What year? I was on from early 63 thru late 66 (ships company).
April 10, 1974 -- initial CarQual in the A-6 while going through the RAG and my 23rd birthday. OK, so here's the story...
All pilots go through carrier qualification (CarQuals) during pilot training, once at the end of basic, and again at the end of advanced. No CQ, no wings. OTOH, NFO's get their first look at the back of the boat in type training after they get their wings, and before they go to their first operational squadron. In my case, that was in VA-128, the west coast A-6 training squadron.
For CQ, the trainee pilots are paired with trainee BN's. In my case, the pilot was a bit older than the average nugget. He'd gotten his wings about six years earlier, and gone through CQ in TA-4's at that time, but was sent for his first sea duty tour to a transport squadron to fly admirals up and down the west coast in CT-39's (basically Saberliner 35's in Navy paint) rather than to a carrier-based unit. His next assignment was shore duty -- with the Recruiting Command as a pilot recruiter, where his flying consisted of giving demo rides to potential pilots in T-34's. When he came up for sea duty again, they sent him to A-6's so he'd get a promotion-essential "warfare specialty" before he was up for LCDR.
What nobody really knew was that his eyesight had deteriorated a bit over the six years since his last look at the boat, especially at night. As he had been doing almost no night flying for several years, even he didn't know it. He was pretty good in daylight, when the pupils pinpoint some to improve visual acuity, but at night, with pupils dilated, his uncorrected vision was more like 20/30 or 20/40 -- not quite where it needs to be for seeing the meatball accurately.
We got through our 10 day traps just fine, but when we went back out at night for the required 5 night traps, things got ugly fast. He had me talking him in a bit, but since I'd never made a night carrier landing before, we're talking about the blind leading the blind. After 10 passes, we had four traps, a few bolters, and a couple of wave-offs. On the last pass, he decided that he was not going to miss the wires again, and he got low --
way low.
I'd always known that if you're low, the ball turns red, and that if you get even lower, it starts to flash, but I didn't know that if you get
really low, it disappears completely. At that point, everybody (me, the LSO, the Air Boss, and even the Captain of the ship) was hollering "
POWER-POWER-POWER!" He got enough power on the plane to level off at about 60 feet on the radar altimeter (just about the height of the deck above water) about a quarter mile behind the ship, and we rolled onto the deck and into the #1 wire. "Trap!" and we're done with CQ (except for the LSO debrief, which was real ugly).
We got out of the plane, headed down to the Ready Room, where, in the old Navy tradition, a birthday cake was waiting for me. We shared some cake, wished for a double-Jack Black, and just shook our heads when those who'd seen us on the Plat asked what happened.
That was our last flight together. He went off to one squadron, and I went to another. I understand that his carrier landings improved dramatically after he stopped at the flight surgeon's office to get a pair of glasses to wear while flying. Last I heard, he'd made CDR and was commanding an A-6 squadron, and I'd fly with him again tomorrow -- as long as he's wearing his glasses.
