Watch a flight of Navy carrier planes sweep across the sky, and notice how heads turn to follow them. Among civilians and non-flying naval officers, the usual reaction is "Why would a man want to fly those things? Every minute up there is dangerous!" Admittedly, flying is dangerous. Yet student aviators find flying a fascinating release from humdrum earthbound routine and the dull grind of desk work. As far as fear and danger are concerned, both are soon lessened to a considerable degree with increased experience and foresight. Yet the Navy's student aviators do have problems, pressing problems, on which their viewpoints are well worth considering.
Many of the problems of our nuclear Navy, fast moving into the space age, are beyond the ability of junior officers to grasp or resolve. However, the junior officers of today must become the senior officers on whom our country will depend for protection in a future which appears to be far less secure than at any previous time in our history. Many senior officers do not concern themselves with the problems of our present junior officers, because they feel such young officers have no command decisions to make. Some senior officers likewise assume that only the most aggravated blunders can minimize junior officers' career opportunities and that these young officers have unlimited opportunities which simply did not exist 20 or 30 years ago. All too often their problems are regarded as mere trivialities. The lives of junior officers, however, are not quite so rosy as some might assume, nor are they liable to become rosier in the future. And this seems to be especially true in the case of junior officers in naval aviation.
The following presentation of the problems, ideas, hopes and conflicts confronting newly commissioned junior officers is based on discussions with student officers in the Naval Air Training Command and those who have recently been designated naval aviators. All these student aviators have a definite goal. Almost every aviator, whether he plans a naval career or not, has some goal. The career officer may hope to achieve anything from command of aircraft squadrons to command of a task group. Every pilot wants, at least, to become a plane commander. This goal is achieved by jet aircraft pilots as soon as they receive their wings. For ASW aircraft pilots, pilots of S2F's and P2V's, it takes longer to get command of a plane but rarely more than two years.
Student aviators feel they have a distinct advantage over other naval officers because they will have their first "command" while they are but junior grade lieutenants. Their contemporaries in the subsurface Navy do not achieve command until they are at least lieutenants. Line officers who hope to command destroyers usually must wait until they are lieutenant commander or above.
Basically, all line officers are naval officers first and aviators, submariners, or surface line officers second. Although only a special field of the Navy is being examined, it should be understood that all junior officers are interested in the Navy and its over-all mission. The various specialties of the junior officers may be of such a nature as to require them to follow different courses throughout their naval career. But all careers aim at essentially the same height; command. Thus, in analyzing the present day situations of junior officers, many problems and difficulties encountered by aviators may also be applied to those in other specialties of the Navy.
The student naval aviators, capable, competent, and mature, are well-qualified to be examined as a group typifying what the Navy may expect to find in its senior officer ranks in years to come. The student aviators of today have more education than they did during World War II, when the tremendous demand for pilots prohibited waiting for aviation students to graduate from college before entering a formal flight training program. That was strictly a mass operation in which the Navy trained as many young men as it could accept, as quickly as possible, in order to get them into the air. At the close of the war, many officers decided to remain in the Navy. But many aviators were not augmented into the regular Navy because they lacked the college education which their contemporaries in the surface Navy possessed. Today, however, most aviation students are college graduates.
Student naval aviators know they are involved in one of the most hazardous branches of aviation in the world. The major difference between naval aviation and all other kinds of flying is the aircraft carrier. It is not nearly enough that naval aviators be able to complete long-range missions, low altitude overwater flights, and high-speed, high-altitude bombing runs. They must be able to do all these things and in addition return themselves and their aircraft to base safely. Any pilot normally can land quite easily on an 8,000- foot-long, 200-foot-wide landing strip. But naval aviators must be able to fly onto a carrier deck landing area no more than 300 feet long. This involves handling aircraft at slow speeds, in dangerous attitudes, and at very low altitudes. Carrier operations require pilots to land on an exact spot on deck in order to catch the arresting wire. Such landings mean that pilots must withstand deceleration from 100 knots down to zero knots in a matter of seconds; they must endure even greater accelerations in catapult shots. To add to this hazardous routine, the ship is often not in her expected position when pilots return, due to operational requirements necessitating radical course and speed changes.
How can student aviators daily risk their lives in such a manner? Every student aviator knows the answer--training. The student knows that only a sound mind and a well conditioned body can withstand rigorous and trying operations. By the time he is ready for his first carrier landings, he has spent a year in training. He has no real fear of this operation. He is over the initial fear of flying and the sensations which result when men leave their natural habitat and take to the air. He is accustomed to long periods of time in the air and is likewise adjusted to low-level flying and unnatural aircraft configurations. Certainly students show some skepticism on the initial approach to the "postage stamp in the middle of the ocean," but after the first landing all this concern is over. There are two great moments in the lives of all student aviators: primary solo and the first carrier landing. From the day of the first carrier landing, each landing thereafter becomes a challenge to the student to perform better than on the landing before. It ceases to be a hazardous operation and becomes a normal function.
The requirement for carrier training is one of the reasons the Navy keeps its students in the flight training program so long. Student naval aviators see their classmates in the Air Force training program finishing far sooner and wonder why the Navy is extending the program. By the time they master the techniques of carrier landings, they can understand the reason for their lengthy training.
Of all the important aspects of naval aviation training, none is quite so important as the relationship between student and flight instructor. Here, the officer student gets his first insight of Navy life. Not only are the flight instructors capable and competent aviators with at least one tour of duty in an aviation billet, they are fine officers as well. The instructor-student relationships find their closest counterpart in the Fleet in the form of the department head-junior officer combinations.
Student officers agree that their first flight instructors are the ones they will remember the longest. If there is a single source from which career motivation begins, it is from the flight instructors. Many students who have started their flying careers with some skepticism have gone on and received their wings and in the meantime developed a love for flying which did not exist at the outset of their career. These students attribute their interest and their desire for a naval career to their flight instructors. An enthusiastic flight instructor has the ability to send his flight students on the road to a long and happy career in naval aviation, while a mediocre instructor may cause fine young men to leave the Navy.
Throughout the flight program, a student meets many different flight instructors and, as a result, learns many different flight techniques. Herein lies a source of difficulty. When aircraft are flown according to procedures outlined by the manufacturer, optimum performance is supposedly obtained. There are circumstances in which deviation from prescribed flight performance is necessary, and often-times results in better piloting techniques.
These variations, of which there are many, are found through experience and cannot be theorized in the factory. Thus lack of standardized procedures often develops among the instructors to the dissatisfaction of the students. Some student aviators have been taught many methods of flying aircraft. While this is beneficial as experience grows, it can be totally unsatisfactory at the outset of the students' flying career. Conflicting points of view as to which procedures should be followed at a certain time often lead to indecisiveness. The students feel that standardized instructional procedures are a must for their training as naval aviators.
Another concern of student aviators as they finally receive their wings is the very long time they have been in a training status. While their seagoing contemporaries in the Fleet have spent nearly two years contributing to the efficiency and performance of their ships, the student aviators have been in training. Students realize that training is a prime requisite to the over-all mission of the Navy; they also feel, however, that the time spent in training is not contributing directly to the furtherance of this mission. It is well known that fitness reports received by students do not carry nearly the weight of those received by these same officers when they reach a squadron. The career naval aviators know that they will acquire many fitness reports before they can even hope for command, and hence the sooner they can join a squadron, the better off they will be.
For junior deck officers, the day they stand their first bridge watch is the time they feel they have finally accomplished something worthwhile. Similarly, student naval aviators have much the same feeling when they select the type aircraft they will learn to fly in advanced training and in which they will fly for at least one four-year tour of duty. The Navy tries to place students in accordance with their desires, but this is not always possible and, as a result, many students are dissatisfied. Many Navy and Marine Corps officers enter flight training with but one thought in mind: to fly the fastest and "hottest" jets the Navy owns. Over-ambitious recruiters tell the potential pilots that they are practically assured of flying jets because the time is right and jet pilots are desperately needed. This is simply not true. Jet pilots today far outnumber the jet aircraft available. Hence many of the students are frustrated when they learn they cannot fly jets.
The major complaint that students have is the fact that assignments of officers to aircraft is accomplished solely on the strength of choice commensurate with flight grades. Many feel selection should be based on the motivation which the students have toward a career in the Navy. They feel that if officers really want to devote their lives to the service of their country, they should at least be given priority over those officers who are merely putting in their years of compulsory military training. Such not being always the case, there are some officers learning to fly aircraft which they do not want to fly. Of course, most officers are mature enough to accept whatever type aircraft the Navy offers-and the wiser ones will learn to enjoy that aircraft.
Almost anyone can learn to pilot an aircraft, but becoming an exact and precise aviator is quite a different matter. In today's high performance aircraft, expert techniques are essential for the successful execution of wartime and peacetime missions. Student naval aviators take pride in the fact that they are receiving the best pilot training in the world- yet they are aware that while they are training as naval aviators they are not learning enough about the rest of the Navy.
It is interesting to note that of the 1,500 or so naval officers designated as naval aviators each year, less than one-half have had any shipboard experience. Naval Academy and N.R.O.T.C. officers have been aboard ship as midshipmen during summer cruises. For the remainder of the students, their first and only contact with a ship occurs during the training period when their aircraft makes five or more carrier landings. They never again board ships until they join an operating squadron, and their group deploys. For this reason, many student aviators cannot possibly know in the early days of their career whether or not they wish to remain in the Navy. They know that if they are to make a career of the Navy they will not be forever piloting aircraft, and that they will spend some time at sea as part of a ship's company.
The greatest disadvantage which aviators face by not having any sea duty experience prior to entering the Training Command is that by the time they are sent to sea in a nonflying status they are usually senior lieutenants with practically no knowledge of shipboard operations. Thus they spend much of their time at sea learning the same fundamentals which seagoing ensigns have long since mastered. The result is that the more senior aviators are reduced to standing watches and performing duties not commensurate to their rank.
If they had a year of sea duty behind them when they entered flight training, student aviators feel they would have a better understanding of the life of the seagoing naval officer and that they could then decide more maturely if they desired such a life. The few students who do have experience at sea before they report feel they have acquired invaluable training. Until recently all officer aviation students were required to spend at least one year at sea before reporting for aviation training. Many students today feel that this practice should not have been stopped. The needs of the Navy, however, seem to require that this former policy be changed in order to send an adequate number of pilots to the Fleet each year.
By the time the student aviator has reached an operational squadron, his training has cost the Navy approximately $130,000. For the time and the money spent, the Navy should be able to hope that most aviators would remain in service. Yet many do not. There are three basic reasons why naval aviators leave the Navy for civilian life.
The first of these reasons is the educational background of the students. Some student aviators know full well that they will never make a career of the Navy. They feel that after having spent the time and the money to educate themselves in law, pre-medicine, engineering, or business, they can hardly spend the next 20 or 30 years of their lives flying airplanes or serving aboard a ship. Fortunately, these students are in the minority. It is interesting to note that many high ranking officers in the Navy today have widely varying backgrounds, ranging from certified public accountants to electrical engineers.
The second reason for resigning is dissatisfaction with Navy life. Some students cannot bear the thought of spending a few months at sea away from their wives and families. NO one enjoys leaving his loved ones, but, of course, this is part of the calling of every Navy man. Other students simply cannot contend with a regimented life. The nine-to-five day looks far too good to them, and they forsake the Navy because they do not like the idea of being called upon at any hour of the day or night. A move from duty station to duty station is perhaps one of the most enjoyable aspects of Navy life for many. Yet for others it is a miserable time in which old friends must be left behind. They feel they would much prefer to buy a home somewhere, settle down, and live in one place for the rest of their lives.
The third reason officers leave naval aviation is to earn more money. Most of those aviators who finally decide to leave do so because of the opportunities for higher pay in civilian life. This can be especially tempting for pilots because of their particular specialties. It is very difficult for the Navy to offer financial arguments for staying in when civilian airlines are able to offer three times as much money for getting out. This is just about the ratio of wages received after 10 years of service in either occupation. Yet it is amazing to see the number of naval aviators who return to the Navy after only a short time with civilian airlines. What is the reason for this? It is primarily because these officers find that the grass was not so green on the other side of the fence as they thought it would be. Civilian pilots, although their prospects for eventual financial gains are brighter, must wait some years before their pay can begin to match that of Navy lieutenants or lieutenant commanders. Likewise, they must fly as copilots for up to 12 years before they actually get command. Fortunately, most student aviators of today are wise enough to spend their early days as junior officers carefully scrutinizing all the pros and cons of Navy life before they decide to give up interesting and profitable careers as naval officers.
Student naval aviators are individuals with tough jobs, perplexing problems, and an uncertain future. Like a:ll naval officers, their lives are ones of dedication. Not only must they leave their homes and their families when the Navy deems it necessary, but also they must lead lives which are far from safe. Student aviators, however, are only one group among many in the military services who are preparing themselves for the over-all task of defending our nation. They know they cannot exist alone and that they must have a great deal of help in trying to solve the military problems we now face. Student aviators know that their aircraft alone cannot handle the missions which the Navy may be required to carry out. They recognize the importance of closely knit support and timely co-operation among all units of the surface, subsurface, and airborne Navy. Moreover, they are aware that seagoing units are vital to both their own mission and their safe-keeping. Without competent air controllers aboard aircraft carriers, pilots could not possibly be vectored on target, nor might they find their ship in bad weather. Without the destroyers on plane guard duty at night, pilots might never be picked up after forced landings. Without cruisers, they might not get the protection from the flanks for the extra few minutes they need to get their aircraft airborne.
The student naval aviators of today will be the pilots of tomorrow and the commanding officers of the future. The importance of their mere existence at the present time may not be noted for years to come; during that time they will simply be naval aviators with many missions to perform. As the years go by, however, they will be the ones who will formulate policies and will go on to rank among the Navy's great commanders.