Another Hornet in Davy Jones’ Locker
Another Fighter Jet Tumbles from Truman Carrier Deck into Red Sea
By Konstantin Toropin
The USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier lost another F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet on Tuesday — the third since it deployed to the Middle East — this time amid a landing incident that caused the jet to go overboard, defense officials confirmed to Military.com
The incident comes just more than a week after the Truman lost an F/A-18 jet and a connected tow tractor when the pair fell overboard while being towed around the carrier’s hangar deck.
Officials said the most recent incident was caused by a failure in some part of the arresting equipment used to bring the jet to a halt on the carrier’s flight deck, and both aviators ejected safely from the aircraft.
The pair of sailors were recovered by a rescue helicopter and found to have minor injuries, the defense officials said.
Truman has had a hard deployment, from a collision at sea resulting in a new commanding officer, losing an -18 to friendly fire (lucky only one!), another over the side during evasive maneuvers, now this. The only saving grace is no lives have been lost and the injuries have been minor in nature. That and a Rescue Swimmer just scored a double, the lucky bastard.
Hat tip to Mick for the head’s up.
Category: Guest Link, Navy, Search and Rescue
That’s $219 million tax dollars in the drink. Well done.
The video rattles off a number of failure points for an arrested landing on a carrier, but he did miss one – failure in the arresting engine itself. There’s a lot that can go wrong on a carrier. VF-142 lost an F-14 off the USS America in the Med in 1978 when a valve failed in the arresting engine. This valve regulated how fast the hydraulic fluid flows out of the cylinder as the plane pulls the cable. It is adjusted based on aircraft type and weight at landing. In this case, the valve had been rebuilt as part of preventative maintenance but was reassembled incorrectly. It literally came apart. A stream of hydraulic fluid at a few thousand PSI came shooting out – lucky no one was killed in the arresting engine room. Cable payed out with no resistance until the piston hit the end of the cylinder. Cable parted and the F-14 rolled over the end of the angle. Pilot and RIO punched out as that happened and were picked up by the plane guard helo. Can’t remember if it was the 2 or 3 wire but we had to land without one of them for a while.
Successful by the little hairs on the big brass balls, or unsuccessful by the little hairs on the tight asshole.
NO THANKS.
Y’all keep on keeping on.
Jumping from aircraft in the dark of night was enough for me.
I’ll just watch from over here.
Isn’t there a cheaper way to wash planes?
Well, they could leave them on deck during a t-storm….
The “optempo” has been rather high for the carrier and the rest of the fleet. Seems to me the Dept of the Navy should be looking at increased rotation. The news said hat carrier had been out there for 8 months already in what is pretty much constant combat. Looking at it in terms as if they were in WW2, the loss of only 3 planes and zero human losses isn’t bad for almost year of combat ops.
Given we have more than one carrier group in the Atlantic side of the globe it seems to me that leaving only one in the area is short sided.
Hopefully now that the houthis have at least called a “time out”, if not really surrendered, maybe the sailors can get a break
I doubt we could get this done today, but it was interesting to me how they cranked out so many ships leading up to, and including, WW2.
I’m not even sure how many ship builders are left any more.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-the-us-built-5000-ships-in-wwii?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=104058&post_id=162982470&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=5ns5k&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I only spent one day on a bird farm, so what is the over/under on aircraft lost during a deployment? I did three deployments as part of the Nimitz Battle Group, and I recall they seemed to lose at least one each deployment. Can any airdales confirm?
Before I went aboard the LPH-3 in 1963, A small aircraft was used to see if it could land without arresting cables and it surely did land almost going into the drink. I think it was as small as a piper cub but I don’t remember. That was that and they stuck with the H 34’s and Hueys that the Marines used at the time. The ships helo was a 34 while I was aboard.
I did a cruise aboard the Nimitz in 2005 as Maintenance/Material Control Chief with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 (Red Devils). During that deployment, the carrier air wing lost no aircraft and the Nimitz had no personnel casualties. The battle group lost two people – one lost overboard and another due to a medical condition, if memory serves. All while supporting daily combat flight ops over Iraq (mostly flying around for hours with bombs, hoping for a call to drop them, only to bring them back to the ship). Lots of cyclic flight operations, but no one was attacking the ship.
I deployed on 3 carriers and only one, USS America, lost one. Slid off the elevator. That was in 1982 or so in the NAS.
So I did my own research on the Nimitz, and this is what I found:
September 4, 1986 An A-7E Corsair II crashed in the Norwegian Sea. Despite an “intensive” search the crew could not recover the pilot.
January 25, 1987 An EA-3B Skywarrior from Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron (VQ) 2, crashed while landing on board the Nimitz in the Ionian Sea, at 2328. The front wheel caught the barricade net and the aircraft skidded across the flight deck, going over the edge and breaking apart as it struck the water. Lt. Cmdr. Ronald R. Callander, Lt. Stephen H. Batchelder, Lt. Alan A. Levine, Lt. James D. Richards, AT2 Richard A. Herzing, CTI3 Patrick R. Price and CTI3 Craig H. Rudolf were killed.
February 24, 1987 An A-7E, assigned to Attack Squadron (VA) 82, crashed at sea after a cat shoot. The pilot ejected safely.
Wow…that was bad a couple of months. 3 aircraft and 8 lives lost.
Damm that used to be the best boat.
Does losing two planes = running into one boat? If so they will have their third deployment captain.
My understanding of Navy is limited at best but I think if there is a command issue with aircraft it falls upon the CAG to fall on his sword and take one for the team.
You motherfucker stealing my bingo card and I’m laughing a whole fucking lot harder than I expected…
Gotta think the NEW CO might set a record for the shortest command held in history. You splash TWO 60+ million fighters in a week? You gots to go…
I see more “loss of confidence” headlines soon.
Now Hiring: one senior O6 for “skipper” job. Must be experienced in retention of multimillion dollar jets.
Totally out of my experience areas, but IIRC there’s been a lot of noise about too much money on DEI crap and too little on training and equipping.
It seems that the (D)emon-rats’ attempts to hobble our military and destroy our country have had an effect that is showing up here.
If we sacrifice enough aircraft to Poseidon is the Navy expecting calm winds and following seas?
The US military is a joke.
DEI, polotics and marxism put in there.
It will take a generation to fix.
Four years oughta fix it.
As not well versed in Navy terminology, what does rescuing 2 people (just scored a double) mean? Is it worth promotion or pay?
No such luck. I was a helo rescue swimmer for a tour and never got to jump for reals. Bragging rights and if he’s worth his salt he’ll sport two F/A-18 nametags on his flight jacket sleeve.
This guy does a good job discussing it.
https://youtu.be/pueEvyNJRVs?si=Xumg0J5F0uBL1mIn
He does. He also sounds like Steve Doocy from Fox News.
Another video that popped up after that was an interview with a F18 pilot that was bested by his former cable repair guy flying an F15. That too was an interesting story as well.
US taxpayers when one Hornet falls into the drink: Mistakes happen. No big deal.
US taxpayers when another Hornet (from the same carrier from before) falls into the drink: STOP SINKING MY MONEY!!!!