The ship I was on had two gyros, one digital and one analog. What nobody seemed to know was when the boat turned on it's jammer it robbed the digital gyro from the meatball, which then reverted to the analog gyro. That analog gyro couldn't keep up with the average wave motion of a bath tub. We had a really bad recovery one night and then somebody figured it out.
USS Saratoga, 1985, southern Med. Our aircraft were mixing it up with the Libyans over the Gulf of Sidra, no shots were fired that night, that would come later in the week. After chasing off the Libyans our pilots had to return to a dark, pitching deck in bad weather. I’m told we were at Emcon alpha and the ACLS was turned off. All of the pilots made it back on-board but an A-7 had such a hard landing that its main landing gear was bent at odd angles, it had to be dragged out of the landing area and finished the cruise in hanger bay 1 with a bullseye painted on it’s tail.
That night, the ship’s Captain, a former F-14 pilot came over the 1MC and told the crew about the day’s events. He then apologized to the ship’s chaplain for what he was about to say. He told us that when he was in pilot training a very senior aviator told him that there are three things that are best in life: 1) A good “bowel movement”. 2) A good orgasm. 3) A good night carrier landing. And if the night is dark enough, and the deck is pitching enough, you can have all three at the same time.