When there used to be more than one carrier in a task group, if an aircraft landed accidentally on the wrong ship, some fun was had before sending him “home”.
Imagine doing this today.
The flight deck crew would be sent immediately to undergo 100 hours of mandatory sensitivity training, so as to be sure Peter “Wrongway” Peachfuzz’s hurt feeeeeelings were properly assuaged, of course. But none of these all-in-good-fun hijinks would be possible today, sad to say. For one thing, it would require a sense of humor, which is a rara avis indeed in these parlous times.
I purely love what they did to this F2 Banshee.
The “Down Bird” Phantom is good too.
FYI, it’s an aircraft from USS Constellation, see, that mistakenly set down on the deck of the USS Bonhomme Richard, whose crew-assigned nickname (all USN ships have one, which is voted on by the crew from a list of candidates which have been pre-approved by their CO) is the Bonnie Dick. Lots more rib-tickling photos at the link, going all the way back to an old F4U that got itself declared a “POW” owing to its poor pilot having shit the bed, so to speak, in similarly spectacular fashion.
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Then there were the Japanese pilots who landed on a US carrier during WWII…
Huh. Don’t recall ever reading about that, unless you mean on purpose.
Sadly, the Bonnie Dick was scrapped after Today’s Navy couldn’t figure out how to put out a fire.