You get used to it, sort of

I'm sitting here in the ready room, finally hooked up with my own computer, if not my own desk.  That's ok, because the ready room chairs are more comfortable than the stiff Navy-style straight back desk chairs, anyway.  I'll try to post some pictures of such things in the future.  Anyway, as I'm sitting here, the airwing is wrapping up today's Airplan (the flight schedule for the whole ship) with the last recovery (navy-speak for getting aircraft onto the ship).  The ship has a camera aimed up the glide path that shows each aircraft as it approaches the flight deck.  This helps the Landing Signal Officer guide the aircraft safely and consistently onto the arresting wires. 

The other advantage of the PLAT (the acronym-based name for the camera--don't ask me what it stands for) is that from the ready room, we can see when the planes are inbound.  This is important because when each aircraft lands, they land just 4 feet above our heads on what seems like a very thin layer of steel.  Imagine a 40,000 pound jet traveling through the air at 120 knots, whose decent at 500 feet per minute is abruptly halted by a steel island in a manner resembling a crash more than a landing.  All that kinetic energy must go somewhere. 

The ship is equipped with hugh hydraulic engines which hold 2-inch thick cables that span the back end of the flight deck: the arresting gear.  As each jet's tailhook catches one of these 4 cables (the "3 wire" is the target), the cable is pulled taught as the jet decelerates within about 1 second to a halt on the deck.  When the hook catches the wire, the jet's wheels are still in the air!  Moments later they slam into the deck, creating a deafening crash down here in the ready room.  If you're not watching the PLAT, those landings can catch you off guard at first.  Many folks will watch intently, and put their fingers in their ears moments before the impending "KAAASLAAAMMMM," which is followed by the whine of the arresting gear motors being pulled to their full extent.  Fortunately, we're in Ready Room 4, which is not directly adjacent to the AG machinery rooms.  The folks over in Ready 5 get the full effect (it's even more deafening than the landing itself).

Alas, after a few days of sitting below this din, the crashes become part of the general background noise of the ship.  They're still annoying, continually inturrupting conversations and the best parts of every movie, but after a while they cease to cause surprise or even a blink.  Once in a while though, a nugget backs off on the power just a little too much on short final and really nails the deck -- loud enough to cause a cringe and remind us that we're definitely not sitting in our living room at home.