CALL SIGN - SPLASH

     There was a Navy pilot I knew years ago who'd had a close brush with the Grim Reaper, one of many pilots who’d done so I might add. Thankfully this particular pilot did not get very acquainted with the one holding a scythe. I knew him from my squadron at NAS Oceana, Virginia Beach, VA. His call sign Splash, he'd had a very successful career as an F-14 aviator and was a very well respected fighter pilot. Well before the glory years being in a Tomcat cockpit flying out of Virginia Beach, back in his days of training as a student Naval Aviator during the carrier qualification phase, he'd experienced an emergency in flight, an engine failure. No big deal if you have two engines, but in this case he was in the single engine TA-4J Skyhawk, and while landing, or should I say "taking off?" Engine failure in an A-4 usually meant a return to Terra Firma via nylon letdown, and hopefully alive. In some cases, as what happened with Splash, a parachute never made it into the equation.

     The training was being conducted off the keys on a spring day - clear, calm, sunny, and beautiful. Wind still and ocean flat as a Great Lake, there wasn't even a ripple lest it was a wake. Carrier qualification training back in those days was conducted on CV-16, the USS Lexington, the Lady Lex, now a museum on a bay in Texas. Because of the lack of wind, the dead calm, she was making her own thirty-two knots of breeze over the deck, enough to recover planes. And the flying that day had gone smoothly, been uneventful, launching and recovering student pilots in a constant cycle, evolutions without incident, until Splash had his one problem.

     The engine failure occurred during a "bolter," when the jet "bolts" because the plane's tail hook misses all the wires when landing. Uncommon as it was, commonly that would occur due to pilot error, being too high, too fast, or too flat at touch down. Splash was coming aboard for his final landing of the six day-traps required in order to be qualified a Naval Aviator. He rolled into the "groove," on final, gear down, hook down, and ready to trap aboard, just ten seconds from being in the wires, and the latest qualified Naval Aviator.

     "One oh five, Skyhawk ball," he called over the radio, pulling a little power to adjust for a "float" as he rolled wings level. The "meatball" amber light was in the center of the Fresnel lens, meaning he was on glide slope, and he was lined up centerline, and on speed - a perfect start. A hundred more minor corrections later and he'd be done.

     "Roger ball Skyhawk," came the reply from the Landing Signals Officer, or LSO. "Looking good."

     Like the veteran carrier pilot he wasn't yet, as he crossed over the angle deck he confidently goosed the power just a tiny bit to compensate for the "burble" of the round down, the correction always more significant when the carrier made its own wind. The landing so far was flawless, right on glide slope, and he was right on airspeed, landing in the middle of the arresting cables, the hook hitting twenty feet aft of the three wire where it should if all is on and on. As luck would have it, the hook skipped over the three wire, ticked the four, and then clattered down the deck in a hail of sparks, thus missing all arresting cables entirely. The result was an "in the wires bolter," and something of a rarity.

     Already at military power during the bolter, as carrier pilots land power going to maximum for that very rare occasion, Splash rotated and got his plane airborne. Suddenly the plane coughed, and shuttered violently while passing the bow, as the Skyhawk experienced catastrophic engine failure, simultaneously going into a nose down pitch to port. The jet of course was slow, around 130 knots and decelerating, plus dirty with gear down and only fifty feet above the water. With that kind of configuration, and with zero "thrusties" now available for speed, altitude and life, there's only one procedure to initiate.

     The air boss and the LSOs simultaneously called for "Eject, eject, eject," over the radio.

     Already intensely hawking his RPM, Fuel Flow, and airspeed as they unwound, Splash didn't need the encouragement. Thinking, "Fuck this - I'm outa here," he pulled the lower ejection handle on his seat.

     The Martin Baker seat went through its advertised sequence of events, first jettisoning the canopy, then firing the seat rocket launching it up the rails out the cockpit. The seat drogue chute deployed and seat man separation occurred a split second later. From initiation of ejection to seat man separation one second had elapsed, but unfortunately the aircraft had also continued in its nose down trajectory, and Splash didn't have the altitude to get successful deployment of his chute before water impact. Instead his rag doll body hit the water at 125 mph, but at the precise angle that caused him to skip across a very flat Atlantic Ocean a half a dozen times before stopping suddenly in a big "Splash." He was very wet, but for the most part unscathed, however still needing one more carrier trap for the successful "Qual."  Bolters don't count, no matter how pretty they may be.

     Fortunately for our student that was not his time, and the Reaper saw no reason to stick around. So Splash got back on the horse for one more lap around the track, successfully getting his final trap and his "Qual." A week later he was on his way to Oceana training to fly the Tomcat. He was in a brand new plane with a call sign that would stay with him forever.