Posted on 05/06/2025 7:19:51 PM PDT by Macho MAGA Man
Another multimillion-dollar F/A-18 Super Hornet has been lost from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, marking the second such catastrophic incident in barely a week.
According to multiple sources speaking to CNN, the latest jet went down in the Red Sea following what appears to be an arresting gear malfunction during landing.
The pilot and weapons systems officer were forced to eject and were later rescued, suffering only minor injuries. But the jet, valued at over $60 million, now rests on the ocean floor — unrecovered and unrecoverable.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Just last week, another F/A-18 fighter jet fell overboard from the Truman after a “hard turn” to allegedly dodge Iranian-backed Houthi missile fire. That’s two high-tech war machines gone in a matter of days.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Time for a stand down.
You lost another F/A-18 Super Hornet?
Whoever is riding the brakes on the jets is not doing his job.
I had a pilot one time wanted to ride brakes on my aircraft during spot.
I rode next to him. This jerk was soon busy chewing his gum that he didn’t hear the whistle to apply brakes. The whistle kept blowing. He didn’t apply the brakes. I had one hand on the canopy eject handle and my right leg hanging out of the right hand seat, ready to jump. Finally this dumbbell pilot put the brakes on.
The aircraft was 3 inches from going overboard.
An idiot riding brakes can easily let an aircraft go overboard. When you are deployed it’s 12 on 12 off 7 days a week...overworked and tired...
My exact thought after seeing the headline.
Sabotage?
Yes...don’t be too hasty in judgement. Things happen. An anecdote, if I may.
When I was on the USS JFK back in 1977 or 1978 (I cannot recall now) we were deployed to the Mediterranean, and were conducting flight operations under darkened ship and EMCON conditions. That meant all the white lights were off, and there were only red lights on the island and communications were restricted or shut down.
I was all by myself walking on the bow just forward of the angle, picking my way through the planes spotted there, stepping over tie down chains, avoiding the sharp edges of wings and pylons, heading towards one the A-7s our squadron had tied down up there. I cannot remember why I was up there, probably to check something on one of our planes, but there was nobody else around...anywhere.
In the back of my mind, I could hear the routine of flight operations, and there was an approaching aircraft, coming in to land. I wasn’t really paying attention to it, but it did register there was an aircraft approaching the ramp to land, and my unconscious noted it, getting louder, but I was looking in front of me, focused on not walking into the corner of any lowered wing flaps or tripping over a taut chain.
I heard the incoming plane slam onto the deck, and heard its engines go to full power, as is the norm. Again, that sound was registering in my mind, but I was focused on the task at hand.
There were two very loud, staccato booms, almost merged into one, and I instinctively ducked and crouched.
My first thought when I heard it was that it was a compressor stall. I had only heard that once before on the flight deck, when an RF-8 Crusader had experienced one and spit a tongue of flame out of its intake, and this sounded to me just like that. As I straightened and turned towards the source of the sound, I saw the plane fly by, as if it had boltered, missing the arrestor cable.
It was less than 50 feet away, coming off the angle. This is not an uncommon thing, but as I straightened and looked, I saw the silhouette of an aircraft flying by where I stood. Immediately, I knew something was wrong.
It was going too slow. Way too slow. I could not make out the type of plane, but I saw a dark shape, and could see the bright green starboard navigation light on the wingtip nearest to me. I could also see one of the elongated, narrow rectangles of a subdued green color which were called formation lights.
I stared at in in fascination, knowing immediately the plane was going to crash. It was just going too slow. I had seen hundreds of planes coming in to land, missing the cable, and thundering off the flight deck to go around again for a successful landing, but...I had never seen this. I just knew it was going into the drink.
With my eyes riveted on the plane, I began nearly running through all these tied down planes, my eyes no longer looking for sharp things to avoid, but fixed on this black shape. I reached the bow, and somehow, the plane was still flying.
So, here I was, standing on the very bow of the carrier, all by myself, watching this black shape slowly proceed in front of the ship. It was slightly pitched up and even appeared to gain altitude a little bit, as it began to drift slowly in front of the ship. I couldn’t believe I was seeing this.
The plane was now perhaps 100-200 yards in front of the ship, and began, very slowly, to increasingly pitch upwards. Then it paused imperceptibly in mid-air, and began to very slowly descend towards the water, tail first, its engines thundering at full military power. As it descended, it began to pirouette slowly, rotating as it fell.
Watching this, I realized I had been repeating over and over again “Get out! Get out! Eject! Eject!”
The plane hit the water and disappeared instantly, leaving only a frothy white patch of water.
I was dumbstruck.
I thought “My God. They didn’t get out.”
At that point, all the white lights came on, and the 1MC began blaring “PLANE IN THE WATER! PLANE IN THE WATER!”
I saw two parachutes enter the sphere of white light out of the darkened sky, one came down and landed on the flight deck getting hung up on the tail of another plane, while the other chute drifted through the light and disappeared astern into the darkness. He was shortly plucked out of the water by the Sea King that was airborne, and both of the crew only suffered minor injuries.
Of course, the whole ship was awakened, and I ran to my shop down below bursting into our Line Shack shouting from my goggled and helmeted face “YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT I JUST F**KING SAW!”
For years, in my memory, I thought it was an F-14 Tomcat that had gone in, but when I was trying to find an account of it, There were no incidents of any F-14s crashing in that time frame off the JFK, but there was an A-6 Intruder. Interesting how that rush of adrenaline completely scrambled my memory of that.
Apparently, when the plane caught the arrestor cable, the the tip of the tailhook just fractured and broke off, and the plane could simply not get up enough airspeed to fly. The point is...these things happen, especially when there is a high tempo of flight operations. It is a dangerous environment, and a lot of things can go wrong as a matter of routine, no matter how careful people are. Things just happen.
When I saw in the article “Arresting gear malfunction” that was the first thing that came to mind.
I know nothing about aviation or aircraft carriers, but I am quite sure that tending planes on an aircraft carrier pitching and rolling in the sea is a lot more complicated and fraught with danger than doing it on dry land where landing strips are measured in miles, not yards.
Deepest part of Red Sea is about 9500 feet. ( Suakin Trough). Average depth 1600 feet. If not in the trough , I (in my inexperienced ocean going way)...would guess they could get it. They got lots of the wreckage of the TITAN, the wrecked Titanic tourist “death trap”.
That was absolutely fascinating, thank you for sharing! If I may: there is a channel on youtube called “Ward Carroll”. Ward is a retired naval aviator (F-14 RIO) and he’s posted up videos of “flight deck mishaps”. They have been either filming or videotaping carrier landings since at least the 1950’s. Perhaps the incident you describe is one of those videos. It’s worth a try at least.
CC
Yes...there are a lot of moving parts, in a confined area. Intakes, exhausts, planes taxiing, planes taking off, planes landing, ordinance.
It is pretty impressive there aren’t more accidents than there are.
Absolutely! I have watched a bunch of his stuff. He is a pretty sober, level-headed analyst. I do follow him.
Oddly, I only found one reference to the accident I spoke of...we lost two A-6 Intruders during my four year hitch, but...I cannot find hide nor hair of them in recent searches. One was the incident I described, and the other was lost, a tanker, it just went out and never came back.
We lose a lot more aircraft in routine operations throughout the military than most people realize, though the Internet now brings it to everyone’s front door.
Before the Internet, if a plane crashed, only the base, the surrounding civilian community, and various military personnel heard about it unless the plane crashed into a neighborhood or something like that.
The worst and tragic one we lost a S-3 and crew during night ops. It landed but something went bad wrong either on the arresting gear and it went on the angle and dangled there. The crew tried to pop out but by then the plane had one across the top of the water the other into the ships hull. No survivors. More happened but those are the ones I remember. I was ships company an A-Div snipe. I was below decks when these happened. One last tragic one I remember was during a re-spot a chalker was run over by a Tomcat and killed the guy. Ships go to sea and people die or get crippled. These events I mentioned were in the late 1970's.
The plane though was stuck in the nets on the angle deck nose down , tail straight up !
The admiral said “Cut it loose !”
Couple of oxy/acetylene rigs and they cut the frame for the nets off of the angle deck. The plane and nets and frames all fell in, the ship did a hard turn to avoid it and a helo shot the A-6 full of holes as it sank.
There was something going on with the A-6’s in that timeframe you speak of so bad that they had a stand down Navy wide on them best I remember. We lost a couple while launching. They’d launch go a few miles or less and drop. AMERICA was in the MED Sept 77- April 78. Then went back in early 79 and were back at the states when we went on alert over the Iranian Hostage Crisis. WE had lost a MMR and generator on a post deploment carrier qual trip out before entering NNSY for overhaul in late 79-Oct 80. We weren’t going no where with those issues.
Not accidental. I believe deliberate negligence.
Thanks for sharing that. The flight deck of a carrier during ops is one of the most dangerous spots on Earth. Reading the story about the second loss, I wouldn’t judge too quickly either.
Somebody can forget about ever reaching flag rank.
Carrier operations are a serious business, and these weren’t the first planes nor will they be the last lost due to accidents. It just looks bad that two were lost in a relatively short span of time off the same carrier. The way each was lost were completely different scenarios. Shit happens.
That’s what happens when you name an aircraft carrier after an army guy.
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