Day Approach

They rolled out down the carrier’s wake, and the wingman can tell by the churn behind that she’s making almost all of her own wind, the four great shafts thrashing the screws to drive her through the water. This will have implications in his approach turn, and in fact close in on final, and he puts a mental footnote on the observation. In his momentary peek out side, he sees a relatively steady deck, for which he gives a silent, unformed but nevertheless sincere prayer of thanks. Focusing closely on the task at hand, he closes up the formation overhead the ship, knowing as always that it would be better to be dead than to look bad, especially around the ship.