraft, to raise his tail hook, and direct him out of the landing area.’

Emberson continues:

‘One of the scariest things that happened to me on an aircraft carrier was when I was a U.I. [Under Instruction] yellow shirt in FLY 3. During recovery, FLY 3 sees little action because no aircraft can be sent back there while birds are landing, so most FLY 3 yellow shirts go down in the fly hole and listen to the flight deck radio, have a snack or whatever, and wait. Tonight, however, a friend and I were standing by the arresting gear shooting the s**t enjoying the night.

‘As we were standing there, an F-18 is coming into land. What seemed like 10 feet away from the wires the aircraft’s nose rapidly swings up. The bird had been waved off; something had fouled the landing area and the green light signaling a clear landing area had turned red.

‘This is approximately where we were standing and the bird was probably that close to landing when it had been waved off.

‘The aircraft was nearly perpendicular to the flight deck trying to climb back into the night sky but, unbeknownst to the pilot, the tail hook had caught a wire and he was attached to the deck.

‘So, here we are. My buddy and I standing there in FLY 3 by the arresting gear, an F-18 on full power, roaring, trying to gain altitude, streams of fire coming out of the exhaust, and the thick cables of the arresting gear not letting go, pulling the jet back towards the deck. We did what anyone would do, we ran.

‘I thought the jet was going to explode when it crashed back onto the deck, the blast killing us or sending us flying over the edge of the deck. But, it didn’t. The jet did smash back on the deck causing damage to the aircraft and a lot of sparks, but no fire started. The pilot was bloodied up when he eventually got out of the plane but he walked away. Flight ops continued after a FOD walk-down.’

Emberson concludes:

‘I thought I was going to be caught in the middle of a flight deck fire that night. It was pretty scary.’

Photo by US Navy