Visitors at Sea View Carrier Choreography With Wild Blue Wonder

An F-14 Tomcat fighter jet lands on the aircraft carrier Independence every 45 seconds during flight exercises. Rubber burns, engines scream and the landing safety officer yells: “Clear deck! Clear deck!”

With bright yellow foam plugs stuffed in their ears, a bevy of civilian visitors gathers on Vulture’s Row, a deck overseeing the four-acre landing strip pitching up and down in the heavy seas.

“How do they do it?” asked Father Luis Peinado of Loyola High School in Los Angeles.

During a recent two-day visit, these guests--carefully selected by the Navy--try to discover the answer to that question. Peinado waited four years for the opportunity to board a carrier. Bob Sonnhalter, a senior vice president with Great American First Savings Bank, waited two years. And Tom Huntington, a special education teacher, traveled to San Diego from Flagstaff, Ariz., so he could visit the carrier with his brother David.

The Distinguished Visitor program lets the Navy show citizens how their tax dollars are spent. It’s considered a public relations tool for promoting good will and wooing potential recruits.

For Peinado and others, the visit fulfills a long-held desire. Peinado, who is passionate about flying, got his pilot’s license in 1982. Each time he lands, he relives the thrill he felt as a 7-year-old riding in a plane for the first time.

Like most aviators, he is awed by the pilots who land at 130 m.p.h. or so, snagging a 3-inch cable on a flight deck swaying in the ocean. When the jet’s tail hook nabs the cable, the aircraft is jerked to an abrupt stop aboard the 356-yard-long deck. Peinado watches with boy-like wonder and fascination.

“I would love to be in the back seat of one of those,” Peinado said.

The visitors, however, are not allowed to fly in the high-performance jets, which pierce the sky like silver splinters. Sometimes they walk on the docked vessel before it embarks. Other times, they ride in a helicopter or a fixed-wing plane that brings mail and supplies to the carrier. Since the program operates at no cost to the Navy, guests must accommodate the existing schedule of departures. They pay $20 to cover the costs of meals and berthing during a two-day stay aboard a carrier.

Last year, Pacific Fleet Naval Air Force officials chose 125 people to visit aircraft carriers operating in Southern California waters. More are chosen during some years, depending on deployment. In 1988, 260 visitors went out; in 1987, there were 298.

For every applicant selected, three are turned away, said Lt. Cmdr. Bob Pritchard, a spokesman with the Pacific Fleet Naval Air Force.

“We attempt to get people from all walks of life, from everywhere in the country,” said Lt. Greg Smith, a Navy spokesman in Washington. “We want Middle America.”

In San Diego, an internal memo says the guests should be community members who are “active and influential.” Celebrities such as San Francisco 49er linebacker Riki Ellison and Indianapolis 500 winner Wally Dallenbach Sr. have visited carriers. The guest list also includes Phoenix federal judges, the Young Presidents Club of Dallas, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s deputy superintendent, and top executives from the Marriott Corp., Westinghouse Electric and the San Diego Zoo.

“It tends to be subjective,” Pritchard said. “But we try to get folks out there who are influential in the community and who will have a lasting impact for the Navy. They will touch people who will touch other people, telling the story of their experiences.”

With Peinado, the Navy hit a home run.

“That’s a memorable experience in my life. You won’t shut me up,” he said. “I’ll be talking about it forever.”

A carrier such as the Independence functions as a mobile air base and can change its position by hundreds of miles in a single day. Home to 5,500 pilots and crew members, it plays host to nine squadrons with about 75 aircraft. When idle, the planes are moved by elevators and stowed in a gigantic hangar beneath the flight deck.

Officers are assigned as guides to usher small groups of visitors around the vessel. They explain the mundane, such as why one 4-foot-11 crew member is called “Shorty.” And they also adeptly field the complicated, technical questions about such things as the steam-powered catapult that launches the jets from zero to 130 m.p.h. in 2 seconds.

On a recent trip, not all the guests needed guides. Retired Rear Adm. Obie Oberg, a commanding officer of a carrier 17 years ago, prowled the vessel as an aficionado. Oberg, who visits a carrier every year, arranged for the Huntington brothers--family friends--to join him.

“Every time I go, it turns me on,” Oberg said. “This is an art. The crews have to be adept--mentally and physically--and motivated.”

Part of the elaborate choreography that enables the jets to land and launch involves men in different colored jerseys who dart across the deck. Those in purple handle fuel. The fire crews wear silver and the launch team wears yellow. Men in red arm the planes; those in white give first aid. The greens are maintenance workers and the blues move the landed jets.

“The thing that is so striking is that each person had their own job and it was a chain reaction,” said Dan O’Neill, a San Diego engineer who joined his father, Clement for the visit. “I never realized how many people it took and that it could be run so flawlessly.”

The “air boss” orchestrates the whole operation, making sure the flight-deck crew is not endangered. He ensures that the jets land 45 seconds apart, are pushed off the runway to make room for the next one, then get catapulted back into the sky. He also makes sure the arresting cable is adjusted properly to snag the planes, as each type requires a different tension.

“Is this high stress? Every job on the carrier is high stress,” said Air Boss Capt. Fort Zachary, whose men call him by the name emblazoned on his leather flight jacket: “The Terminator.”

“Air Boss makes us come together and turns us into a flight machine,” said Lt. Scott Jacobson, a helicopter pilot and five-year veteran of the Navy.

An aircraft carrier is a dangerous place. Men have been sheared by a snapped cable, blown overboard, sucked into engine intakes, run over by tractors and smashed by crashing planes.

“It is a hostile environment,” said Vice Adm. Jack Fetterman, commander of Naval Air Force Pacific.

In recent months, the toll has included:

* A jet pilot making his first carrier landing who crashed into the carrier Lexington in the Gulf of Mexico, killing himself and four others on deck.

* Three sailors who were swept off the Eisenhower near Cape Hatteras. One was never found.

* A sailor from the carrier Carl Vinson who fell into the Pacific about 620 miles north of Wake Island. He was never found.

The visitors, however, are carefully shielded from potential dangers. Appointed guides stay close to their charges, who tend to walk around with amazement on their faces. Instead of the danger or the technology, most visitors seem more impressed with the men who work long hours.

The planes fly well into the night, usually stopping about 2 a.m. The average workday lasts 17 hours, said Cmdr. Kenneth G. Bixler, the Independence’s executive officer. “We get about as much work for the dollar as you can.”

Bank executive Sonnhalter and others said they were dazzled by the young men who work tirelessly in an environment where mistakes can cost lives.

“I was impressed with the dedication and skill that those young seamen exhibited in bringing the planes in,” he said. “I’ve got kids not much younger than they are, and I can’t imagine my kids doing something like that.”