Aerospace Blog

Your flight jacket is a survival jacket if you were to ever fall off the flight deck of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. It has a strobe light that flashes at night so other sailors can know where you are. Your flight jacket also has a bladder that fills up with air when you hit the water. If that bladder were to fail, there's a tube that you can use to manually fill up the bladder. Just blow into it. The flight jacket also has dye packs so that if you were to fall off the ship during the day, people can find you.

The heat from the exhaust of a jet isn't the only risk from the jet. If you're not paying attention to what's going on around you and a jet turns, the force of that jet will knock you down and send you for a ride. It can also blow you off the side of the ship. When you're blown across the flight deck, you get road rash from the "non-skid," the substance put over the deck to prevent slipping in case of oil or gasoline spills. Being blown over the side of the ship is more dangerous since there's always the chance the fall could kill you by breaking your neck. You could also get sucked under from the screws of the ship and then chopped up by those screws.

When aircraft land on the carrier, there are four steel cables that catch the plane as it lands. These are the arresting cables. Whenever a jet is landing, you want to stay away from the designated area because if you're caught in that area, that wire - with all the force pulling on it from the jet - will cut you in half. There are elevators, too, four to be exact, on the flight deck. There are also supposed to be people and other safety precautions around to make sure nobody falls, but human error occurs. So if someone isn't paying attention, especially at night, then you can have a nasty fall.

Even when jets aren't moving around, the flight deck is a dangerous place because something is always going on. For example, there are blast shields that raise-up to deflect the after-burn when a jet takes off. Well, a friend of mine worked on them doing routine maintenance checks. The shield was raised partially so he could work. For some reason, the hydraulics on the shield failed and it fell back down. My friend was lucky enough for the shield not to land on him, but not lucky enough to get completely out of the way. One of his fingers was partially torn off.

I always took my friend's story as a firm reminder to be aware of what you're doing and to keep your head on straight. Always. There are many more things to watch out for on the flight deck of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, but these are just some examples that show why the flight deck is so dangerous.

Editor's Note: Click here for Part 1 of this two-part series.