Lights On in General

Turning Your Lights On

by CDR Jack “Farva” Curtis, USN(Ret)

On the signal from a 20‐something Sailor, you advance the throttles forward and feel the machine come to life. You don’t hear much because the noise is all behind you.

You quickly scan the engine
instruments, not actually reading them so much as scanning for anything that looks different — different is bad. There are no red warning lights or beeping alarms — this is good.

Satisfied that all appears normal, you advance the throttles a little more through a small bit of physical resistance. This opens valves that spray fuel into the already hellish infernos that are the exhaust stages of your engine — afterburner.

Beautifully terrifying cones of flame rage out the back of your machine. They are perfectly shaped, parallel to the deck, blue transitioning into hues of orange. The machine seems to be begging to be let free of the deck, held in place by a small piece of metal straining against the violence.

With 60,000 pounds of machine shaking and howling, it takes just a flip of a switch near your left pinky finger to consent to its release. This small “pinky switch” controls the exterior lights.

When you’re ready to unleash this thunderous fire‐belching beast, turning the exterior lights on tells that 20‐something to tell someone else to tell yet someone else to push a button.

The button sends a surge of steam pressure through countless pipes and valves up to a large piston connected through the deck to that small piece of metal holding everything in place. That surge of steam pressure is just enough to exceed the tensile strength of the connector and now there’s nothing holding you back. The piston screams down its track, taking the machine with it … and you.

Leaving the flight deck, there is nothing (NOTHING!) outside to see, nothing to look at except the small symbols on the head‐up display showing your flight path, altitude, airspeed, heading and a positive rate of climb away from the ocean. You know it’s down there, you can sense its enormity, but you can’t see it.

As children we thought our bedrooms were the darkest scariest places imaginable after the night light went out. Dark is a familiar concept, but there is no dark like the darkness off the front of an aircraft carrier. We often perceive darkness as the absence of light. This darkness is more. It’s not the absence of something, it’s an actual present thing, a darkness so complete that you feel it—and it’s heavy. You’re not passing through it as much as you’re a part of it, but mercifully, it begins to change, albeit slowly.

As your brain begins to process numbers, words and radio calls, you start to notice the tiniest flickers of light. You even have a second to consider not just the life choices that brought you to this moment, but also other stuff like how the light of those flickers left its source, in many cases, millions of years ago, so you could see it now. It’s enough to make a confident jet pilot feel small.

By the time your machine has delivered you to altitude you can see the Milky Way, Venus and maybe a sliver of a moon that seems to taunt you as it sets below the horizon. It’s still dark, but the world is beginning to make sense again. There’s dark below and light above. The old ladies at Sunday school had no idea how right they were!

There’s been much written and said about the challenges of landing aircraft on ships on the sea at night. And, let there be no confusion, it’s not easy nor is it particularly fun, but there’s one element that most experienced pilots will admit makes it much more comfortable than the night catapult shot. You’re in control of the landing and being in control matters to the kind of people who do this job. The extent of your control off the bow ends at turning your lights on and accepting your fate.

The number of people, most of them high‐school students a frighteningly short time ago, who have to do their jobs correctly is enough to keep your lights off. The number of hot, tired and dehydrated people responsible for getting the dozens of calculations right, balancing factors such as aircraft weight, asymmetric weapons loading, air temperature and wind speed, is enough to keep your lights off.

You hope that the last person pushing the button has enough good sense to time it with the up and down heaves of the deck, but this assumes there’s enough of a horizon for him to even perceive the heave. This is enough to keep your lights off.

You hold your outstretched arm firm against the throttles, brace your head and neck, wiggle your toes and say a quick prayer. Your lights have been on for what seems like the longest three seconds of your life. Please God, please have allowed all these people to have done their jobs well tonight.

And in an instant, you’re fired into that all‐encompassing abyss. Positive rate of climb. Positive rate of climb. So far, so good.
Everyone did their job tonight. And you?

Against all reason you turned your lights on and it’s time to do your job.