A couple of stories from my tour on the carrier USS America. 
The America was deployed to the Mediterranean in the spring of ‘86.  I was on the Kennedy that spring and literally got overnight orders to transfer to her (I had ticked off the detailer).  Four days after I flew on board the America in a C1-A COD off the coast of Sicily, the America got tasked to strongly tell Libya’s Mu’ammer al-Gathafi that the Mediterranean did not belong to him. We all knew it was for real when one walks through the crew’s mess decks and sees all the tables and chairs pushed to one side and crews assembling bombs and rockets to be sent to the flight deck and later delivery to Gathafi. Four days after I arrived we bombed a number of military targets in response to their attempts to launch rockets at the battle group from a number of small boats. The photos of that operation that my photographers shot were published in magazines and newspapers around the world.
During the next month, the America’s squadrons flew literally around the clock, seven days a week. I remember during this period looking up one day at the TV in our work space.  We had the channel on for the PLAD cameras (Pilot Landing Aid Television). The shot was from a camera buried on the flight deck. A rather big air crewman had stepped over the camera and was walking forward on the flight deck with probably a hundred or more pounds of aircraft tie-down chains over his shoulders.  The flight deck was so slick from the coating of oil and fuel from so many flight operations that the man was slipping and sliding like he was on ice. Despite these conditions flight operations continued to go on.
A day or two later I heard one of my crew hollered for everyone to look at the TV. Again we had the PLAD channel on and we all gathered round to watch in horror as an A-7E was slowly sliding sideways toward the port (left) side of the deck. Out of our sight an F-14 had turned up and it’s exhaust had caught the large A-7’s tail which acted like a sail and the A-7 was blowing sideways across the slick flight deck. The A-7 got all the way to the flight deck edge where there is a steel lip called a combing which is a little lower than a typical street curb. The plan hit the combing and then the right wing started to rise up. Our hearts were in our throats as we watched that plane’s right wing lift up until the plane was about 30 degrees to the flight deck. Suddenly, at the last possible moment before falling into the sea, it fell back down to the deck. Crewmen ran over and quickly checked out the plane and it was then directed to the waist cats (the two catapults on the angle deck) and it was launched.
Later that evening a pilot from that squadron came be. I told him what we had seen and asked him if he had seen the near accident and what had happened. He replied that yes he had see it, and that he was the pilot.  At the end, just before the plane’s wing dropped back down he had his hand on the eject levers and was all prepared to pull them to eject.  That night he was real cool about it, as those pilots seem to always be. As for me, well if that had been me at the very least I would have needed a new flight suit.
It was a few days later when we finally got time for a stand down from flight operations and the crews were able to wash down the flight deck and make it safer. It is a tribute to all the men who worked up there that even under those conditions of day and night flight operations on a “skating rink” that we did not have one serious accident.

Kennerly (Ken) Brown
Computer Sciences Corporations
Training Center of Excellence