A glimpse

On deployment things kind of changed. Watching the flight deck is like watching a dance, there is a true group working together. All the colors mean something, all of them have jobs that only they can do, if they dont do the jets don't launch.

Everybody will tell you that their shirt is the most important, except me. I will say that the white shirts had to be the most important. White shirt meant the safety team, the medical team. Green shirts did work on the air crafts, red shirts handled ordinance, brown shirts were part of the squadrons and helped the jet get ready to go to work or bed. Those are the squadron colors, these people pretty much go wherever their jets are calling home at the time.

The ship has it's own colors, granted any airdale worth it's salt can do most of these jobs on the beach, almost all fully qualed brown coats can. Blue shirts tend to take over the jet from the brown if the jet has to be towed and follow the yellows direction who guides where the jets go. Purple fuels the yet. They had their own green shirts who did maintenance on the gear that dealt with the jets.Mind you, this is an over simplification, it breaks down a lot more than this, but it explains the basics. A day in the life of a F18F goes something like this. Predawn- a brown climbs into the jet and waits for a blue to hook up his tractor and a few yellows to guide them where they need to move to. Then dailies/weeklies are done. If the jet needs working on it will be done as soon as it can typically around this time if not at night. Reds and purples do their work at this time.Ready for flight? a brown helps it start up, with a few other bodies around, puts a thumb on the nose and the yellow knows that it is good to go. it gets walked to a cat while getting one last quick check by a (typically) green and then you make a Y. A few other things happen, and then the launch, refueling might happen in the air by the chairforce with the wrong fuel, they get caught on the wire, wrong fuel dumped and the bird might go back up or be put to bed. more dailies, more maintenance, more moving. Teamwork is important here, without it the missions wouldn't happen

#CVN68 #VFA41 #USN