Inside-of-a-basketball black. Nights like these bring out the inner demons harbored within each pilot.
Cold cat shots. Ramp strikes. Total electrical failures.Those who bolter or receive low state wave-offs are given vectors to a tanker located overhead in the gloom. Those pilots, sometimes near a state of desperation, must try to find it without becoming disoriented, without losing control of the aircraft, and without letting a moment’s inattention cause them to collide with the tanker.
Pilots who experience brake failure on deck must make a frantic pull of the ejection handle before the aircraft goes over the side. The seat blasts them out of the cockpit and then blasts them again into a parachute. They have no more than a second after the disorientation of the opening shock (OOMPH!) to get their wits about them and to prepare for water entry.
Inflate! Pull at the toggles. Raft! Reach for the release.
Immersed in frigid seawater, they struggle to get free of the chute, conscious of the great ship parting the waves mere feet away. As the wake breaks over their heads, they get tossed about, get sucked under, gag constantly and spit out mouthful after mouthful of salt water. They must feel for their raft in the blackness, as icy cold numbs their fingers. Above all else, they hope the plane guard helo sees them and puts a swimmer in the water now. Please, God, help me!
It gets worse. If a pilot can’t get aboard or tank, he may be directed to divert ashore. This requires that he transit alone over miles and miles of open ocean. If disaster strikes then, and the jet is no longer flyable, the pilot makes a desperate Mayday! call, giving his range and bearing before he ejects into black nothingness and a shivering cold descent. Added to that is the dreaded knowledge that no human being is within 100 miles! And even if a rescue helo is sent immediately, it won’t get on scene for nearly an hour, and the pilot is in the cold water that whole time, fighting shock and hypothermia. They hope to muster the strength to signal for the helo if it, by miracle, finds the “needle in the haystack” of the black and limitless sea.
Wilson and the others were well aware of the sudden and violent ways aviators could meet their end. Episodes like this were quite rare. The Navy, as a whole, often went many years between such incidents. Their training was superb and they knew how to handle any situation placed before them. But the nightmares did happen on occasion, and deep in their minds — in the darker than night place where the demons lived — they knew that some gloomy night fate could choose them.
