Signal Charley - Flaps, Wheels, Hook Down will captivate flight-fanciers, adventure readers and US Navy buffs alike.
Flight stories cover pilot training, day and night aircraft carrier qualifications, operations in the Pacific area, squadron operations, inflight emergencies and the transition from straight-deck to angled-deck carrier operations. In the beginning, both “paddles” and the Mirror Landing System (MLS) are used by the Landing Signal Officer (LSO) on angled-deck carriers.
The next chapters present how, through happenstance, the author also became a meteorologist. These stories describe the evolutionary change from manual to numerical analysis and forecasting, the initial introduction of satellite (TIROS) data to improve both methods, and more interesting flight events.
Adventure tales include among others a description of Super Typhoon Karen (Category 5) as she roars directly overhead on Guam and pictures of the destruction (1962), temporary additional duties in Moscow (1967) and landing on an oceanic ice floe north of Alaska (1972).
After 26 years in the Navy, the author became a civilian Program Manager and Senior Scientific Analyst responsible for developing numerical operational applications for the Navy, in meteorology and oceanography. A few of these programs are briefly described, including the Optimum Path Aircraft Routing System (OPARS), which has saved the navy millions of dollars.
Everyone will appreciate the depth and accuracy of these stories and the author’s insightful and engaging perspective.