by New IN d n S Sta
Holding Instructions Fo
r th e
F if
e m th Ti
Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Jakoeb VanDahlen
Despite the incessant heat, lack of wind and constant mugginess, the South China Sea presents some of the most picturesque seascapes in the world. On this particular evening (June 24, 2019), I was fortunate enough to be in the left seat of aircraft 600, dubbed lovingly by our squadron as “The Opal of the Orient,” known for her reliability. In my right seat was a super junior officer (JO) and a very experienced Hawkeye Carrier Aircraft Plane Commander (CAPC). We were tasked to control a Hawkeye Controlled Approach (HCA) and execute a “trap-cat-trap” in order to keep both myself, a junior pilot, and the CAPC night current. As we taxied to catapult number three, everything seemed perfect for the launch. The plane had passed all ground checks, and the systems were looking 4.0. We rogered up the weight board, ran up the motors and saluted the shooter. As we were launched off the deck of USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) into a beautiful pink sunset, I put our aircraft into flyaway attitude, began a left hand clearing turn and raised the gear.
26
As our gear was in transit, we heard the tell-tale “deedle-deedle” of a master caution. More intent on flying the aircraft away from the water than looking inside at our gauges, I continued to climb until we leveled off at 500 feet and turned to parallel Basic Recovery Course (BRC) after our clearing turn. Then, looking inside, I saw the caution “Tow Link.” The caution has a two-fold meaning: either the tow link (the launch bar in the VFA/VAQ communities) was still down, or our nose wheel was cocked past 10 degrees. The boldface procedure for this emergency is simple enough: “Check Nose gear visually before raising gear.” However, as in most cases of this emergency, the gear was already in transit as the caution sounded. Frequently it is merely a bad wire or connection in the circuit with no real issue. We made the decision to get away from the carrier before we lowered our gear to check anything and continued our Case I departure and began to climb away. After departing the terminal area and establishing a climb, we communicated the
By LT Clay S. Elward Jr. malfunction to the Air Boss, then slowed the aircraft to below gear speed and lowered the gear as we continued to climb. The sight window in the cockpit can only let the pilots confirm whether the nose gear is centered or not, and as far as we could tell, it was centered, but the status of the tow link itself was still in question. Our next course of action was to get another aircraft to join us for a visual inspection. Our Combat Information Center Officer (CICO) immediately reviewed the air plan to determine nearby aircraft and cross-checked it with whom he saw on the scope launching from the ship. We assessed the best course of action was to get an E/A-18G Growler to join up, as they had a pretty light mission for the event. Our CICO reached out on their tactical frequency and they agreed. After leveling off, we lowered the gear and then sped up so that the faster jet had some airspeed to play with when joining up. While this would burn more gas then we wanted to, we were scheduled for a relatively short double cycle, and we could afford to burn more gas than normal to troubleshoot.
