Hitting the Boat!

When a crisis emerges anywhere on earth, it’s no accident that every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has asked the same first question: “Where are the carriers?”

Modern nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, such as those in the Nimitz or Ford class, are over 1,090 feet in length (longer than three football fields), displace nearly 100,000 tons, and support a ship’s company and air wing totaling over 5,000 personnel. They serve as mobile airbases, capable of projecting power anywhere in the world.  Launching and recovering a 40,000-pound aircraft from a moving, pitching deck is not merely a feat of engineering and physics—it’s a demanding test of precision flying, situational awareness, discipline, and nerves of steel.

So, why am I writing about such a random topic on August 6^th, 2025?  Well fifty-seven years ago today, 2^nd Lt. L.S. “Butch” Mazzuca, USMC landed his T-28C Trojan for the first time aboard CV-16 the USS Lexington in the Gulf of Mexico – and exercise colloquially known among Navy and Marine flight students as “Hitting the boat”

~ How it’s Done ~

To land on an aircraft carrier, a ‘naval aviator’ must execute a precisely controlled approach in three dimensions, coordinating airspeed, altitude, descent rate, and angle of attack.  There is virtually no room for error.  Modern carriers employ an Optical Landing System (OLS), commonly referred to as “the lens,” mounted on the port side of the flight deck near the fantail.  This system uses Fresnel lenses and colored datum lights to provide a visual glide slope indicator.  The aviator aligns the aircraft with the “meatball” (the bright central light) to stay on the correct descent path.

Upon entering the carrier’s landing pattern—known as the “Charlie pattern”—the pilot flies a downwind leg, opposite the ship’s course, with landing gear, flaps, and tailhook deployed. At the “abeam” position (abeam the landing area), the pilot executes “the break,” a descending 180-degree turn to port, setting up for final approach.

At approximately three-quarters of a mile astern, flying at 800 feet AGL and about 140 knots indicated airspeed (KIAS), the pilot is instructed by the Landing Signal Officer (LSO) to “call the ball.”  Spotting the meatball, the pilot transmits the aircraft type, fuel state, and “ball” call, confirming glide slope acquisition.  From this point, the pilot must maintain precise parameters—typically within ±1 knot of reference airspeed and ±1 foot per second of vertical descent rate.

The landing target area is astonishingly small and the “window” in space the aircraft must fly through is approximately three feet high and eighteen inches wide—just behind the stern of the ship. This window moves with the ship’s motion and may be heaving and rolling with the sea, making it a dynamic, not a static, target.  Too slow (e.g., 139 KIAS), and the aircraft risks a ramp strike, i.e., contact with the stern ramp, which will ruin the aviator’s whole day.  Too fast (e.g., 141 KIAS), and the aircraft may fail to engage any of the four arresting wires, requiring an immediate wave-off.

The margin of error is unforgiving.  A wave-off—executing a go-around due to an unstable approach—may be necessary, but repeated wave-offs risk both mission failure and reassignment to shore duty.  LSOs, typically senior aviators, evaluate every approach in real time and provide radio calls or visual signals to correct deviations.

The time from “ball call” to touchdown is about 15 seconds.  The landing area itself measures roughly 200 feet in length and 40 feet in width with arresting wires, spaced about 50 feet apart, spanning the area.  The pilot must catch one of them with the aircraft’s tailhook—a successful “trap.”  Upon catching the wire, (#3 is preferred and frequently a cause for bragging rights in then “O” Club bar when back in port) the aircraft decelerates from 140 knots to zero in under two seconds, generating over 4 g’s of deceleration.

Upon touchdown and trap, the pilot immediately applies full power to military or afterburner thrust (depending on the aircraft) at the moment the main landing gear contacts the deck—before knowing whether a successful trap has occurred in a practice known as “bolter power” or “roll-out power.”  The reason – in case the tailhook misses all the arresting wires in what’s known as a “bolter,” the aircraft needs to be at full power to safely take off again from the short flight deck

Once parked, the pilot undergoes debriefing, reviews PLAT (Pilot Landing Aid Television) footage of the approach and prepares to do it again—often at night, in marginal weather, or under combat conditions.  And all the while, it’s worth remembering that for these aviators, bringing the bird back on-board ship often occurs after flying a dangerous mission over hostile airspace and under fire.

Quote of the day: “There is no such thing as a routine carrier landing.” – Every Naval Aviator -ever!