24 Hours on the 'Big Stick'
O'ROURKE, P. J.
24 Hours on the ‘Big Stick’ What you can learn about America on the deck of the USS ‘Theodore Roosevelt’ BY P. J. O’ROURKE Landing on an aircraft carrier is. . . . To begin with, you travel...
...A strange fl ight it is—from the hard and fast reality of a fl oating island to the fantasy world of American solid ground...
...In fact what everyone calls the C-2 is the “COD...
...We were in heavy seas...
...Given what screw-ups we humans are in these respects, conservatism is also a matter of sense of humor...
...At least John likes women, which is more than we can say about Hillary’s attitude toward, for instance, the women in Bill’s life, who at this point may constitute nearly the majority of the “women’s vote...
...The heater is from the parts bin at the Plymouth factory in 1950...
...There’s Ms...
...These are the same kids,” a chief petty offi cer said, “who, back on land, have their hats bumped to one side and their pants around their knees, hanging out on corners...
...The captain commands, but his whims do not...
...I don’t pretend to know what I’m talking about here...
...Indeed the whole ship is run by youngsters...
...Even the pilots live in three-bunk cabins as small and windowless as hall closets...
...The cables are held slightly above the runway by metal hoops...
...Really, they communicate by “training telepathy...
...Change...
...The hook doesn’t appear sturdy enough to yank Al Franken offstage when Al is smirking about the presidential candidate who belonged to the Tailhook Association...
...The effect is of being strapped to an armchair and dropped backwards off a balcony onto a patio...
...The hook is supposed to—and somehow usually does—strike the deck between the second and third arresting cables...
...Commander Philip Rosi, public affairs offi cer of the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group...
...And most of the fl ight deck crew members are only 19 or 20...
...This indicates that the pilot is . . . no, isn’t . . . yes, is . . . isn’t . . . is . . . on course to land...
...The cable then does not jerk the F-18 back to the stern the way it would in a cartoon...
...You sit reversed in cold, dark cacophony while the airplane maneuvers for what euphemistically is called a “landing...
...I could go on about the TR and its crew at epic length...
...The catapult sends you squashed against your fl ight harness...
...This is not a pilot taking off...
...When the shear pin shears the jet is unleashed and so is a steam catapult that hurls the plane down the slot, from 0 to 130 miles per hour in two seconds...
...And there’s the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political cr?che, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: “Change, man...
...They’re not just running against the hero John McCain, they’re running against heroism itself and against almost everything about America that ought to be conserved...
...its tailhook snags a cable on the carrier deck...
...God has given America a special mission...
...The pilot can’t really see these cables and isn’t really looking at that runway, which is rising at him like a slap in the face or falling away like the slope of a playground slide when you’re four...
...Heard any good quips lately from Hillary or Barack...
...He answers to the nation...
...They have absorbed their responsibilities to the point that each knows exactly where to be and when and doing what...
...And the EU can’t blow up Liechtenstein...
...A one-day visit to an aircraft carrier is a lifelong lesson in conservatism...
...Conservatism is also a matter of honor, duty, valor, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilization, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy are based...
...They are on the radio telling the pilot what he’s doing or better had do or hadn’t better...
...Smarty-Pantsuit, the BosniaUnder-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns...
...We went back on deck to see—wrong verb—to feel and hear the night fl ights...
...These are supremely dangerous jobs...
...Spray was coming over the bow onto the fl ight deck, 60 feet above the waterline...
...There is a fl eeting moment of unconsciousness...
...I can speak to John’s honor, duty, valor, patriotism, etc., but I’m not sure how well his self-discipline would have fared if he’d been on an aircraft carrier with more than 500 beautiful women sailors the way I was...
...Landing on an aircraft carrier was the most fun I’d ever had with my trousers on...
...The powered-up jet is held at the end of its slot by a steel shear pin smaller than a V-8 can...
...McCain could hardly escape understanding the limits of something huge but hermetic, like a government is, and packed with a madding crowd...
...Then, miraculously, you’re still alive...
...The plane is moved to within what seems like a bowling alley’s length of the bow...
...It is not a toy bunny serving imaginary sweets at a makebelieve political tea party...
...But it’s full, with some 5,500 people aboard...
...A warship is a sort of giant Sherman tank upon the water...
...And one day, if they’ll invite me back, I’ll do so...
...Cabin lighting and noise insulation are absent...
...This is a C-2 Greyhound, named after the wrong dog...
...Plus there are other pilots on the radio along with an offi cer in the control tower...
...This is a pilot as cat’s eye marble pinched between boundless thumb and infi nite forefi nger of Heaven’s own Wham-O slingshot...
...You’re in steady, level fl ight...
...Scores of people are all over the fl ight deck during takeoffs and landings...
...They use hand signals...
...And yet an aircraft carrier is more an example of what people can do than what government can’t...
...Once below deck you’re sealed inside...
...While we were on the Theodore Roosevelt a memorial service was held for a crew member who had been swept overboard...
...The average age, offi cers and all, is about 24...
...Some people say John McCain isn’t conservative enough...
...And while I’m at it let me heap praise upon the people who arranged and guided my Big Stick tour...
...And the plane doesn’t land...
...ger, or more moving, than a U.S.-fl agged nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that’s longer than the Empire State Building is tall and possesses four acres of fl ight deck...
...And the 24 hours that I spent aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt—the “Big Stick”—were an equally unalloyed pleasure...
...Would there have been an admiral and a captain of an aircraft carrier and hundreds of the bravest Americans at a memorial service for you when you were 20...
...Whereupon there is a crash...
...This is an acronym for “Curling the hair Of Dumb reporters,” although they tell you it stands for “Carrier Onboard Delivery...
...Your seat faces aft...
...An intricate, time-tested system replete with checks and balances is not a plaything to be moved around in a doll house of ideology...
...I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer...
...This is not an impressivelooking piece of equipment—no smirks about the 1991 Tailhook Association brouhaha, please...
...China can blow up Tibet, maybe, and possibly Taiwan...
...The ship is immense, going seven decks down from the fl ight deck and ten levels up in the tower...
...And just when you think that everything inside your body is going to blow out your nose and navel, it’s over...
...Russia can barely blow up Chechnya...
...C-2 Flying Pit Bull is more like it...
...Dell’Orto and a group of ten Distinguished Visitors (minus me...
...I was invited on the “embark” thanks to the kindness of the Honorable William J. (Jim) Haynes II, former Department of Defense general counsel...
...The trip was arranged by Colonel Kelly Wheaton, senior military assistant to acting Department of Defense general counsel Daniel Dell’Orto, and by Lt...
...Carrier landings are more astonishing...
...It requires organization, needs hierarchies, demands meritocracy, insists upon delegation of authority...
...They wear color-coded T-shirts—yellow for fl ight-directing, purple for fueling, blue for chocking and tying-down, red for weapon-loading, brown for I-know-not-what, and so on...
...As the ship was pitching, 18 tons of F-18 with a wingspan of 40odd feet approached at the speed of celebrity sex rumor...
...Carrier launches are astonishing events...
...There is only one window in the freight/passenger compartment, and you’re nowhere near it...
...And machinery doesn’t get any bigP. J. O’Rourke is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Although watching these events is so unreal that you expect cartoon logic to apply...
...This is a good thing, as is being far from the window, because what happens next is that the COD reels the hooked cable out the entire length of the carrier deck until a big, fat nothing is between you and a plunge in the ocean, should the hook, cable, or pilot’s judgment snap...
...Supposedly the “women’s vote” is . . . well, let’s not go too far with this...
...There are no cheery portholes to wave from...
...Living space is as cramped as steerage on the way to Ellis Island...
...These people can’t hear each other...
...The pilot has his eye on the “meatball,” a device, portside midship, with a glowing dot that does— or doesn’t—line up between two lighted dashes...
...Four acres of fl ight deck has never looked so small...
...A slot-car slot runs down the middle of the bowling alley...
...Now imagine all concerned doing all of the above with their eyes closed...
...The pilot drops his tailhook...
...But the USA can blow up . . . gosh, where to start...
...Meanwhile there are sailors in charge of the landing hunched at a control panel portside aft...
...The pilot is very well trained because at this point his head doesn’t explode...
...A blast shield larger than any government building driveway Khomeini-fl ipper rises behind the fi ghter jet, and the jet’s twin engines are cranked to maximum thrust...
...In this never-never land a couple of tinhorn Second City shysters—who, put together, don’t have the life experience of the lowest ranking gob-withaswab cleaning a head on the Big Stick—presume to run for president of the United States...
...I traveled with the Honorable Mr...
...This four acres, if it were a nation, would have the fi fth or sixth largest airforce in the world—86 fi xed wing aircraft plus helicopters...
...To begin with, you travel out to the carrier on a powerful, compact, and chunky aircraft—a weight-lifter version of a regional airline turboprop...
...When a plane crashes, a weapon malfunctions, or a fi re breaks out, there’s no ejection seat for the fl ight deck crew...
...But, being a reporter, I wasn’t there to report on things...
...Had it been lawn you’d swear you could do it in 15 minutes with a push mower...
...I wanted to say something about Senator John McCain...
...And as soon as our distinguished visitor group donned “fl oat coats” and ear protection and went to the fl ight deck and saw F-18s take off and land, I had something to say...
...Wheeler, commanding officer of the Theodore Roosevelt, Rear Admiral Frank C. Pandolfe, commander of the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, and Command Master Chief Petty Offi cer Chris Engles, who— as anyone with experience in or of the Navy knows (my dad was a chief petty offi cer)—actually runs everything...
...Some say John McCain’s character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison...
...The nearest land is 150 miles away...
...And—if all goes well—the airplane is airborne...
...I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do—voluntarily...
...But it’s John McCain who actually has put his life in the hands of adolescents on a carrier deck...
...These would have been interesting subjects to discuss with the Theodore Roosevelt shipmates, but time was up...
...And, come night ops, they can’t do that...
...Supposedly the “youth vote” is all for Obama...
...The Theodore Roosevelt and its accompanying cruisers, destroyers, and submarines can blow up most of the military of most of the countries on earth...
...They are also waving colored paddles at him meaning this or that...
...And here they’re in charge of $35 million airplanes...
...But I didn’t visit the Theodore Roosevelt just to gush patriotically— although some patriotic gushing is called for in America at the moment...
...If an arresting cable breaks—and they do—half a dozen young men and women could be sliced in half...
...The only things we could see were the fl aming twin suns of the F-18 afterburners at the end of the catapult slot...
...Back on the COD you’re buckled in and told to brace as if for a crash...
...I love big, moving machinery...
...Four arresting cables are stretched across the stern, each thick as a pepperoni...
...Onboard we met people more distinguished yet, including Captain C.L...
...But there’s more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo...
...That is a night operation...
...Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer’s or a half gallon of Dewar’s...
...The crew is in more danger than the pilots...
...I was there to get a journalistic hook—a tailhook, as it were— for a preconceived idea...
...Got any spare change...
Vol. 13 • April 2008 • No. 31
