Waiting On The Bus - Another from my Lens Flare period. This one was taken while we waited for the bus to take us from the Naval Air Station at Yakuska to where the U.S.S. Midway was in port at Yokahama. We all passed this down time in various ways, one naps, one reads, and the other rests from Frisbee tossing, while the fellow standing gets in one last Schlitz before heading to sea. Me I'm taking pictures...
Work - This room has a floor area of about 6' x 12' and was the Work Center for our 25 man detachment while serving aboard the U.S.S. Midway. The space was conveniently near the bow of the ship where they always parked our plane. It also gave us the sloping wall for seating and spare parts storage. The TV wasn't tuned to MTV, but the flight deck camera so we could keep track of the activities there and at least once our deck crew was lounging around in here when we noticed that our plane just snagged the wire. The place emptied quickly.
Group Photo - Here is a group photo shot of our whole detachment (minus a couple guys) on the flight deck in front of our plane. You've met most of them before in the Crowded bus photo. That is me, 4th from the right in the back row, standing next to Keith. The photo was taken by the ship's photographer for the Cruise Book (think HS Yearbook.) He took the shot with his camera and then with probably 10 more cameras that belonged to the subjects.
Bofuckingardus - One of the good places on the ship to take pictures is the Crow's Nest. Not really a little basket like you see in cartoons, but a big flat area on the top of the carrier's island about 6 stories up from the flight deck. Once while shooting pictures up there I noticed one of my squadron mates up on the flight deck and he was wearing my protective gear. How did I know it was my stuff? When I zoomed in, I could read my reflective taped nickname on the top of the helmet. In crude naval fashion this nickname was formed by grafting my last name, Bogardus, with an expletive.
Wrong - While up shooting images on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Midway back in the late 70's after flight ops had ceased for the day, one of my squadron mates decided that he wanted to model for me. Too bad this pose is so wrong.
Symbol - The A-3 Skywarrior was originally designed in the late 40's to carry one 10,000lb nuclear device in it's large bomb bay. They joined the fleet in the middle fifties and remained in active service all the way to the end of the 80's. It was also a symbol of versatility as it served many roles for the Navy, from it's bomber beginnings, through tankers to trainers and air-limos for Admirals, all the way through to photographic and electronic surveillance duties.
Whale Tail - Looking up at the tail of an EA-3B Skywarrior on the deck of the U.S.S. Midway. The affectionate nickname for this plane was the "Whale" because it was the biggest plane in the carrier's compliment. You will see many more pictures of this plane here as that is the craft I flew in as a Naval Air crewman back in the day. I don't know who this fellow is, but he looks kind of sad. Probably because he is stuck on the ship and I am not. 🙂
Structure - Taken on the bow of the U.S.S. Midway while in port. The planes are arranged on the flight deck in a very structured manner. While in port the front of the flight deck is kept clear so helicopters can use it for various supply missions. While at sea during flight ops there are a couple of other parking plans used before launches and after landings. 80 planes need to be kept arranged on 4 acres of deck in a manner similar to one of those slide games where there is one open square. Some planes are moved into one area to clear a place for different planes and so on. (As a theme bonus, the part of the ship sticking up on the left there is called the Island or super structure.)
Askew - askew - adv. & adj. - To one side; awry. This sailor is askew in the frame as he walks away. For the second Tuesday in a row, a photo from my U.S.S. Midway days. This is also another image from the "Lens Flare" collection. I love the fact that you can see the actual shape and size of the aperture opening in the flare...
Steam - Here is a Vought A-7 Corsair moments away from catapulting off the deck of the U.S.S. Midway. The pilot has saluted the Launch Officer and has braced his helmet back against his headrest in anticipation of going from a standstill to 120MPH in less than 300 ft. The engine is at full power and you can see the steam from the cat being sucked into the huge intake of the plane.
A7 on Final - Here is another A7 on final approach to the U.S.S. Midway. Scanned it at the same time as I did with the photo I used for last Thursday's challenge Noisy.
Black and White - An A-7E on its way to touching down aboard the U.S.S. Midway. I took this picture standing in the catwalk that surrounds the flight deck. The 2 fellows in front of me have a "fun" job, once a plane has caught the wire, they rush out behind the plane, waiting for it to raise its tail hook. They then guide the dropped arresting cable as it is reeled back in, making sure it doesn't snag on one of the other cables. And then jump quickly back to the side as another 20-ton jet pounds onto the deck about a minute behind this one.
Discipline - Think how much discipline it take to become a pilot, because unlike driving a car, flying is in three dimensions. Now multiply that discipline by a factor of 10 and you have what it takes to pilot a multi-million dollar high performance military jet. Now multiply that discipline total yet again by about 100 and you have what it takes to land a 30,000 pound jet traveling at 125 MPH onto a deck bobbing up and down about 5 feet, that is moving away from you at 20 knots. Let's not even talk about doing it at night...
Sound - On an aircraft carrier full of fighter and attack jets the sound of the turbo-propped E2C Hawkeye coming in for a trap is very different.
Sunset - From the archives comes this sunset at sea. Flight Ops on a carrier usually run from before sun up until well after dark, so it must have been a rare moment of quiet for me to be able to capture this sunset as we steamed along.
Orange Sky - Here is the "Whale" silhouetted against the evening sky. I only have the one shot of this event, so I have to assume I didn't have the motor winder on the camera. Also because I don't have any other planes taken against this sky I can't be sure I took this on the U.S.S. Midway. Might have been during practice touch and go's on Guam.
Pusan Liberty I - In November of 1978 while anchored in the harbor of Pusan, Korea for a 3 day visit, some unexpected waves came up during the first night and damaged our gangway. Those wanting to go ashore on liberty for days 2 and 3 had to climb down cargo nets to get to the barge for boarding the boats for the trip to land.
Pusan Liberty II - This was kind of tricky if you had never done anything like it before and that is on the way to shore. Imagine how tricky it was coming back to the ship later that night after consuming plenty of Korean beer and carrying some sort of souvenir...
Ocean - Because the ocean can be an unfriendly place it is good to have a body guard. That is the job of this destroyer to the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Midway from which I took this picture.
Woman - A day late with this one, and in the end I copped out. I'm not much of a people photographer, so coming up with a woman photograph was hard for me. For whatever reasons, sailors always refer to their ships as female in gender, so here you have the woman named U.S.S. Midway. Taken out the side window of the EA-3B from a few thousand feet in the air. Kinda small looking from here, so imagine how hard it would be to find if you didn't know where to look.
Noisy - While almost everything about flight operations aboard an aircraft carrier is noisy each event has a unique sound. The noise an A-7 Corsair makes while on final approach is almost a whistle sound that varies in pitch as the pilot adjusts the throttle up and down while flying the ball.
Noise - For the second week in a row I have violated Theme Thursday Guideline #6, "Picture should be recent. Meaning that the photo was taken, preferably, within the last week or so." This picture of a McDonnell Douglas F4 Phantom on the left catapult of the U.S.S. Midway was taken in 1978. If you look under the tail of the plane you will notice very hot gases escaping at an extremely high rate of speed, because the plane has it's afterburners on in preparation for launch. Trust me, this is very noisy.
Heavy Metal - The red shirted ordinance men were the folks that loaded the "heavy metal" onto the planes on the flight deck of the carrier. Here, a few of them load AIM-9 Sparrow missiles on an A-6 Intruder. Most of the time the planes just carried the air to air missiles for self defensive purposes, but when they were flying bombing exercises these guys would get a workout loading the 250 and 500 pound bombs.
Analog - This is a Photo Friday EXTRA Challenge. Extra Challenges are different. Each will have guidelines that participants must follow. This one has a simple rule: NO IMAGES FROM DIGITAL CAMERAS. Hence the title Analog. I reached back into the archives and brought out another of my U.S.S. Midway flight deck photos taken with my then trusty Canon F1. This is an EA-3B Skywarrior as it is catapulted of the ship at dawn.
Flight - Looking up at the belly of an EA-3B from the flight deck of the U.S.S. Midway as it flies over before getting into the approach pattern. The speed brakes are out and the gear is still up. The long shape on the bottom of the fuselage is the radome that housed the four spinning electronic intelligence antennas.
EA-3B On Approach II - I've got these out of sequence. This picture is really one frame before yesterday's. For a lot of these scanned slides from on the flight deck I used a Canon F-1 with a motor winder. The really nice thing about serving on the U.S.S. Midway during this time was the Air Boss and the Captain didn't mind non-essential crew on deck during flight-ops as long as you stayed behind the fouls lines. I've got a bunch of this kind of shot for several types of aircraft, plus I have a bunch of catapult shots too.
EA-3B On Approach - A fellow by the name of Troy Prince stumbled onto my little corner of the Internet the other day and wrote me a little email. Troy runs a website dedicated to the U.S.S. Midway called MidwaySailor.com and he would like to use some of my photos on that site. I said go for it. In honor of this request I created a category just for the Midway pics and uploaded this picture. Here is an EA-3B coming in for a trap. The plane is seconds away from snagging an arresting cable and being jerked to a halt.
EA-3B Approach No. 3 - This image completes a series of shots (posted all out of order) I took of an EA-3B landing aboard the U.S.S. Midway. I was using my Canon F-1 with a motor winder and panning and zooming as the plane landed.
Number 3 Wire - The UPS man dropped off my new toy this afternoon - a Minolta Diamage Scan Dual III. I've got about a thousand slides from the late 70's to early 80's tucked away in a closet, that I want to turn into digital images. During that time frame I was in the Navy and shot mostly slides. Here an EA-3B Skywarrior catches the #3 wire on the deck of the U.S.S. Midway.
Crowded - Here is one from the bus trip back from the ship, taken using my cheapo 21mm lens. About 20 people sharing a school bus along with the rattan furniture bought in the Philippines, spare air plane parts in crates and all our sea bags. This may look crowded, but after having spent a few months at sea on an aircraft carrier, to us it seemed quite roomy.