Rough stuff….
ATLANTIC OCEAN (October 12, 2020) -- Sailors perform a foreign object debris (FOD) walk down on the flight deck aboard United States Navy Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7).
A FOD-walk down is necessary before every flight operations period. It’s an inch-by-inch up-close examination of the deck surface for even the tiniest bit of debris that could be sucked into, and damage, a jet engine, or hurled across the deck like a bullet. It’s an all-available-hands evolution, as illustrated above.
This deck-level perspective shows the non-skid surface utilized on U.S. Navy flight decks. The rough texture is a necessity considering the water, fuel oils and pitching ship that could make the deck dangerously slick for the personnel and the multi-million-dollar aircraft operating on it.
In the photo above, even the cloud layer cooperated to emulate an almost-non-skid appearance of its own.
USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7)
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>>Top photo: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Dominick A. Cremeans, USN
