24-05-2025
Landing on an aircraft carrier at night
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Being an F-18 pilot takes hours of training and practice. After pilots have made a specific score on landing and taking off during the day, the lights turn off, and the stakes are higher.
Each pilot has to land in the middle of the ocean, on an aircraft carrier, in the middle of the night.
Lieutenant Andrew Mueller, F-18 Instructor Pilot, explained that this is important for all operations. Missions usually happen at night.
'The night is where we operate. The opportunity to go out there and do our country's good deeds. There are bad people around the globe that need to be taken care of, and at night is the best way to do it,' said Mueller.
What it takes to be a Navy pilot
While this is hard for an onlooker's brain to comprehend, it's even more mentally tough for the pilots trying to land in complete darkness.
'It's pretty tough for the human mind to literally be staring at death in the face and a guy's on the radio being like 'hey, you look good dude, keep it coming.''
Mueller doesn't mean to discredit pilots who are nervous; he's been there before and knows it's tough each time things don't look right.
'You see a ship, you know, pitching up and down into the blackness and the propellers coming out, and you're like 'oh, I'm supposed to land there, very cool. And at one point, the LA can go so far down the ship comes out of the water that it just completely disappears and you're basically staring at death in the face.'
The best advice he gives to pilots he's training, 'When you walk out onto an aircraft carrier deck at night, take a deep breath, and go like okay well no, I'm actually, I'm the boogie man tonight, I'm the darkness, and then we go do some good work for the US Navy.'
To see more from Shelby's naval journey, check out the News 2 special report .
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