Rules of Engagement

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Marine 1st Lt. Brad Austin exercised his flight controls to the stops, then saluted the catapult officer and braced his head for the violent launch. He inhaled a deep breath of pure, cool oxygen and held it in his lungs.

The F-4 Phantom's twin turbojets produced an earsplitting roar as the cat officer leaned forward and touched the flight deck, signaling to fire the catapult.

The deck-edge operator, standing in the starboard catwalk of the mammoth ship, pushed the launch button and quickly ducked below the surface of the flight deck to avoid the superheated jet blast.

The fighter-bomber, howling in afterburner, snapped the hold-back bar and hurtled down the deck in a cloud of swirling steam.

Austin's helmet was pinned to the ejection seat headrest as his eyeballs flattened under the 6-g cat shot. His normal body weight of 165 pounds had instantly increased to 990 pounds.

Austin's radar intercept officer, navy Lt. Russell Lunsford, gripped the sides of the rear cockpit and looked at the port catapult track. The ship and the ocean were vague blurs of gray and blue as the Phantom accelerated from zero to 170 miles per hour in two and a half seconds.

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