Photos by Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot.
Posted on 09/27/2004 2:24:20 PM PDT by Pukin Dog
The Virginian-Pilot
© September 13, 2004
Last updated: 8:56 AM
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| Cmdr. Dave “Mongo” Koss checks an F/A-18 at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. Photos by Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot.
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But at Oceana Naval Air Station, that is no longer the case. It has been years since the base’s Navy pilots have been able to practice like they fight, and the gulf between the two is growing.
The reason: jet noise.
The chief purpose of Oceana, the Navy’s East Coast master jet base, is to train pilots to take off and land on aircraft carriers. In recent years, however, Oceana officials have modified training to mitigate jet noise for neighboring residents.
At Oceana and Fentress, an auxiliary practice field in Chesapeake, war planes now fly vastly different patterns than they would if they were approaching or leaving an actual carrier. They fly higher, come in steeper and follow awkward flight routes.
And according to Capt. Tom Keeley, Oceana’s commanding officer, the Navy is out of alternatives.
“We are at the limit,” Keeley said.
Continued development near the airfields has raised concerns that the Navy might eventually move its operations from Oceana, which is now the military’s most-encroached-upon air base. Oceana has more people – about 120,000 – living in its high-noise contours than any airfield in the country except Miami International Airport, which has roughly 124,000.
And development pressures are increasing as Virginia Beach and Chesapeake look for more places to build homes. City and Navy officials are trying to hammer out a long-range plan to manage growth while allowing the Navy to continue training pilots.
The Navy is hoping
to build another auxiliary field in North Carolina, to take some of the pressure – and noise – away from Fentress. But those plans have hit legal roadblocks, and there is no telling when, or even if, the field will be built.
In the meantime, Keeley does his best to schedule flight operations that provide the necessary practice for pilots but limit the roar of engines over residences. Technically, the jets can fly whenever and almost wherever they want – but Navy officials try to minimize nighttime and Sunday morning flying.
Keeley, who flew at Oceana as a bombardier/navigator in an A-6 Intruder in the late 1970s, said he has even honored specific requests on occasion, such as not flying during a certain time period because of a wedding or public function.
But with Oceana fielding roughly 220,000 takeoffs and landings each year and Fentress getting about 140,000, Keeley and other Oceana commanders have found it challenging to train pilots properly while keeping the community happy.
At both fields, the repetitive activity relies heavily on “touch-and-go” exercises, in which pilots simulate a carrier landing then immediately take off and circle around for another landing.
Though the runways at Oceana and Fentress are longer, wider and safer than the deck of a carrier, Navy officials do their best to give pilots a target that resembles a flight deck. But you cannot replicate a carrier landing on solid ground.
“I shake like a leaf every time I land on a carrier at night, and I have done it 450 times,” said Lt. Cmdr. Dave Koss, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot with Strike Fighter Squadron 87. “I literally roll out and my knees are shaking.”
Flying at Oceana and Fentress is safer for the pilots than working off a carrier, but because of neighborhoods and buildings around the airfields, patterns are modified – most importantly in the steeper approach.
With carrier landings, pilots are at about 800 feet when they’re a mile out, then they decelerate and descend to 600 feet before lining up and coming aboard. At Oceana, the approach is at 1,500 feet, dropping to 1,000; at Fentress, it’s 1,000 feet, dropping to 800.
Lt. Cmdr. Mark Sullivan, an F-14 pilot and veteran landing signal officer with Fighter Squadron 211, has spent countless hours at the unforgiving steel stern of an aircraft carrier guiding approaching pilots. He also has pulled considerable duty at the darkened end of a concrete Fentress runway. The difference in approaches is dramatic, he says.
“It’s similar to having a guy practice on a 10-foot basketball hoop and then all of a sudden reduce the hoop down to 8 feet,” Sullivan said. “They are just going to be shooting rocks for the first couple of times.”
Development around the airfields has brought other changes to the way pilots train. When operating off carriers, pilots rely heavily on instrumentation; here they use specific visuals.
“When you fly at Fentress,” Koss said, “your pattern is looking down on the ground: 'OK, here is that road; I am good to go. There’s that guy’s house I don’t want to fly around.’ ” The landmarks also can be obstacles.
“This whole neighborhood is off limits to us,” Sullivan said, pointing to a map of Fentress. “ So we fly around this farm on this side. We stay outside this road here, cut back in on this side so we don’t cross the Intracoastal, go all the way out here and now drive over to try to get on line.”
Capt. Mark Mills, who commands Air Wing One at Oceana, says flight patterns at Fentress are a half-mile wider than those used at the carrier.
“We do it, obviously,” Koss said, “but it’s not easy because we are creatures of habit. You are trying to establish good, solid habit patterns.”
Training at Oceana and Fentress, pilots are unable to get into the rhythm they do with an actual carrier pattern. And while they practice for emergencies, it’s just not the same.
“We have trained them to fly a certain way,” Sullivan said, “how to set his fuel flow, how much angle of bank to use, when to look outside and when to look inside.
“Now you send them to the scariest environment you can possibly imagine: pitch black, the deck is going up and you hear the call on the radio for 'Power! Power!’ then 'Wave off!’ – blood-curdling calls that scare the heck out of you.
“Now the guy is going to have to go back to that one thing that he learned – to set power and set angle of bank – and he is going to struggle.”
There are 265 aircraft assigned to Oceana, a number that has been falling. Just three years ago, the base had 316 planes; in 2010, it is scheduled to field 231 aircraft.
Oceana has 145 F/A-18C Hornets, seven Super Hornets and 80 F-14 Tomcats, but the Tomcats are being phased out. By the end of 2006, they are all expected to be retired.
The current model of Hornets also will be augmented by more F/A-18 E and F model Super Hornets, which will be trickling in this fall and will begin flying regularly next spring.
Eventually, there will be 120 of them based at Oceana, and by everyone’s admission, the Super Hornets are louder than anything now flying here.
“It is going to change the look and sound of what is flying in and around Oceana,” said Cmdr. C.J. Deni, commanding officer of Fighter Squadron 211, which has operated from Oceana for 55 years.
“We want the community to be ready for it and we want to maintain our relationship with the community. We don’t want to see the rules and procedures continue on a trend that will make it more difficult for us in the future.”
Jet fighters are
not the only aircraft that train at Oceana and Fentress – the E-2C Hawkeye radar planes and C-2 Greyhound cargo planes based in Norfolk also practice at the airfields.
Some of the activity at the Navy airfields involves qualifying new pilots to land and take off of carriers. But much of it is also refresher work, allowing more experienced pilots to keep up their skills or re-qualify .
Because of the risky nature of their work, carrier pilots are constantly being tested.
Sometimes, the Navy requires them to be re qualified twice in one year.
The standard rule for each pilot is to conduct two day time periods and six night time periods before being qualified. Each period has six landings.
Weather, operational commitments and maintenance requirements can make scheduling the necessary practice sessions difficult. But the impact of residential development around the airfields continues to generate the most problems.
Koss recalls carefree days of flying from Cecil Field, Fla., which the Navy closed in 1999.
“Cecil was out in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “We took off and went right over the ocean and did our mission. We went straight to the bombing targets and did our mission. There was no 'Be at this altitude. Be at this airspeed.’ It was 'Go do your stuff and come back.’ ”
But at Oceana, they do things differently. In addition to the adjustment in approach altitude, flights heading off shore get over water as quickly as possible to lessen jet noise.
Southbound departures are not allowed to climb above 4,000 feet until they are 15 miles away from Oceana. Then they can climb, dumping their jet noise and exhaust over the water instead of over homes.
Helicopter pilots used to approach and leave Oceana over Rudee Inlet, an easily spotted landmark from the air. But now they are routed in and out above Camp Pendleton, the state’s seaside military reservation.
The Oceana pilots say they can see the advancing encroachment around the Virginia Beach field every time they return from deployment.
“Going back and forth on cruise is just amazing,” Sullivan says. “Leave this town for six months and it is a different town when you come back.”
Among the complaints Keeley says he hears from residents is that the planes at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton don’t seem to create nearly the noise issue that the Navy jets do.
That, Keeley says, is because Langley pilots take off, conduct their missions, then return and land. They don’t have to practice countless touch-and-go landings because they never land on carriers.
“We already know how to take off and land on 8,000- or 12,000-foot runways,” Keeley said. “What we practice is how to land on about 200 feet of that carrier deck.”
Oceana pilots sense that they alternate between being viewed as heroes and villains in their home community – heroes after returning from deployments, villains while flying practice missions over Hampton Roads.
Their safety records are strong; considering the more than 300,000 annual takeoffs and landings they conduct, accidents are rare. The last major incident here involving an F-14 or F/A-18 was in 2001 at Fentress, when a Tomcat belly-landed with its wheels up. Before that, another Tomcat crashed at Oceana in 1996. None of the crew was injured in either accident.
“We are doing whatever we can to operate out of here safely,” said Cmdr. Dave J. Silkey, executive officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 87, a Hornet unit.
Pilots say they have heard residents question the need for them to fly so often, especially at night. But night training is essential because during combat, most missions take place during the cover of darkness.
“Every flight we do has a purpose,” Koss said. “We don’t go out and showboat.”
Plus, the jets have recording devices that provide a detailed paper trail of the flight – the altitude, speed and location of the jet at any time.
“So if someone says this jet flew over my house, we will actually go and pull the tapes out of the jet,” Koss said.
Despite the noise-induced friction between the Navy and the community, pilots say they like flying out of Oceana and enjoy the lifestyle it affords their families.
“We are trying tremendously hard to work with the Virginia Beach community,” Silkey said. “We are adapting our patterns in every possible way. “We love being here. This a great place to grow up and live.”
Navy officials will not comment on the upcoming BRAC 2005 – the Pentagon’s latest round of base realignment and closure, designed to streamline the nation’s military by closing or realigning bases and commands.
As the Navy’s master jet base on the East Coast, Oceana would appear to be safe from closure or losing planes – except for the encroachment issue. And jet noise already has played a role in some jets not being located at Oceana.
Partly because of the noise factor, two Navy Hornet squadrons were sent to the Marine Corps Air Station at Beaufort, S.C., when the jets were moved from Cecil Field in the mid-1990s. And a year ago, the Navy announced it would put two Super Hornet squadrons at the Marine Corps base in Cherry Point, N.C.
Initially, the Navy wanted to have all of the Super Hornets at Oceana. But noise concerns led to the proposal of a new practice field to ease the load at Fentress. The Navy chose a site in Washington County, N.C., for the new airstrip – and then gave two squadrons to Cherry Point so the state could reap some economic benefit in exchange for the rural runway 70 miles south of Virginia Beach.
Opponents of the Washington County airfield have had recent success in stalling the project. Navy officials still insist that the plan will go through, but it has hit a significant legal roadblock. A recent ruling prohibits the Navy from purchasing any more land for the proposed 30,000-acre site, and there is no indication when the next step might be taken.
A delay in building the airstrip, or cancellation of the field , would hamper the Navy’s goal of trying to reduce jet noise in Hampton Roads and could put the future of the base more at risk.
How Oceana will fare in BRAC 2005, or future realignments, remains to be seen, but Keeley said there is no question about the importance of the base’s mission.
“Since 1990, every carrier air wing stationed here has seen combat,” Keeley said.
And with the global war on terrorism showing no signs of letting up, he expects Oceana’s contributions to remain significant.
The challenges remain considerable, as well.
Keeley’s job of balancing the demands of the training with the concerns of the community will only get tougher when the noisy Super Hornets arrive.
For now his juggling act is working, Keeley said, but, “We are not training like we fight.”
Dog, has the Navy ever considered moving operations like these to Fallon or China Lake?
Seems to me there's lot's of room to play out there.
Cecil was close enough to Mayport to be "near" a carrier homeport but was still kinda out in the boonies.
So they close it, but leave NAS Jax open, which is right in the middle of downtown Jacksonville.
But the BRAC recommendations were based more on politics than reality.
Sounds like they closed the wrong base.
I'll go along with that. I worked at Naval Air Technical Training Center in Millington, TN when BRAC decided to spend a billion plus and move it to Pensacola. As I heard it, the Navy's own analysis couldn't justify PCLA after they shut down NADEP, so the push was on to keep it, being the cradle of NAVAIR and all.
Congress threw Millington a bone and moved most of BUPERS and NAVCRUITCOM here, and gave the airfield and all the rest to the city.
Ever visit that strip joint at the end of the main drag off Hwy-51? Home of the ugliest naked girls in America?
NAS New Orleans has nothing but a golf course and a ramp where transient flag officers can fly in for Mardi Gras.
The place is sinking into the swamp but it will never get closed. Not as long as Bourbon Street is there.
Our children live in Va. Beach. He is stationed on the Big E. They have been lucky to have been there for 17 years. Everytime that we go to visit we are so glad to hear the jet noise. Makes us feel really safe to know that you all are in the sky protecting our country. Thank you so much for your service to our country. My advise to Mayor Myra is to stop building homes so close to the base.
Millington was down pretty hard for a few years after the A Schools left, but things are picking up around here latey. The Old NAS Memphis is being marketed as the West Tennessee Reigonal Business Center - 8000' foot runway, 19,000 acres around it for industrial and office development. Hopefully something will come of all that.
We did have a ton of orange Navy aircraft up here last week for the hurricane flyaways. It was kinda nostalgic seeing a full flight line up there!
Rumors abound that the next BRAC will move the RESCEN 'Nawens up here so they can live happily everafter next door to BUPERS, but things being what they are, you are probably right. The Navy needs to stay close to *some* good liberty ports anyway! :o)
Yep, they had to have 12.3 dancers in there to make a full set of teeth LOL.
The River Rattlers stood up at Millington back in the '70s flying the A-4.
VP-94 would be kinda mis-located though, being the Crawfishers. And kinda pointless to put a P-3 squadron in the MidSouth.
Anyway, Beale Street is just like Bourbon Street, but without the smell.
That's the sound of freedom.
The Navy is having the same problem down in Pcola from the folks that bought in new developments built under the approach path past Blue Angel Parkway. The Navy pleaded with the contractors and the city not to build there. Like in Oceania, the Navy has tried to be a good neighbor by altering hours, and flight profiles but the complaints keep getting worse. People have to realize the Navy has operated out of those bases for nearly 100 years.
They should count their blessings that the noise is not from MiGs.
Fallon is a great idea. It has the double bonus of Top Gun school and the Nellis bombing range.
Don't forget the Mermaid Club which was near the corner of 51 and Navy Road, near Millington Honda.
Not me anymore. Fact is, when Delta has enough gas money, I only protect peanuts from hungry flight attendants these days. But thank you and your boy for his service.
I don't Fallon is a good idea. Quals require a lot of airspace and base activity; more than I think that area could handle. Oceana is too busy right now without the added airframes.
I live next to Miramar, and I remember what it was like when I flew out of that place before it became a Marine base. Too many aircraft when you had half the Tomcat fleet and TopGun working off the same tarmac. It got crowded.
I was born and raised in Norfolk and moved to S. Carolina in 1978. It's amazing how much the area's grown since then. It's pretty sad that the Navy's taking grief over Oceana, since Norfolk wouldn't be 1/3 the size it is without the presence of the Navy.
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