Very informative. A friend of mine was a "yellow shirt", now retired, and told me many stories. But, we never covered all the info covered here! Thanks, Nice job!
I was assigned to HS-2, that was assigned to CAW-2 aboard the USS Ranger CV-61, from 1980 to 1982 and aboard the USS Kitty Hawk CV-63, from 1983 to 1984. Squadrons use the same hand signals as the yellow shirts, because, the plane captains in the squadron do all the communicating with the pilot. The catapult crew and arrested crew have different hand signals, especially the arrested crew telling the pilot to release the arresting cable and telling the pilot that the yellow shirt is in control once the arresting cable is released.
Kneeling: three reasons I can think of: 1) you don’t want to get hit by a wing, 2) you don’t want to get knocked over by the jet blast, 3) praying because you know the plane was built by the lowest bidder on a government contract
