New Skivvies Required? Maybe.
On March 18 of this year, an E2C aircraft was making a carrier landing on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
During the landing, there was a sharp “snap”. The arresting cable had broken.
The plane did not decelerate. It proceeded off the end of the carrier’s runway.
Through immediate action, the plane’s aircrew managed to save the aircraft. It descended nearly to the water – one of the crew estimates to within approximately 10 feet – but did not impact. They were later able to land safely.
Fox News has a story today concerning the incident that gives more details. It’s worth a read – and includes video of the incident.
For their actions that day, three pilots on-board the aircraft – Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Browning, Lt. Cmdr. Kellen Smith, and Lt. Matthew Halliwell – were awarded the Air Medal earlier this month. Well done, men. Damn well done.
And after that incident, if any or all of you needed new skivvies – that’s IMO quite understandable. (smile)
Category: Navy
I would have left a brown streak from the end of the carrier to the next port of call.
Excellent job gentlemen.
Yeah, I suspect I might well have needed a new pair of skivvies after experiencing something like that.
I would also have to report to the crash crew afterwards and have them use the Jaws of Life to pry the seat cushion out of my ass after it got sucked up in there while I was waiting to see if the aircraft was going to hit the water or not.
The E-2C is not equipped with ejection seats, so when something like this happens, the crew is along for the ride, however it ends up.
So, they did what they were trained to do? Um.
Yes. Just like a firefighter who runs into a burning building to rescue someone is using his/her training.
The fact that someone is trained how to accomplish a particular task is irrelevant regarding whether their actually doing that task merits praise.
Except the firefighter doesn’t run into a burning building to save himself.
I don’t think these guys did what they did to save themselves, either.
On the carrier I was on, I have seen fighters go off the end like that and it seems forever until they show up climbing out of it…but our WWII carrier wasn’t anywhere as big as the Ike or as tall!
why the fuck to you think they did it? they did the job they did were trained to do and a damn good thing their training is some of the best in the world. Whether or not they deserve a medal is a different discussion. Personally, I think a well done is enough
I thought the same. Standard procedure to go full throttle on landing in case you overshoot/miss the cables, or a cable parts as this case. Seems like a simple (albeit unplanned) touch-and-go drill.
Not comparable in my mind to the pilot that risks (and sometimes loses) life and limb to crash a malfunctioning plane away from populated areas.
Appears the air medal is between the AF and Joint Commendation Medals and just below the MSM. This here jarhead thinks that’s a bit of a stretch. MAYBE an achievement medal for whichever of the 3 pilots on board was actually in control. Of course, since two of them were Lt Cmdr’s (or is it Lts Cmdr?) an achievement medal is automatically upgrades to a commendation medal.
Good pilot? Yes, you have to be good to even try a carrier landing. Extraordinary among peers? No, IMNSHO.
I was thinking a stellar eval and a free lunch.
This incident was very much more than ‘a simple (albeit unplanned) touch-and-go drill’.
The aircraft had already executed a successful arrested landing and had decelerated below flying speed in the landing area when the cross-deck pendant broke, so even with the throttles pushed up and the substantial relative wind over the flight deck, it was highly unlikely that that aircraft was going to get safely airborne again under those circumstances.
This E-2C crew made a great save here, and they definitely rate the Air Medal for ‘meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight’.
Please note that the Air Medals that these guys received are for “meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight”.
Contrary to some erroneous reports and posts that are emerging, THESE AIR MEDALS ARE NOT AWARDS FOR VALOR.
Please go to this link if you’d like to read the Air Medal citations for both LCDR Smith and LCDR Browning for yourselves:
https://news.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/LCDR-BROWNING-AND-LCDR-SMITH.pdf
the link says “armed forces air medal for valor”. Was the clip wrong in this and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
Still looked like a job well done and executed like the excellent training they had but not worth a medal. I’m not going to begrudge them one, though.
Please read the citations found at the link that I provided in my post. Those citations clearly state that these Air Medals are for meritorious achievement; they are not for valor. If the Air Medals were for valor, they would include a “Combat V”.
I read the citation. The clip appears to be wrong in mentioning valor. after reading the citation I guess I have no problem with them receiving it with the way the citation reads but then again no-one asked me.
Yes, they certainly did what they were trained to do, and they did it exceptionally well.
They used their training to perform an incredible feat of airmanship after they found themselves in extremis when that cross-deck pendant broke on the Ike, thus saving a multi-million dollar aircraft that is a critical asset within a Carrier Strike Group, along with the lives of the five crewmembers aboard the aircraft.
Yes, they certainly did what they were trained to do. They did indeed.
Bravo Zulu to that entire E-2C crew. Well done.
You should have written the citation. After reading your stuff, I’m convinced.
Tell me why three crewman got a medal. Were they all flying the a/c?
I wondered that myself. I can see pilot and copilot, but I’m a bit confused over what the 3rd individual may have done to merit an award.
Then again, I’m not an aviator and am not familiar with crew duties on the E2C. So I can’t say with certainty that the 3rd individual sat and did nothing during the incident, either.
Been there done that, 3rd person(but not a pilot).
Kahoolawe Hawaii, around 1984. I was the LCPO of an EOD team going there for a 3 week stint of blowing up UXOs.
Both the pilot and co-pilot had never flown there before. I explained to them we had a “landing pad” of volcanic rock but regardless always had terrible brown out. I told them you have to hit the pad otherwise you’ll be up to the body of the A/C in sand.
I guess these guys had never been in a brown out condition quite like this. As we were attempting to land I could feel the chopper slipping left and was yelling into the ICS to move right.
Yep, we got stuck!
Relationship to C-2 story. I bet that 3rd guy was giving the pilots hell on the comms just like I was cussing out those CH-53 pilots.
My thing is only 1 NFO in the back? What happened to the other two? Great job though.
He was in the back “levitating” for all he was worth.
No, they were not all actually flying the aircraft with their hands on the controls, so to speak.
The E-2C flight crew normally consists of a pilot, copilot, Combat Information Center Officer, Aircraft Control Officer, and Radar Officer. Please note that the Combat Information Center Officer, Aircraft Control Officer, and Radar Officer are not pilots; they are Naval Flight Officers (NFOs), and their crew stations are back in the fuselage of the aircraft.
LCDR Smith and LT Halliwell were the pilots. LCDR Browning was the Combat Information Center Officer, and according to our local E-2C guys, he was also the Mission Commander for this flight, which is why he was awarded the Air Medal along with the two pilots.
Here is a link to the Air Medal citations for both LCDR Smith and LCDR Browning:
https://news.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/LCDR-BROWNING-AND-LCDR-SMITH.pdf
Former Army Grumman OV-1 right seater (non-pilot)here.
Sometimes you can help by not screaming like a little girl and distracting the pilot.
OK; that’s a true statement. Not sure what you’re driving at, though.
In any case, I doubt that anyone in that E-2C crew was ‘screaming like a little girl’ during that emergency.
In Naval Aviation, anyone with a propensity to ‘scream like a little girl’ at any time doesn’t last very long, regardless of aircraft community or crew position.
I guess this guy is out then…
Yes; that guy would be out.
I would’ve been screaming like a mashed cat. I watched that clip last night and figured we were gonna see a big aircraft get plowed under by the pointy end of a big ass ship. Very happy I was wrong
As an AW, basically an airborne sensor systems operator on P-3 Orions, I was onboard when my crew had a couple of VERY close calls. What I remember most of all was that there weren’t any screaming, or anything out of ordinary comms between the crewmembers,and a LOT of silence.
I suspect that most of the other crewmen were, like me, busy tightening and retightening our harness, our helmet chinstraps, tugging on gloves, and going over and over our emergency requirements for our individual positions.
The only time, and I mean only time I ever heard anyone raise their voice was on one event in the Azores. We were almost out of fuel, in a thunderstorm with driving rain, at night, and on our 7th approach. If we didn’t land, we’d have to ditch.
The SAR bird was already airborne, just in case. As we touched down we again bounced up as the turbulence caught us. I heard our PPC, the guy doing the landing holler out “You aren’t gonna kill me, you sunofabitch”.
He managed to somehow slam it down on the runway and the flight engineer threw the power levers into reverse and we slowed down to taxi speed.
After debrief and getting back to my barracks, I had several long pulls on a bottle of Jack I had in my room.
Anyway, I’ve gone on enough. Like I said, in the times I was involved in inflight emergencies, including landing and T/O I never heard anything else but that one curse. The rest was calm and deliberate comms.
Slick, it also helps if you don’t cover the pilot’s eyes with your hands and yell, “Guess who ???!!!”
Completely understandable.
The physics behind this is easy.
The sheer force of their gigantic balls collectively generated their own anti-gravity and deflecting force against the ocean so that, well follow the explanation here….
“When we would normally be coming to a stop, we weren’t,” Smith said in a statement. “Our years of training kicked in and we reacted on instinct. I slapped back the ditching hatch (To air cool their nuclear fusion reaction heat generating man marbles) (Hawkeyes do not have ejection seats (As their giant brass balls would not FIT in an ejection seat, and also they render ejection seats unnecessary and ineffective) ) as we cleared the deck and began a deep settle (significant descent).”
At that point they estimated coming within 10 feet of the surface of the ocean, so if you calculate the mass vs. the area between the aircraft and that none of the crew mention any vibration or tickling of their lower scrotal areas, you can effectively estimate that their brobdingnagian giggleberries are excess of 10+ feet, EACH.
So there you have it.
/SCIENCE BITCHES
? ? ✊
Yeah, well, they know how to fly a plane to the max, too, Chipster, unlike some we’ve heard of.
They can properly manage their aircraft’s fuel supply, too.
Well, you know they felt the cable snap and the pilot most likely immediately went full throttle, counting on the carrier’s ability to create lift for the plane and the fact that the plane was still in motion.
That, and the height distance of an aircraft carrier flight deck from ocean surface them room to pull it off.
No pilot error here. Damn good job of saving air crew lives.
I was thinking that the carrier just push-started them once they dropped below the deck. You know – put it in second gear and pop the clutch…
Eight crewmen were injured by the snapped cable and an investigation concluded that maintenance screwed up by not following the prescribed procedures. For you crazies out there who know about landing fixed wing a/c on a freaking boat, is it normal for that type of a/c to snag only the last available cable?
I haven’t worked a carrier deck, but I don’t think that’s how it’s done, no.
This article explains it somewhat.
https://theaviationist.com/2012/10/05/deck-landing/
When there is tension on the tailhook it will raise enough to clear any remaining cables. By the time it snapped, they were already past any other cables. I don’t know about this particular aircraft type but fighters always aim for cable number three. I was not Navy but I saw dozens of barrier tests in my Air Force career and know what the tailhook does under a load.
The aircraft carrier’s Improved Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System (IFLOLS), a.k.a. ‘The Meatball’, is set for an ideal glide slope of about 3.5 degrees (the glide slope is adjustable to account for sea state), which sets the aircraft up to hook the #3 wire in the landing area.
If the aircraft hooks the #4 wire (#4 is the last wire), the aircraft is landing long.
They also can use ACLS, the ship and plane will land itself…my pilots hated this. They wanted control.
They shoot for the three wire which is second to last…1 wire is furthest aft 4 wire furthest forward.
They get graded on each landing, an OK three wire is what they (The LSO, or Landing Signal Officer) are looking for.
HOOOOOOAH !!!!!!
Had a few crazy landing in the sand box but the one that made me shit my pants was in da Stan
The only thing I’ll take issue with is your statement that the aircraft did not decelerate. I’m quite sure the aircraft did nothing but decelerate right up to the point where the cable snapped. That’s what makes this a noteworthy story. When the aircrew figured out they weren’t going to stop on deck, I’m quite sure they were at or near stall speed. This, despite their training, was quite a feat of airmanship with a bit of luck tossed in for good measure.
I believe I put the sentence containing “did not decelerate” AFTER the sentence containing “snap” above.
I’m pretty sure that the aircraft didn’t continue to decelerate after the cable went snap.
Yeah, that’s what you wrote but that’s not really how it reads. As the cable plays out it is slowing them down the entire time. Right up to when it snapped. No matter. Good story, and good pilots!
Admittedly my understanding of carrier landings is limited to hearsay and Stephen Coonts novels, but isn’t it SOP to hit the throttles on landing in case of just such an necessity? And if they were hitting the last cable, wasn’t it already a marginal landing? (Had a friend who reputedly was a hot-shit carrier pilot who never used the last cable – ever – in his Nam tours.)
Could use someone knowledgeable to edumacate us, I think.
Your right Dave. My guess is this.
1: The cable snapped very shortly after engagement, but long enough to slow the A/C (they were still full throttle, but slowed down.
2: The pilot felt the drag and came back off the throttles, then cable snapped.
I was never a crew member on carriers, but rode 3. We got to watch a lot of take offs & landings. My memory tells me that the vast majority of the pilots did not come off full throttle until all forward motion ceased.
Cheers!
Thank you!
Still have to admit that getting close enough to the water for ground effects to kick in would kick my pucker factor into multiple digits.
And they were lucky to be in an E-2. From my times up in Vulture’s Row, those aircraft couldn’t wait to get in the air. That extra lift (compared to a jet) saved them.
Back in 1987, a VQ-2 A-3 “Whale” just couldn’t make it onto the deck. They set up the barrier, but the pilot wasn’t able to catch it. The bird went right off the deck. From what I understand she went straight down. Lost some good men that day.
Check out the video:
Yeah, that was pretty sad – The gym at DLI Monterey is named after Pat Price.
CTIC(SS)(RET)
Yup. I remember when it happened. I was stationed at VPU-2 at that time. I am SO glad that I never flew in
A-3s. Heard a few horror stories about them.
Pretty sure that the VQ-1 incident happened in the 80s also. The one where the VQ XO was piloting the plane. Lost. Never found to my knowledge.
I remember that one, too.
They just disappeared.
MustangCryppie:
That A-3 mishap was one of the mishaps that was analyzed/discussed in great detail back in the day at Aviation Safety Officer School out at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. The details of the pilot’s efforts to get aboard that night and the subsequent crash into the water are flat out gut-wrenching.
I don’t know if they’re still using that mishap as a teaching tool out there at ASO School, but if not, they should be.
No idea if it was scuttlebutt, but I was told that the pilot did not have much experience in A-3s or in carrier ops for that matter.
Rest in peace to all.
Yes, that’s more or less the story as I remember it.
From what I remember, he was very low on fuel, he wasn’t able to get the probe into the basket at the overhead tanker (night air-to-air refueling in the Whale? No thanks…), no option to bingo to the beach, and he just couldn’t bring it aboard for a trap. Rigging the barrier was their last ditch attempt at recovery. If I remember correctly, he was still fast and high at the barrier, which he clipped with his nose strut and then he slid off the angle.
A tragic mishap.
There are two things that I know about the
A-3: that I thank the Lord every day I never flew in them; and that they were the loudest damn plane on the flight deck. The noise from them was incredible and that’s saying a LOT about a Navy jet.
We deployed to Rota twice and were always across the ramp from the VQ guys. Used to watch the A-3’s on a regular basis and yeah, you could not hear the, but feel them/
I got to ride aboard the CNO’s VIP conversion of an A-3 from Moffit to Andrews. heck of a plane. Had the 2 pilots and an MS1 as a flight attendant.
Oh, yeah. LOVE those kind of landings!
I think those LTs should have been awarded the DFC. I know their crewmates agree with me.
Not a Navy aviation guy here. Just a grunt who rode in a lot of Hueys. But I will say for these men, that in a situation where your nuts want to shrink to raisins, I am amazed that the extra weight of their gigantic balls did not cause them to hit the water. Training, training and more training is what I figure is the reason they are alive.
So as you Navy types say, Bravo Zulu to this crew! Well done and I’m glad you got to “call home”.
That’ll put whitecaps in your coffee cup.
Something to consider is that, IIRC, carrier landings take place with both the aircraft and the ship facing into the wind. Final approach is from the stern. What that means is if a landing goes bad, there’s a good chance the aircrew is not only going to be treading water, but also have 100,000 tons of aircraft carrier about to run right over them.
That is correct.
And aircraft carriers can’t turn on a dime.
Not really, that’s partially why the landing area is at an angle.
The landing area is also angled so that you’re not trying to land with a bunch of aircraft parked on the deck up forward directly in front of you, like they had to do on the carriers in WW2. Not good if you bolter or have to wave off.
In any case, I wouldn’t want to go into the water off of the angle. You’d still be too close to the hull of the ship, and if there’s a delay in turning the ship and swinging the stern away from you, I’m not sure how it would turn out if you got close to the screws, or as CB Senior notes below, any of the water intakes.
You guys fail to take into consideration the aerodynamics of the AWACs planes. They have an extremely wide wingspan, much wider than a fighter jet’s wingspan and that alone gives them more lift.
Also, if you look at that video, it’s quite plain that the plane simply rolled off the flight deck in a rather flat trajectory and kept flying, and did NOT go off the edge nose-first. Good plane, good pilots.
E-2’s practically jump off the deck to get into the air.
I had one of my pilot’s take a ‘cold cat’ which means not enough steam pressure to get him in the sky due to his payload weight (lots of bombs)…he said it felt like his wheels were in the water when he finally transitioned to full flight.
There is also much more relative wind over the flight deck of an aircraft carrier than most people realize (prevailing wind speed + speed of the aircraft carrier as it moves forward through the water). Every single additional knot of wind on the nose of an aircraft in a situation like this helps.
I know several current and former Navy E-2C pilots, and they’re unanimous in their opinion that this was a great save by any measure.
We had to make our own wind in the Persian Gulf
Maybe it’s already been written. Navy/USMC pilot’s are trained to go full military throttle as soon as they hit the deck…that way if they Bolter (miss the wire) or snap the wire..they are already spooled up and have enough ground speed to obtain lift.
By the way, as a Plane Captain and Trouble-Shooter…a snapped cable was my worst fear. I always tried to put several objects (planes, tow tractors, people, etc.) between me and the damn thing just in case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOgrcuJVy-s
Had to change ALL the seat cushions in this bird!
HOLY..FUCKING…SHIT!!!!!!!!!
Now THAT’S a SEA story!
Daaaaam
HOLY SHEEEEIIIIITTTT !!!!
The extra guys in the plane get the medal for yanking various pieces of upholstered articles and cotton/polyester garment fragments out of the assholes of said pilots…
From the “Here, hold my beer and watch this” department !!!
The flightdeck is a very dangerous place. It’s organized chaos. Cables don’t break often, but other things do that have the potential for castastrophe often do. The only reason we don’t lose more aircraft and crew is because of the training and safety measures in place. I was ship’s company on a bird farm and we had people get run over and lose limbs, jetblasts blow men off the deck into the water. collisions, fires etc. On any day the potential is there and there are considerably more accident free days than there are conflagrations. I’ve seen things go wrong and a plane is saved by a pubic hair. I’ve also seen a few get lost. The most memorable save I ever personally witnessed was pretty impressive. We were operating above the arctic circle. The flight deck had been resurfaced. The non-skid looks like frosting on a cake but it’s a tough tar-like/gritty coat that will rip the skin right off of you if you fall on it. An F-14 was taxiing to the bowcat on the port side. Catapults throw off steam, and the steam had turned to ice…black ice. The ship has to maintain a forward speed of at least 20 knots for flight ops. It’s a combination of the thrust of the jet engines, the catapult and the forward movement of the ship that allows for the plane to take off instead of dropping off the bow. The black ice and the turbulent air caused the F-14 to move sideways instead of forward on it’s way to the bowcat. The pilot throttled to correct, which didn’t work. The jet went nose first and a bit twisted off the flight deck. The pilot punched out. Because of the forward speed of the carrier (carriers don’t turn or stop quickly)he came down and the chute snagged the bow, so he was hanging there, luckily above the water and didn’t get accidentally keel hauled. Flight deck personnel ignoring their own safety crawled out over the safety nets (actually they’re wire and can eff you up)and yanked the chute until they… Read more »
shoulda proof read….meh
Wow! I hope that young Sailor got recognition for his courage.
I’m thinking he should have gotten a flight deck commission…
Of course turning him into an O-1 would wreck his attitude and totally destroy any intelligence he had prior to the commissioning…
There were a number of people rightfully recognized for their actions. Only reason I wasn’t involved immediately in retrieving the pilot (assuming I wouldn’t have just fainted)was that I was running the ER, so I witnessed it real time on the cameras and heard the chatter over the 10MC.
I don’t remember with any reliability what the plane captain received.
I had the easy job of receiving the pilot and a few others to assess and provide along with others there, necessary treatment/documentation.
From several accounts a strapping, lantern-jawed HM1 pulled the pilot up to safety pretty much by himself. He was awarded a NAM for that. I think he should have gotten a NMCM, but I don’t make those decisions.
Pucker factor was so high, their assholes just sucked that airplane right up outta the water.
What many are also forgetting is. How is the Ship’s main engines getting water?
After 10 knots the main circ pumps are shut down and the scoop injection is opened up.
Yes big giant holes in the side of the ship to capture water and circulate it throughout the energy systems.
I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to a V3 Blueshirt at the end of the 1989-90 USS Forrestal deployment. We were at Man-Overboard for about a day before they called off the search…never did find him.
We were a day or two away from pulling into Mayport Naval Station, and he jumped off Elevator 3.
For anyone who is interested, this is the flight deck at work on USS John C Stennis. Note the way arresting cables are handled by the crew after a launch.
https://youtu.be/Y4NsF75PseM
I don’t get it?? What did he do so wrong