Another Great Day at Sea. Geoff Dyer

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СКАЧАТЬ plane from a neighbouring catapult blasts into the sky.

      With the first part of the launch and recovery cycle completed there was an interlude of quietness, though even during the busiest times there had been a lot of hanging about; at least one of the coloured-castes of crew were lounging about in a state of relaxed alertness. John Updike asks, in one of his books about art, if there is such a thing as an American face. I don’t know, but looking at the guys on the flight deck, unfaced by cranials and vizors, persuaded me that there is such a thing as an American walk. Even overweight cops have it: an ease and grace, a subdued swagger. It used to be identified mainly with race—a black thing—but now it seems a cultural and national quality.

      Through the dazed silence we walked towards the stern of the boat to better observe the planes landing, past the side of the island where a sign warned, quite reasonably:

      BEWARE OF

      JET BLAST

       PROPELLERS

      AND ROTORS

      All of which were gathered here in great abundance. Over this warning, like the sign of a giant casino, was the white number 77. There was much to see, lots of it on an enormous scale—but my escort was always tapping me on the shoulder, pointing to hoses, pipes, hooks, chains and other small things that could be tripped over.

      We could see the planes high up in the blue distance, plane-shaped specks coming round in an immense circle. As they approached the carrier their wings were all the time tilting slightly, first one way and then the other, adjusting, compensating. Three arresting wires—thick as rope but thin and wiry in this context—were stretched across the rear of the deck. On the port side of the boat, very near the back, the landing signal officers—all pilots themselves—communicated detailed refinements of approach to the pilot.

      The planes thump down and then, rather than slowing down—as one might reasonably expect—immediately accelerate to full power in case they miss all of the arresting wires and need to go round again, as had happened to us on the Greyhound: a bolter, in the argot. If the hook catches then the arresting wire snakes out in a long V and brings the plane to a halt. The dangers of the operation are numerous and evident. The plane can crash into the back of the ship, slide off to port and into the sea or—worse—slide starboard into the island, people, tow trucks and other parked planes. Every variety of mishap was featured in a book I’d been looking through on the flight to Bahrain: Clear the Deck! Aircraft Carrier Accidents of World War II. Unused missiles would shake loose from under wings and be launched into the island. The force of the landing would be so great that a plane already damaged by gunfire would break in two, the back half snagged by the arresting wire while the front part barrelled on down the flight deck. In the worst crashes the plane would become an instant fireball but—and this is what rendered the book engrossing rather than simply horrific—it was often impossible to tell what would happen to the pilot. The plane comes crashing down and, amid the flames, the pilot scrambles out of the cockpit and rolls down a wing to safety. The plane smashes into pieces and the pilot walks away, shaken but otherwise unhurt. But a relatively innocuous-looking crash results in his being killed instantly, still strapped to his seat.

      The metaphor that kept coming up in pilots’ accounts was that landing on a carrier was like trying to land on a postage stamp (one of the guys I met later on the carrier would use exactly that phrase). Which takes some doing, of course, but if it’s daylight, with a steady wind, perfect visibility and the sea flat as a pond it looks fairly routine. But then you throw in some variables: a storm, cross-winds, rain and pitching seas so that looking through the Plexiglas of the cockpit is like being on a trawler in the North Sea. Or maybe one engine’s gone. Or both engines are gone. Or you’re blinded by gunfire, unable to see anything, taking instructions from a plane on your wing and the LSO, nobody raising their voices, just ‘Right rudder, right rudder’—until the last moment when the LSO shouts, ‘Attitude, attitude, attitude!’

      You can see footage of this stuff, along with a lot more escapes and disasters—recent and vintage—on YouTube. A plane that seems on the brink of stalling, almost vertically, right over the carrier, somehow takes wing again. A malfunction means the navigator has partially ejected and so the pilot has to bring the plane in with his colleague riding on the remains of the cockpit as if at a rodeo. Hearing the LSO yell, ‘Eject! Eject! Eject!’, pilot and navigator obey instantly, only to see their plane gather speed and fly gamely into the distance like a horse whose jockey has fallen at Becher’s Brook.

      If all goes as planned, the plane comes to a halt, the tail hook is raised, the arresting wire is released and comes snaking back, helped on its way by crew members who prod it along with brooms to discourage it from even thinking of taking a break. Within seconds it’s back in place, kinked and quivering somewhat from the strain of its existence—understandable in the circumstances—but otherwise ready for the next tug of war with an F-18.

      2

      We trooped back down the stairs, took off our float coats and cranials. In the course of my stay I moved constantly and quickly between the numerous levels below the flight deck, often barely conscious of where I was (didn’t have a clue most of the time), but the difference between the flight deck and everything below was absolute. It was like entering the dreamtime up there, a martial realm of the supersonic, where the sky gods G and Negative G had constantly to be assuaged and satisfied. Launch and recovery may have been organized as they were in the interests of efficiency and safety but it was a religious ritual too—a ritual from which it was impossible to return as a non-believer or sceptic even if one didn’t understand exactly who was doing what or why (actually that qualifier binds it more tightly to traditional religious ceremonies).

      Now it was time for another, more ordinary ritual: lunch in the Ward Room reserved for commissioned officers. My anxieties about what life on the boat would be like had not been confined to whether I’d have my own room. I was also worried about the scran, the scoff, the grub. I’m the worst kind of fussy eater. I don’t have any allergies and aside from seafood I don’t have any generic objections to food types, but I have aversions and revulsions so intense and varied that I struggle to keep track of them myself. I grew up hating all the food my parents cooked, was always being told I didn’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive. That’s probably why I’m so skinny, why I joined the lunch queue with some trepidation. Trepidation that turned out to be entirely justified. It was all revolting. The smell of cooked meats and the jet fuel they were cooked in made me heave. There were salads, yes, but with lettuces represented and disastrously symbolized by the iceberg they were deeply dispiriting. I’m not a principled vegetarian but I was on the look-out for a cooked vegetarian option which I found in the form of spaghetti with tomato sauce. It was almost cold while it was in the serving containers. By the time it had sat on a cold plate for thirty seconds and I had sat down with the snapper, Newell and some friends of his from the Reactor Room, any residue of heat had gone. It was not a pleasant pasta but at least its unpleasantness was all in the moment of consumption; the unpleasantness did not turn into the gag-inducing aftertaste of the big meats. A veteran of assignments in the world’s most troubled and least appetizing spots, the snapper tucked in with gusto. He was hungry, the snapper, and he was adaptable. For dessert I had a couple of plums and a yoghurt which, coincidentally, was plum-flavoured though it didn’t really taste of anything. It wasn’t much of a meal but the sparrow had been kept alive, the wolf from the door. I had got through lunch but I was already—after just one sitting—calculating how many more meals I would have to get through in the course of my stay.

      3

      After all I’d heard about the size of these carriers I’d assumed there would be an abundance of facilities. Ping-Pong tables—and the prospect of a table-tennis league—were such a cert that I’d actually brought my paddle with me. Badminton seemed likely and, though СКАЧАТЬ