THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290625
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ABOARD THE JOHN C. STENNIS LENGTH: 84 lines
The ``purple shirts,'' the sailors who fuel this carrier's fleet of jets, helicopters and radar planes, matched their attire last week.
Standing on the windswept flight deck as the ship pushed through the mid-Atlantic, their faces and hands exposed to an Arctic blast, the fuelies' skin turned blotchy purple.
They weren't alone in feeling the cold. Red-shirted ordnance workers, white-shirted safety personnel, the green shirts who ran the catapult and arresting gear and brown-shirted plane captains scurried, bundled against the chill, across the 4 1/2 acres of runway and parking lots that cap this oceangoing airport.
Such is life off the Virginia and North Carolina coasts this time of year, as the Navy conducts day-and-night flight operations to train its pilots and air crews.
The cold winter air, blowing at 45 knots one day earlier this month, kicked up spray from the warm Gulf Stream below to produce an eerie steam above the wave tops. Snow showers blew sideways. Seas were running nearly 10 feet high.
And this being a carrier, its chief business an outdoor job, there was no hiding from the weather: Sailors aboard the ``JCS'' had to tough it out.
``It's tough to stand out there and be so cold,'' said Capt. Robert C. Klosterman, the commanding officer of the giant carrier, as he watched the men and women of his ship launch, park, fuel and catch the multi-million dollar planes that screamed through the heavy air.
From up on the bridge, the carrier's bow gliding through the white mist made it appear as if the Stennis was traveling through wind-driven sand.
``We're taking special precautions in this cold,'' Klosterman said. ``We dress them real warm and rotate them more frequently than what we normally would do.''
The Stennis, which left Norfolk Jan. 17, is plying the coast through the end of the month, providing carrier qualification training to naval aviators throughout the East Coast. Among them are fledglings from flight school in Pensacola, Fla., making their first carrier landings.
It was earlier on this cruise that the ship hosted the F/A-18-F Super Hornet the Navy wants to buy for its first carrier landing and catapult take-off - a much-anticipated event that took place in less-than-ideal weather.
An icy fog swathed the ship. The wind-chill factor was minus 6 degrees.
Of the sailors on deck, only those wearing ``pumpkin suits'' - insulated orange coveralls reserved for those whose duties kept them outside all day - seemed close to comfortable. The bulky protection blocked the piercing air much better than the dungarees and khaki slacks their shivering shipmates wore.
One sailor, his face obscured by a hood that revealed only his eyes, said that beneath his uniform he wore long underwear, a sweater, two pairs of gloves and three pairs of socks beneath a larger pair of borrowed boots.
``The pumpkin suits got it better,'' he said. ``They get the good stuff.''
The rainbow-shirted flight deck crew and the ship's lookouts are most exposed to the elements.
``The lookout people, especially at night, are out in the elements normally on two- to four-hour watches,'' Klosterman said. ``But last night we rotated them every 30 to 40 minutes.''
On deck the flight crews seemed to wander closer to the jet engine exhausts than they normally would, drawing just enough warmth for comfort, but not so much as to get hurt by the super-heated gases.
``You tend to get complacent when it is cold because you put your hands inside and tend to cover up,'' said Cmdr. Ken Parks, an EA-6B ``Prowler'' pilot about to take command of a West Coast training squadron.
``When you see them with their hands in their pockets, looking down and away from the wind, thinking more about being cold than what they're there for, then it's about time to rotate them.
``One of the things you need to do on a flight deck is look around because you can't rely on sound to tell you anything. The entire flight deck is loud. So you have to continually keep your head on a swivel and look around. That concerns us a lot.''
The good news, said Klosterman, was that the crew wouldn't have to put up with the Atlantic's frigid blast for too long.
The ship was already nudging its way south, toward warmer waters off Florida, a more pleasant place to go to work this time of year. It's due home on Friday. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by Ian Martin
Steam rises from the flight deck of the carrier John C. Stennis as a
crew member goes about work in the January cold off the coast of
North Carolina.