Free Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War by Bruce Henderson Page A

the port side. They soon realized that calling the ball on the OLS and following the instructions of the LSO, both of which were strategically positioned on the aft port corner of the flight deck so theirsignals were visible even when the nose of the aircraft obscured the pilot’s view straight ahead, were the same as what they had so painstakingly practiced. After everyone made two passes, the LSO radioed the pilots to lower their tailhooks for an arrested landing, commonly called a trap or a recovery.
    The arresting cable system on an aircraft carrier is an essential component of naval aviation, allowing planes to land in a short distance aboard a ship at sea. As utilized by the early naval aviator Eugene Ely for the first shipboard landing of a plane in 1911 (aboard the cruiser Pennsylvania ), the rudimentary system consisted of pulleys and sandbags for deadweights. The recovery system had been mechanized and modernized over the years. A plane’s tailhook—all carrier planes have one, which folds up under the fuselage when not in use—catches one of four cables stretched across the flight deck. The force of the plane’s forward motion is transferred through the cable to the arresting-gear engine below deck. As the cable unwinds, the huge, hydraulic engine is designed to facilitate a smooth, controlled stop of the plane. But generations of navy pilots may dispute that the stop is smooth and controlled, given that a screeching halt from speeds greater than 100 miles per hour in two seconds is so abrupt that they’re thrown against their seat harnesses in a “violent collision” that sounds and feels “like a high-speed automobile accident.”
    After four traps on Lexington —each time they were quickly positioned for a deck launch off the bow—the students headed back to Saufley, exhausted but exhilarated. They were not yet fully qualified for carrier flight operations, however. Not until advanced flight training at their next base would they be shot off the flight deck by a catapult.
    As primary flight training came to an end, there was a “big choice” for Dieter and the other students in his class: which types of aircraft to request for advanced flight training and for eventually flying in an active-duty squadron. They were given three choices: jets; multiengine aircraft that were mostly land-based patrol planes; and A-1 Skyraiders, the last single-engine propeller-driven aircraft still in use on carriers. Each student was given a form to fill out listing his first, second, and third choices.
    Notwithstanding the choices given the students, the navy used two main criteria in making these assignments. First and foremost came the needs of the service, which changed weekly. One week there might be noopenings for jets, which a sizable number of students in any class wanted to fly; the following week, when the next class received assignments, there could be a dozen jet openings. Also, students received—or did not receive—their requested assignments on the basis of their class ranking. Even the top students faced uncertainty about the selection process: at the time they listed their choices, they did not know the number of pilots needed in each program that week or even their own class ranking. If the top student in the class requested jets and there was at least one opening, he would get it. But if the same student requested jets in a week when there weren’t any openings, he would be assigned to multiengines, a disappointment for anyone who saw himself as the fleet’s next hot jet jockey. An added twist was that a student would end up in A-1 Skyraiders, which took just three new pilots every few weeks because the program was winding down (no new A-1s had been built since 1957), only if he listed them as his first choice. Balancing the popularity of jets and the limited A-1 openings was the fact that some naval flight students listed multiengines as their first choice. These students included some who already