Thanks to our sponsor, National University. National University knows how important flexibility is

for busy adults going back to school. After all, NU was founded by a U.S. Navy veteran.

That's why NU offers year-round enrollment, as well as four and eight-week online course

options, masters degrees, and doctoral programs in the most high-demand fields so veterans and

service members can advance their careers. NU is a yellow ribbon school and accepts the post-911

GI Bill while offering veterans help to cover what the GI Bill may not. To find out more,

visit NU.edu-4-VET. High performance military airplanes operate from the flight decks of

ships at sea primarily in one of two ways. The first is known as Stovl, or short take-off vertical

landing. You might picture, say, AV-8B carriers or the B model of the F-35 Lightning II.

The other is conventional cats and traps, let's call it. Think hydraulic or steam-powered

catapults and mechanical arresting gear. Although increasingly these days, you might find both

are electromagnetically driven. Either way, these incredible contraptions launch aircraft like

the F-A-18 Super Hornet or the sea model of the F-35 from zero to 170 knots or more in just seconds,

and later do the opposite to safely recover them. Each method has its challenges and certainly

risks as the recent F-35C crash aboard the U.S.S. Carl Vinson so graphically depicted,

but which do you think is more difficult? Of course, if you ask a hairier pilot,

he or she will say Stovl operations, and the Super Hornet pilot will likely say cats and traps.

The trick is to find a pilot who has done both, and that's not easy. Hello and welcome to the

Fighter pilot podcast. I am your host Vincent Iolo, and I've not done both, but about a year ago,

I did find just such a pilot. Paul Tremmling was a Royal Navy seahireer pilot who later flew F-A-18

Super Hornets on exchange with the U.S. Navy, and I asked him which he found to be the most challenging.

Paul joined us for a Patreon happy hour discussion in early 2021, where he not only ranked the

...