HORNET BAY
FLIGHT LOG
← ALL ENTRIES
FEATUREGRAPHICS

The colored shirts: every hand signal on the roof, annotated 9b70fcc

Annotated triptych of the arrival parking sequence — wands crossed overhead for STOP, wand across the throat for CUT, both wands held up for CHOCKS IN

Follow-up to wands up, by popular request: the full vocabulary, frozen frame by frame with the signals arrowed. A carrier deck is too loud for radios and too busy for hesitation, so the Enterprise’s crew talks with wands — and every shirt color is a different trade. Here is the whole rainbow, caught in the act on the roof.

Yellow shirts — the aircraft directors

Yellow owns every moving jet. From the moment your engine lights to the moment the chocks go in, a director’s wands are the only traffic law that matters:

Annotated shot of the START ENGINES signal — right wand held high, left wand dropped onto the engine Annotated shot of the IDENTIFY GATE signal — both wands straight up, meaning 'I have you, I am your director' Annotated shot of the STRAIGHT AHEAD signal — both wands up, beckoning inward Annotated shot of the TURN signal — one wand points the way, the other beckons the nose around Annotated shot of the SLOW DOWN signal — wands low, patting the air down

And when you come back aboard, the parking sequence is always the same three beats — stop, cut, chocks:

Annotated triptych of the arrival sequence — wands crossed overhead to STOP, wand across the throat to CUT ENGINES, both wands held up for CHOCKS IN

Two yellows work solo acts. The shooter — the catapult officer — sends every jet off the bow with the most famous gesture in naval aviation, and the wingwalker marches the starboard wingtip through the crowded taxi pattern where the pilot is blind:

Annotated shot of the shooter — kneeling clear of the cat track, pointing down the catapult to launch Annotated shot of the wingwalker — one wand held up, marching beside the starboard wingtip

The rest of the rainbow

Everybody else keeps the machine turning around the directors. Wands stowed, jobs very much not:

Green shirt — catapult and arresting-gear crew standing by the shuttle and the jet blast deflector Blue shirt — plane handler on the tie-downs, chocks chains and brakes Red shirt — ordnance and crash crew, arming the stations and standing clear with the pins Brown shirt — plane captain, owning the jet on the spot from pre-flight to walk-around Purple shirt — the grapes, fueling the fleet between launch and recovery cycles

All of it is live on the flight deck right now: spawn on the roof and watch the directors pick you up with the identify gate, taxi to the cat and take the launch signal, or just spectate the air wing cycling — every jet that traps gets the same stop-cut-chocks send-off. Eleven months of flight school, and the deck still says it best with two orange sticks.