The Perfect Storm: an Intrepid night landing Routine Carrier Flight Operations** My experience with an unexpected storm was vividly brought to mind by this phenomenal movie... The Perfect Storm. It reminded me of the night I had to land on the USS Intrepid in the North Atlantic because of low fuel state. The scenes from the movie, while only computer graphics and special effects, were all too real. The unsuccessful effort to refuel the Coast Guard rescue helicopter reminded me of my first seven attempts to land, in each of which I failed to catch a wire with my plane's tailhook. The freighter scenes reminded me of what the Intrepid looked like when I could see her. The deck scenes of the men on the fishing boat and Coast Guard Cutter, being washed about, reminded me of the flight deck crews after I caught a wire on my eighth approach in driving rain and wind. Their courage under extreme weather and sea conditions and their plane handling skills on a rolling pitching deck in the darkness of night remain embedded in my mind. The movie is based on a book by the same name about severe weather, terrifying seas and human events which actually happened in 1991. The realization of what a night of terror I had experienced with my three fellow S2F crewmembers did not really sink in until I was safely in my stateroom sipping medicinal whiskey from the helmet full supplied by the flight surgeon. Based on a review of my log book, this all occurred June 30, 1964, and it was then (and may still be) the Naval Aviation Tradition for the squadron flight surgeon to meet aviators at the bottom of the escalator following all night flights and "administer" to them two bottles of medicine. If you read "Apollo 13", you will recall that Jim Lovell got the standard two bottles for his emergency night landing. The night of June 30th my flight surgeon filled my flight helmet with as many bottles as it would hold, and I didn't even have an emergency other than low fuel state. The above does not mean the weather or North Atlantic Ocean wave(s) were as bad as they are in The Perfect Storm, in the latter case the killer wave was 90 feet and that's not fiction. The only comparison I can make is that the Intrepid's flight deck is 60 feet and waves were washing across as I made my eight approaches. The waves were probably not 60 feet because the Intrepid was diving into each wave much like the freighter did in the movie, but I couldn't tell because I could not see anything except black, rain and the meatball. We did not have automatic landing systems on the Intrepid then. Our navigational aids in those days consisted of radar, TACAN (tactical air communications and navigation) and LSO's (landing signal officer) using lights and mirror... the optical landing system that reflected a ball of orange light (the meatball) which guided aviators in their descent to the flight deck. The object was to keep the meatball centered between two rows of green lights and watch and listen for the LSO's signal, both by radio and visual.....green to cut power and land - red to wave off and go around if you were too high or low or about to hit a wave. In the movie when the skipper of the fishing boat is hanging on the yard arm, think LSO. The only thing to which I can attribute the fact that I kept on coming those eight times instead of allowing the terror of the circumstances to overwhelm me was the unsurpassed Naval Aviation Training which I had received two years earlier. It was, and I hope still is, the best there is, and probably explains why it takes at least six months longer to earn the Navy's Wings of Gold than the Air Force Silver. In later years, in similar weather minus the waves, and flying my Beech Duchess (BE76) during daylight, that same training saved Phyllis and me from buying the farm (ask Michele). And Cdr. Morgan in an e-mail to me wrote... "I remember that training kicking in once when you and I were flying to New Orleans. Seems like another plane was at the wrong altitude, and the air traffic controller told you to lose some quick. You didn't hesitate, and down we went a couple of thousand feet or more in no time. You got kudos from the atc guy, and I arrived in New Orleans a shade of green. But at least I arrived. The flight surgeon wasn't there to greet us, but the bartender was." That night in the North Atlantic no one on the Intrepid expected the weather to do what it did. Nor did anyone expect the The Perfect Storm and it's 90 foot wave when they set sail. It's the unexpected that can kill... rto