Little in this world can be as harrowing as landing on a pitching, rolling carrier deck at night.
I would agree. I haven’t done it in a jet like that, but I have been a passenger in a CG helocopter landing on a severely rolling and pitching flight deck. After 25 or so years now, there are parts of me only now becoming un-puckered. :-)
“Little in this world can be as harrowing as landing on a pitching, rolling carrier deck at night.”
Watching the evening news comes pretty close anymore.
Especially if you are low on fuel with no available divert.
Pucker factor, indeed.
When I was going through Pensacola they told us that measured stress levels during night carrier ops were higher than measured stress levels in combat.
Thankfully, I went helos and never had a night carrier landing. However, making a 45 degree approach to the back of an LPD underway was an exercise in suppressing mental/visual dissonance.
And night, confined area, no-hover landings or night confined area sling loads will sure wring it out of you.
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.