From the Flight Deck

by Mersky, Peter B.

• ISBN13: 9781574884333
• ISBN10: 1574884336
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-06-01
• Publisher: Brassey's Inc

Summary

"Prepare to launch aircraft!" One can almost hear the order booming from the island's loudspeaker. In From the Flight Deck, the exhilarating and always dangerous world of aircraft carrier aviation is covered in thirty-two excerpts of the best fiction and nonfiction writing on the subject. Beginning with the first success in 1910 by American aviator Eugene Ely, the anthology then covers British operations during World War I and the unique contributions to carrier warfare made by the U.S and British navies during the 1920s and 1930s. World War II and the Korean War are also well represented-with excerpts from such American classics as Walter Lord's Day of Infamy, Ted Lawson's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and James A. Michener's The Bridges of Toko Ri-as the period during which carriers and their crews matured into the indispensable weapon systems we nearly take for granted today. Experiments with larger and more capable aircraft as well as advances in a vast array of carrier-related technology bring the reader to the present day, with selections by such noted authors as Norman Polmar (Aircraft Carriers) and George Wilson (Supercarrier). The diverse experiences of U.S. and foreign naval aviators in the Suez Operation in 1956, the French and American wars in Vietnam, the Falklands War, the Persian Gulf War, and the Allied air campaign in Bosnia are all covered, often through eyewitness accounts. For example, in Peter B. Mersky's book, RF-8 Crusader Units Over Cuba and Vietnam, he relates a chilling first-person account of the fire on board the U.S.S. Oriskany in 1966. In She's Just Another Navy Pilot, Laurie Hirschman describes the major social changes caused by the arrival of women fighter pilots in the Navy. From its primitive start during the earliest years of flight, through its numerous tests in the crucible of war, and to the high-tech operations of recent missions, all the thrills and risks of nearly a century of carrier aviation are captured in From the Flight Deck.

Author Biography

Peter B. Mersky is well known for his military aviation books, for some hundred magazine articles, and for hundreds of book reviews on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviation. A lifelong aviation enthusiast, he served sixteen years as the assistant editor, then editor, for Approach magazine, the Navy's aviation safety publication. He is a retired officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, and he has held close ties to naval aviation for more than thirty years. Mersky is also a series editor for Brassey's Aviation Classics series. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Preface	xiii
Acknowledgments	xvii
Credits	xix
The Early Years, 1910--1938
Taking the First Chance: Eugene Ely, the First Carrier Aviator	3	(7)
from Wings for the Fleet
Rear Admiral George van Deurs
The Aircraft Carrier Goes to War	10	(11)
from Aircraft Carriers: A Graphic History
Norman Polmar
The U.S. Navy's First Aircraft Carrier, USS Langley	21	(14)
from The Golden Age Remembered: U.S. Naval Aviation 1919--1941
E.T. Wooldridge
Carrier Aviation Comes of Age, 1939--1945
Fighting the Germans in the North Atlantic	35	(7)
from Wings on My Sleeve
Commander Eric Brown
``The Famous Victory'': Swordfish at Taranto	42	(11)
from With Naval Wings: The Autobiography of a Fleet Air Arm Pilot in World War II
John Wellham
Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor	53	(7)
from Day of Infamy
Walter Lord
Payback Time: The Doolittle Raiders Bomb Tokyo	60	(7)
from Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Captain Ted Lawson
Bob Considine
Something for the Home Folks: Taking Liberties with the Facts	67	(10)
from ``Battle Descending,'' by Richard Sale in Teenage Aviation Stories
Don Samson
The Battle of Midway	77	(23)
The Midway Admiral: Raymond A. Spruance	79	(6)
from Admiral Raymond A. Spruance
Vice Admiral E. P. Forrestel
A Lost Aviator Disappears	85	(8)
from The Last Flight of Ensign C. Martin Kelly, Jr.
Bowen P. Weisheit
From the Japanese Viewpoint	93	(7)
from Midway: the Battle That Doomed Japan
Mitsuo Fuchida
Masatake Okumiya
Fighting for the Solomons: The Carrier Navy Joins the Marines	100	(11)
from Carrier Warfare in the Pacific: An Oral History
E. T. Wooldridge
There Were Heroes on Both Sides	111	(10)
from The Last Tallyho
Richard Newhafer
So Young to Command	121	(20)
from Bring Back My Stringbag
John Kilbracken
The Early Cold War, 1946--1953
The Navy Wants a Piece of the Action: Nuclear Bombers Aboard Carriers	141	(6)
from Aircraft Carriers: A Graphic History
Norman Polmar
Marines on Carriers in Korea	147	(6)
from ``The Black Sheep in Korea,'' by Admiral John S. Thach in Into the Jet Age: Conflict and Change in Naval Aviation 1945--1975
E. T. Wooldridge
A Whitehat's Viewpoint	153	(5)
from Sailors in the Sky: Memoirs of a Navy Aircrewman in the Korean War
Jack Sauter
Fiction As True As Fact	158	(10)
from The Bridges at Toko-Ri
James Michener
Royal Navy Carriers in Korea	168	(13)
from With the Carriers in Korea
John R. P. Lansdown
Times of Development and Transition, 1954--1963
The Rubber Deck	181	(8)
from The Wrong Stuff: Flying on the Edge of Disaster
Commander John Moore
Young Pups and Old ADs	189	(9)
from Gold Wings, Blue Sea: A Naval Aviator's Story
Captain Rosario Rausa
Carriers in the Middle East: The Suez Campaign	198	(19)
from Wings Over Suez
Brian Cull
David Nicolle
Shlomo Aloni
French Hellcats in Vietnam	217	(12)
from Au-Dela du Pont d'Envol [Beyond the Flight Deck]
Vice Admiral Roger Vercken
The Vietnam Crucible, 1964--1975
The Skyhawk's War	229	(7)
from Dark Sky Black Sea: Aircraft Carrier Night and All-Weather Operations
Charles H. Brown
Paying the Price: Frank Elkins of VA-164	236	(12)
from The Heart of a Man
Frank Elkins
Fire on the Oriskany	248	(8)
from RF-8 Crusader Units Over Cuba and Vietnam
Peter Mersky
America and Liberty: Passing Ships	256	(9)
from Wings and Warriors: My Life As a Naval Aviator
Donald D. Engen
A New Age, 1976--Present
War in an Unknown Place	265	(10)
from Sea Harrier Over the Falklands: A Maverick at War
Commander Sharkey Ward
Managing the Store: What It Takes to Run an Aircraft Carrier	275	(9)
from Supercarrier: An Inside Account of Life Aboard the World's Most Powerful Ship, the USS John F. Kennedy
George C. Wilson
A Helo Crew's War	284	(9)
from Weapons Free: The Story of a Gulf War Helicopter Pilot
Richard Boswell
Prowlers in the Gulf	293	(21)
from Ironclaw: A Navy Carrier Pilot's Gulf War Experience
Sherman Baldwin
Bailout in the Balkans	314	(9)
from No Escape Zone
Nick Richardson
Recce Over Kosovo	323	(5)
from Le Porte-Avions Foch
Alexandre Paringaux
Women in the Cockpits	328	(11)
from She's Just Another Navy Pilot: An Aviator's Sea Journal
Loree Draude Hirschman
Dave Hirschman
Index	339	(4)
The Editor	343