Lexington (CV 16) - Naval Cruise Book

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WHEEL CHOCKS ARE CARRIED EORXVARD READY FOR RETURNING PLANES Affection and admiration for the airmen grow deeper each day. Anxiety when they take off, fear for them when they land, I cannot brush aside. I see them take ofl and return again and again day after day, and yet a strange notion persists that this whole thing is impossible. There is a cool impersonal dignity about a pilot seated in the cockpit of his plane, something of the tight alertness of a hawk, and the smooth hard force lines of a bullet about that helmeted head on which eyes and heart focus so sharply. Brancusi might well be the sculptor to create an image in polished steel, an abstraction and a symbol, of this Fighter birdman. Twelve VF-16 fighter planes are now out on combat patrol, fast, tough Grumman flying machines . . . twelve lighter pilots, a trained combat team, alert, keen, itching for a chance to mix it up, shoot it out with the damn Zeros or uZel4es. 39

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A - LAST PLANE IS OEF-SPGTTER NSITS ON THE BREEZE 38

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y , PATROL -PLANES OVER OUR SPACE PROBING FINGERS-THE RADAR ANTENNAE , v 1, These are days of watchful concentration in radar plot. All flights sent out hy the task group are tracked and reported until they return. Their positions, distances, and altitudes are plotted and charted on illuminated plotting charts and drums presided over hy the radar fighter director, Com-A mander A. F. Fleming, and his staff. Our radar heams feel their Way into the sky in all directions of the compass, and as far out as one hundred miles. VVhen additional 'ghogiesn flittle hlursj appear on the radar screen, they must he identified as friendly or enemy planes. At ro A.M. We have a flurry 40 I