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Or, as it is properly called, Primary Flight Control, or PriFly. The strategic (it could be best described) location of PriFly atop the carrier’s island lets the Air Boss and the Mini Air Boss keep a sharp eye out on all aspects of the flight deck, from the roundown on the stern to the very tippy-tip of the bow.

Back in May of ‘06 I did a post about a funny story that made the rounds when I was a catapult officer.  Since it involves the Boss, it begs to be re-told:

Waitin’ On Steam, Boss!

The All Powerful Lord of our Existence on an aircraft carrier is the Air Boss, more succinctly known as simply “Boss”. The flight deck belongs to him, as do all airwing aircraft within 25 miles of the ship.

Kennedy Air Boss CDR Larry Francisco, “Bulldog”, in PriFli, 1988-89

His perch is atop the island, the very tip-top enclosure known as “Pri Fly”, or Primary Flight Control. From there he dispenses his power and effect, sometimes in dulcet tones designed to calm a frazzled young naval aviator wrestling with snakes in his cockpit (go read Lex’s “Rhythms” for a superb description of this), and sometimes in a voice that, quite literally, evokes images of God’s Wrath.

Frank Harvey, in his excellent 1968 book Air War – Vietnam (very likely out of print, but a great read if you can find it) has a definitive description of what the Air Boss can do:

The most fearful accident I have ever seen on a flight deck…happened on the way down from Japan to Subic Bay. An F-4, with a 600-gallon auxiliary fuel tank mounted on its centerline, was being launched from the port waist cat. It was a hot day and the plane was grossed out to the max, so it was necessary to go to full afterburners during the holdback. The burners were roaring and belching flames when the big F-4 broke her sheer link and leaped down the deck. But the massive G-loads of the catapult were too much for the teardrop tank, and it came apart like wet paper, spewing raw jet fuel over men on the deck and in the catwalk. Some were drenched. A fraction of a second later the blazing afterburner torched the fuel and the whole forward part of the deck was a rolling cloud of fire. Out of it raced human torches, screaming in agony. The whole sequence occurred – from everything normal to a sickening horror in about a tenth of a second.

[Air Boss] Comdr. Ken Enny earned a full years pay in the next 10 seconds. Men were screaming at him over the phones to pull the chain and flood the place with seawater, lest the whole carrier turn into a torch. At the same time , an A-4 Skyhawk was sitting on the adjacent catapult, completely enveloped in fire, engine pulling full power, with the pilot not knowing if he’d be launched any second.

But Ken Enny didn’t panic and pour tons of saltwater on the fire, since the fuel was going to burn out very quickly by itself anyway. Besides, the seawater could have done so much harm to the catapult mechanisms as it poured down the groove to the insides of the ship that the waist cat would have been out of commission for weeks. So Enny sat tight. Then he picked up his mike and began giving his orders – calm, deliberate, positive.

He told the A-4 pilot to hold full power lest he be accidentally fired off the cat in the excitement. He told the below-decks crew to secure all launches immediately. He called Damage Control and Sick Bay and told them to move in on the double. Because he was cool and deliberate, he did not make any mistakes and he got his messages fast and ungarbled. What might have turned into a real nightmare was stopcocked in a few minutes. Thirty-two men were burned, four critically, but nobody was killed.

Frank Harvey, Air War – Vietnam, Bantam Books, 1968

Anyhow, it came to be one fine morning onboard USS DWIGHT D EISENHOWER that the catapult crew was getting ready for a scheduled launch. SOP (Standard Operating Procedures, for you landlubbers) dictate specific times to man up your work/watch stations prior to a launch, and all members of the V-2 (Catapult and Arresting Gear) were in place – except one.

Getting ready for a launch evolution is an exercise in watching a visual jigsaw puzzle coming together. Aircraft are taxing up to catapults, weight boards are being shown by deck crew and rogered by aircrew. Holdback units (that hold the aircraft in place as they go to full power while hooked up to the catapult) as are being readied and inspected, trouble shooters are eyeballing their aircraft, ordnancemen are getting ready to arm weapons, catapult crews are inspecting the cat tracks and making sure there is no loose gear about the deck, the ship is starting to make a big turn into the wind to help provide the “lift” needed to “slip the surly bonds of earth”.

Now, aircraft carrier catapults, for the time being (check back to the Instapinch in about 10 years and we can talk about electromagnetic catapults) live on steam. Hot steam. High pressure steam. As in 520 pounds per square inch of steam pressure. Depending on what else may be going on in the ship at the time, that steam pressure may not quite be at the requisite 520 PSI for launch. Happens sometimes – fire drills may be drawing off pressure, some other evolution may be tapping into the steam network, whatever. When that happens, the call to the Boss is usually “Waitin’ on steam Boss!” to let him know we’re all set but waiting on the snipes (engineers) in the dark bowels of the ship to get us our steam.

So, to set up the finale to this over-long post, there are aircraft hooked up to the catapult, weight boards rogered, aircrew ready, ship into the wind, the amber “5 min to go” light is almost turning green, and the catapult crew on the number 1 cat is…..short one man.

Frantic phone calls down to the V-2 office – “#$%^!!! GET that sonuva@#$^% up here right now!!!” was the best that could be done at the moment. Grasping at ANYTHING that could gain a few extra moments, and like true naval aviators, never wanting to look bad, the call went out to the Boss:

“Ummm…we’re….ahhh…waitin’ on steam, Boss!”

At that moment, Petty Officer *#$% pops up in the catwalk, eyes as big as soup plates behind his goggles, and takes off like the proverbial scalded rabbit across the deck to his watchstation.

In the hectic, organized chaos that is an aircraft carrier flight deck seconds away from a launch, it was hoped that he’d make it across the deck unnoticed and all would be well.

But over the radio came this call, from the Boss:

“Hey Bow! I think I see your steam, running across the deck!”

Who said God doesn’t have a sense of humor?