LIVING ON THE EDGE; the Flight Deck of the USS Yorktown

The flight deck of the Yorktown is a treacherous work place.  Many things can go wrong.  Too many of them result in men dying.  When a person works on the flight deck, he must always be aware of not only what can happen to him, but what is happening that may cause a chain reaction that may result in a serious episode.

When an aircraft lands, it is attempting to snag a cable with its tail hook.  This hook extends downward from the tail or the plane.  The ideal situation is for the third wire to be caught.  This situates the aircraft to be in the proper position for the flight deck crew to release the hook from the cable, aid the pilot to taxi the plane to a safe area, out of the way of other aircraft attempting to land.

My camera position usually was on a catwalk, on the after end of the flight deck, across the deck from the Landing Safety Officer.  From this spot, I could photograph incoming traffic, record their landing and if necessary, film their crash into the nylon barriers.  After doing this job for several weeks,  I could tell if the landing would be successful or not just by the attitude of the incoming airplane.  If it appeared to deviate from the  ideal landing pattern, I would  being to take photographs.  Sometimes I would use a 16mm Kodak Cine Special Motion Picture camera.  Other times a K-20 4x5 aerial camera would be preferred.

Operating off the West Coast, we were retrieving Douglas Skyraiders.  These planes were unusually heavy, especially the Anti-Submarine models.  In addition to bombs and depth charges, they carried Sono-boys, electronic gear and two crewmen in addition to the pilot.  The pilots were experienced in carrier landings and everything was going well.  The destroyer "plane guard" was following the carrier by about half a mile.  The destroyer was there to pick up the crew of aircraft that crashed into the water.  Our ship carried a helicopter that was launched in the event  of a plane  going into the sea.

The landings were uneventful.  Everything was going well.  As each plane landed and stopped, two sailors, one from each side of the flight deck would run over to the tail end of the plane.  With 4 foot long metal poles with a hook on the end, they would pull the arresting cable free from the plane's tailhook.

As the last of the large aircraft caught the #3 wire and landed, with the hundreds of pounds of tension on the cable caused by the pulling of the tens of thousands of pounds weight of the aircraft, the 1 l/2 inch steel arresting cable snapped!  The wire snapped through the air as a whip, the tip of it traveling very fast.  The deck hand was already running toward the tailhook to release the cable from it.  The end of the cable struck the man square in the chest, slamming him across the deck, over the catwalk, down 90 feet of space into the foaming cold sea.

It happened so fast, my reflexes were not quick enough to lift my camera.  The man was running on the flight deck and a second later he was in the water, floating facedown as the ship moved rapidly away from him.

Immediately, the ship's whistles and bells began to sound the 'MAN OVERBOARD' signals.  The destroyer behind us immediately responded with search procedures.  Our helicopter which was already airborne, flew to where the man was last seen.  Everyone aboard both ships were straining their eyes to locate the sailor.  The big carrier slowed down, did a 180 degree turn, returned to the area of the accident and stopped.  The sea was searched for hours.  The man was never found.

The medical officer determined the force of the cable striking his chest probably crushed his chest, killing him instantly.  He was probably dead before he hit the water.

I didn't even know his name.

Another day, I was in my usual photographer's location aft, on the catwalk along  the flight deck.  The motion picture camera had an optical viewfinder.  The disadvantage; things in the viewfinder appeared farther away than they actually were.

That day, we were landing Grumman F9F swept wing Cougars.  They were beautiful aircraft and the latest model fighter the Navy had operational.  It was thrilling to see them operate.  They were sleek, newly designed with RADAR and heavy machine guns both in the nose section, forward of the pilot's compartment.  I followed each plane as it came in through the camera viewfinder.

As one of these planes was landing, it's hook caught wire #1, instead of the preferred #3 wire.  the plane stopped, however the entire forward section of the airframe, in front of the pilot, broke off and flew down the deck.  The action began on my left, as the large, heavy section of guns, RADAR and ammunition tumbled down the deck, alongside of me, then rolling in front of me...my eye still in the viewfinder, the camera kept operating.  AS the scene was moving i could hear people yelling  and hollering, assuming tem to be crash crewmen calling out instructions to each other and I kept my eye in the viewfinder following the moving section of the aircraft.

The large forward section continued to roll down the deck, I continued looking through the viewfinder it as it approached the the edge of the flight deck, bounded over the edge, hit the catwalk and dropped over the side and immediately sank.  After it disappeared I shut the camera off and looked around.

I was surprised to see the other sailors looking at me and screaming.  "What's wrong?" I asked myself.  With the noise of the aircraft, the sea and ship noises, it was impossible to comprehend what they were yelling at me.  One of the deckhands ran up to me and screamed, "Are you crazy?"  "That piece of airplane almost took you over the side with it."  He showed me where the nose went over the side, the wooden flight deck had been gouged.  It was barely ten feet away from me. 

I hadn't realized how close I had come to dying.  The optical viewfinder made it appear to me to be much farther away that it actually was.

Task force 77 gets replenished.

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