Harriers

A carrier would begin rotation after the airwing came on board.
Ship's company was only about two thousand people for the Saratoga and when the 'airdales' arrived it got pretty crowded since there were about three thousand of them.

Our home port was Mayport Florida up by Jacksonville. There was naval air station there and the airwing support group would fly in on their own jets and they'd somehow make it over to the ship. It was kind of a drag having to give up all that space to crowd all those guys in but it was also pretty exciting having your old friends come back for another cruise.

We'd spend three or four months doing 'workups' where we would go out to sea for a week or two at a time and then come back in for a few days. After that we would cross the Atlantic and enter the Mediteranean for six months or so.

When we were out to sea for the short trips during workups we would mess around in the Carribean learning how to be bird-farm sailors and honing our skills. Some guys had really glamorous jobs, like the pilots for instance. It's a very challenging job to be a pilot on an aircraft carrier and that's what most people think of when they think of a ship like ours. But it takes a lot of support people to keep those pilots in the air.

A guy I knew was an air traffic controller up in the superstructure of the ship. Other guys loaded ordinance (bombs and missiles and such). Some guys cooked and some cut hair and some did laundry.

Some guys had what was considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world - flight deck worker. We called them 'deck apes'.

My best friend on the ship was a parachute rigger. He took me up on the flight deck now and then to show me around. Scared the crap right out of me. Before we went out there I had to put on a life jacket, a helmet, things covering my ears so they wouldn't get holes blown in them by loud jet noise, and I even had to have this whistle thing hanging from myshoulder so that, if I fell in the ocean out in the middle of nowhere I could blow the whistle and blow the whistle and blow the whistle - praying TO GOD that someone noticed. He made me promise to stick very close to him and to make sure that I didn't go walking around in the wrong place and get run over by landing aircraft, or so that I didn't get sucked up inside one of the man-eating jet engines, or so that I didn't walk behind an air-shooting jet and get launched clean off the five story flight deck into the sea. We climbed up on the side of a fighter bomber which, I think, was an A6. He showed me the cockpit. He showed me the lever that armed the bombs. "I cannot confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons on any ship or plane in the U.S. military". (Something like that).

When we were through sightseeing we went back down to the computer room where I worked. Two decks below sea level in the air conditioned comfort of our music room, it seemed like an entirely different navy. While down there I had no real idea of what was going on and I didn't really care to know.

Sometimes though, we would be out at sea too long and the officers in charge would give us what they considered a party. After we became highly trained and proud of what we could do they would invite privileged people aboard and show off for them. One day we were off the coast of Virginia and we had a senator or two aboard. So the boss wanted to show them something cool. We put a bunch of planes in the air and then cleaned off the flight deck and let all the sailors with nothing to do come out and stand around. Then the planes would blow up fish and do flips and generally have a ball while we watched.

It's remarkable to see a huge fighter jet slide by at flight deck level without making hardly a sound at all, just sort of a swishing sound of air as it went. Then seconds later BOOM! The sound would catch up and scare the crap out of you.

It was very cool to watch planes come in on a bombing run where they would sling a cluster of bombs toward colored flares way out on the horizon. Then the planes would scream out of the way and you'd watch the lethal mess of bomblets fly right exactly into the smoke of the flares. Then pop poppoppop pop pop. The bombs would explode in the perfect spot. And you'd watch in awe as the very distinct line of shockwave travelled across the water and up into your face. Amazing.

This particular time there were two marine Harriers that showed up from some base in Virginia and they came in to show off to us by doing a bombing run. Something happened that wasn't supposed to. The ship's company were announcing on the intercom as the planes did things, they were telling what was going to happen next and what kind of plane and what it was doing. They talked on the intercom about the Harriers and what they were going to do. I couldn't see them yet but we knew they were coming. Then I did see them. Two little dots on the horizon. They were coming real fast from way up high. They came down toward the ocean in an arc and one plane climbed back up into the sky. The other one was gone. No explosion or anything - it was just gone.

We sent rescue boats out to check. About an hour later the captain staged a quick memorial service while we all remained on the flight deck. Then it was over. Who was they guy? Probably only in his twenties. Probably had a wife and some kids or family of some kind. Certainly never expected that to happen.
You don't even get a medal for that.