Maybe, I don’t know. I worked on Corsairs, so I wasn’t that tuned in. We did lose another A-6 about a year before that.
The Intruder busted its hook off when it caught the wire during darkened ship exercises, and slowed down too much and the crew ejected.
I watched that plane lumber by me less than 50 feet away (I was on the bow) climb slowly out in front of the ship, its shape silhouetted against the stars, then slowly fall tail first, twisting and inverting to disappear in a circle of white foam a few hundred yards in front of the ship. I watched in horror saying over and over to myself “Those guys better eject...come on...get out...eject...EJECT!” and they never did.
I was dumbstruck, then the white lights on the ship came on as the air boss said over the 1MC “Plane in the water!” When I looked back, I saw two chutes come down, one went into the water just off the port quarter, and the other landed on the side of a E-2 Hawkeye on the deck. In all the noise of the plane hitting the deck and the throttles being pushed to full military, I never heard the bang of the seats.
It was one of the most startling and amazing things I have ever seen in my life. I was all by myself up on the bow...there was nobody else up there and I had a ringside seat to that plane’s final moments. I felt like I was the only witness to that, even though I am sure everyone up in the island saw it better than me. I immediately ran all the way back to my line shack and burst in all googly-eyed, exclaiming to everyone “You won’t believe what I just saw!”
Funny thing is, for years, it somehow got stuck in my head that it was an F14 I saw go down. It was only in the last few years that did a search to find out specifically what date it happened on, and was chagrined to find it was an A-6, not an F-14. It was odd to have my mind play that trick on me.
BookMark
We had two Flight deck crashes I remember. The first was a Tomcat that during night ops came in low and the landing gear popped the round down. The pilot hit starboard burner to steer it off the angle and jettisoned out. The made it out OK. A bunch of VIP's were on the Bridge SECNAV, CNO, etc. The second was a S-3 again at night that came in high and caught number 4 wire It went over the side and dangled. The crew attempted jettison and they shot out one into the hull of the ship the other across the surface of the water. We also lost an ABH during a re-spot on the hanger deck. They were moving the plane and one of the guys carrying the chalks got ran over.
It seemed like every time we deployed we lost a few persons to accidents and one to natural causes. As morbid as it may sound they were taken to the aft walk in coolers on the fourth deck. We had to post a watch on the cooler gauges until the deceased was flown off.
What really surprised me was in Gulf War 2 carriers were deploying to the IO without any loss of life. Back in the mid to late 70's you knew there was going to be some losses especially in the month of ops off GITMO and usually some on the MED or WESTPAC.