Thorax jolt

Zhou said wearing colorful sweaters, vests and special goggles, and standing on the carrier deck using hand signals to direct the fighter jets' movements may seem "pretty cool".

However, the reality is his team members have to endure a slew of challenges including piercing sounds, walls of scorching engine exhaust, and stiff sea winds that never stop. On top of this, they must pay full attention to their work, he said.

"Our duties have us within short distances from the jet's tail nozzles," Zhou said.

"Each time the pilot switches on the afterburners to increase the engines' thrust before his J-15 fighter roars into the sky, we are always punched by the deafening thunder of its powerful engines though we have earplugs and earmuffs.

"The noise is transmitted through our skull and bones. It makes your thorax jolt like boiling water and at the same time pokes your ears with the sound of air tearing apart."

Another important part of their job is to detect abnormal conditions and hazards and prevent dangerous situations.

Gao recalled one such incident with two other crew members.

"We had saluted the pilot and were about to signal him that he could take off. Right before we gave the 'go' sign, all of us saw one of the engine nozzles spitting out a fireball.

"We looked back toward the aircraft safety observer (standing behind the shooters), and he had already given a hand signal there was a hazard. We immediately stood up and repeated the sign to the pilot. We also signaled the wheel obstruction panels operator not to put down the panels."

If they failed to observe the fireball, and if the wheel obstruction panels had dropped back into their slots, the aviator would have faced a big safety hazard because even if he had noticed something was going wrong on the J-15 and tried to brake the plane, it would be highly likely to be late since the engines had been on maximum thrust and had begun to leap forward, according to the shooter. "To a certain extent, we helped to save that aircraft," Gao said, adding the plane was moved to an emergency area for examination.

In another case, Senior Chief Petty Officer Hao Zhenshan, an arresting gear technician, heard a very faint abnormal sound when he worked with other technicians to maintain arresting gear control equipment after they recovered a group of J-15s.

"The first idea in my mind was that something went wrong somewhere on the cable that we are responsible for. We began to comb the cable and found a tiny bulge that was caused by a broken steel wire. Then we used necessary measures to fix it to make sure it would not affect aircraft operations," Hao said.