Why Did This Finnish Fighter Jet Land on an American Aircraft Carrier?

David Axe

Security, Europe

History was being made.

Key point: Finland is looking for new fighter jets and is working with America. That means it got to land a fighter on a carrier for the first time.

On March 17, 2017 in the Atlantic, a fighter jet landed onto the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. The only difference this time was that the pilot was Finnish, not American.

Capt. Juha “Stallion” Jarvinen’s landing was the first landing on an aircraft carrier by a Finnish air force pilot in history, according to the U.S. Navy. Jarvinen was flying a U.S. Marine F/A-18C Hornet with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101 as part of a pilot exchange program — also a first between the U.S. Marines and the Finnish air force.

(This first appeared in 2019.)

“It was pretty intense,” Jarvinen said according to a U.S. Navy news release. “I was extremely happy because I knew I actually caught the wire when I felt the sensation of rapidly slowing down, but at the same time I was a little disappointed because I caught the second wire and not the third.”

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Nimitz-class aircraft carriers — with two exceptions, the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — have four arresting wires, or cables. Catching the third cable is safest, but the snagging the second one isn’t bad.

The landing is interesting because Finland, like neighboring Sweden, is an officially neutral country and is not part of NATO, and the country during most of the post-war era navigated a fine line between East and West. That is still true, mostly.