Watch a video of Kimberly’s 1,000th landing: www.facebook.com/USSTruman/videos/10153399118689400/?pnref=story
• Eugene Ely made the first carrier landing in 1911 when he set a Curtiss biplane down on the USS Pennsylvania, a battleship that was outfitted with a landing deck. The arresting system was a series of ropes stretched across the deck. Hooks attached to his aircraft snagged the ropes, and 50-pound sandbags tied to the end of each rope eventually dragged Ely’s plane to a halt. (Ely died later that year in a crash; he was 25.)
• Capt. Eric Melrose Brown, a British Royal Navy pilot during World War II, holds the record for aircraft carrier landings with 2,407. As a test pilot, Brown tested the landing systems on more than 20 aircraft carriers.
When it comes to his family’s aviation heritage, “The roots go back quite a ways,” U.S. Navy Capt. Keith Kimberly said.
All the way back to a World War I-era aircraft and a “Roaring 20s” aviator, when John Kimberly was flying a JN-4 biplane in the skies over Vancouver.
“My grandfather got his first aircraft in 1927. He flew his ‘Jenny’ out of Pearson (Field),” Kimberly said. “He was quite the trail blazer.”
The Navy fighter pilot recently added to his family’s aviation résumé. The Vancouver native became just the 371st naval aviator in history to log 1,000 arrested landings on an aircraft carrier.
Kimberly notched his 1,000th “trap” on June 29 when he landed his F/A-18F Super Hornet on the flight deck of USS Harry S. Truman.
“I just never expected it to happen,” Kimberly said. “If you’re in long enough, you keep an eye on it.”
The issue of tenure can work both ways, however, the 49-year-old pilot said.
“As you get older, you fly less. It’s a young man’s kind of game. As you get more mature, a broader spectrum of responsibilities takes you away from flying; you’re not as proficient as you once were. It is a fairly perishable skill,” Kimberly said.
Kimberly’s milestone “is not just about longevity, but a statement about his quality of flying,” Capt. Ryan Scholl, commanding officer of the USS Harry S. Truman, said in a Defense Department video. “You just don’t stick around that long if you’re not a good pilot.”
Two pilots in 1,000
Even if you’re a good pilot, there is a 99.8 percent chance that you won’t notch 1,000.
A total of 174,848 pilots of all nationalities and service branches have been fixed-wing naval aviators since 1911, Rear Adm. Bret Batchelder said in a Navy press release. Fewer than two-tenths of 1 percent of all naval aviators make it to 1,000 arrested-landings, said Batchelder, the commander of Carrier Strike Group 8.
“One thousand traps is not one man’s reward,” Kimberly said. “There are so many people (on a carrier): 750 people in the flight-deck department; over 2,500 people working on aircraft. If there was one thing I would convey, all those people worked so hard to get that one aircraft landed.”
One Vancouver aviator who knows what goes into a carrier landing is Bill Turlay; he made 800 carrier landings as a Navy fighter pilot.
“During the Vietnam War, I might do two or three flights a day,” said Turlay, a Vancouver city councilor.
One secret to making hundreds of carrier landings, Turlay said, is to “never give up a fleet cockpit seat if you can.”
Turlay said he was 35 when he decided to take a brief break from fleet duty. He wanted to skip one sea tour and took an assignment as a training officer so he could spend some time with his wife and their three children. Turlay never made another carrier landing.
He’s ‘that guy’ now
The U.S. Navy’s “trap” record-holder is Vice Adm. Walter E. Carter, with 2,016. Carter was named superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy a year ago.
Kimberly’s grandfather was an early inspiration for the Navy aviator. (And still is: He has a copy of John Kimberly’s pilot’s license.) But another inspiration lived next door when young Keith Kimberly was attending Vancouver’s Walnut Grove Elementary School. An Ash Street neighbor commanded the Oregon Air National Guard.
“He was quite a role model,” Kimberly said.
So were other pilots who flew from the Air Guard base just across the Columbia River.
“Watching F-101s fly out of Portland, I always wanted to be that guy,” Kimberly said.
Eventually, he got his chance. Kimberly made his first carrier landing in 1990, on the USS Lexington.
“The first one is always the one that has a tendency to capture your attention,” he said. “It seems unnatural, to put an airplane onto a 300-foot space.”
• Eugene Ely made the first carrier landing in 1911 when he set a Curtiss biplane down on the USS Pennsylvania, a battleship that was outfitted with a landing deck. The arresting system was a series of ropes stretched across the deck. Hooks attached to his aircraft snagged the ropes, and 50-pound sandbags tied to the end of each rope eventually dragged Ely's plane to a halt. (Ely died later that year in a crash; he was 25.)
• Capt. Eric Melrose Brown, a British Royal Navy pilot during World War II, holds the record for aircraft carrier landings with 2,407. As a test pilot, Brown tested the landing systems on more than 20 aircraft carriers.
The first night “trap” also was memorable; so were some bad-weather landings.
“You come out of the weather and you have a second or two seconds to land the airplane,” Kimberly said. “With instrumentation, they become a bit easier.”
There is more to a flight than a landing, of course. Catapult-powered launches are pretty memorable too.
“You go from zero to 175 mph in about 220 feet,” Turlay said. “That was quite a ride.”
