JP Falardeau Letter

Hey,

So I thought you might be interested to hear about a wild night I had out here last night. I launched off into Iraq yesterday… my third day in country in a row. All amounting to about 19 hours in the air over the last 3 days. That's a lot of time in an ejection seat and my butt is still numb. Anyway, the weather over Iraq was nice, but down below there was a brutal dust storm blowing through the whole Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf. So when we came back to the ship last night, the visibility was down to about 1/2 mile because of the dust. On an average night, you can usually make out the landing area of the boat at about 5 miles and start lining yourself up, even if it is really dark out with no moon. However, I knew last night was going to be a different story. I talked to my buddy, Pods (Dave Podgorski) who was in my right seat and we reviewed the game plan for not being able to see the ship or "meatball" at 3/4 mile (the standard distance for transition to flying visually outside). The meatball (commonly referred to as just "the ball") is a series of lights that tell you weather you are too high, too low or just right (on glideslope). So we pressed for the approach on time, got down to our altitude, got the landing gear down and squared the jet away on final approach. At about 11 miles our TACAN failed the bed and no longer read our distance from the ship. Luckily it came back at 5 miles. At 5 miles, I could not see the boat, and figured it would be a while before I could. So I just kept flying the instruments until 3/4 mile. When I looked up, I could only make out the drop lights on the very back of the ship, indicating that we were lined up right, but I couldn't see the ball because it was still out in the haze. The LSOs started talking me down, but I was lined up so far right and high that they waved me off. I noticed during the waveoff that I could make out the ball, more or less, at about 1/2 mile. Holy ****!, this was going to be interesting. So Pods and I talked about it as we were vectored for a second try. I told him that I just had to fly the instruments for a few potatoes inside 3/4 mile, about until we got to 1/2 mile (200 feet altitude) and then fly outside for the last 10 seconds of the pass until we trapped. Without a horizon as a reference, the Prowler is a bitch to fly I had a hard time keeping it lined up with the landing area on the first pass. We came around for the second pass after they hooked us back in at 4.5 miles and made our approach to the ship. Same thing this time and I was still lined up right at the start. I got a couple "power" calls and "come left" calls from the LSOs, I couldn't see the ball at the start, but made a play to the left and put the power on while referencing the instruments. I drove the jet high, crossed through centerline and ended up left of centerline. At this point, I picked up the ball and started flying outside. From there, I knew I had a chance and worked off the high with the LSOs talking me down the whole time. I caught the 4 wire and was never so psyched to be back aboard the ship. I think my comments were "Holy ***! ****! That's what it's all about!" once we came to a stop. Every landing is stressful to some degree, even for the guys who have flown hundreds of them. If we had to go around again and again, we would have ended up having to go get more gas from the tanker F-18 overhead and keep trying. Because of the bad weather everywhere, there was no chance of us using one of our divert airfields in one of the other countries out here as a backup. So there was a lot at stake and it felt really good to get the job done. It was also interesting getting back to the ready room and watching everybody else come aboard on the platform camera. Pods was great throughout the whole thing and I owe him a cold one next time we pull into port… not to mention the LSOs.