THERE! FIXED IT!!! pic.twitter.com/xEbaWkaWg1— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) December 20, 2021
I was still in High School when this happened but it was fresh in the memory of AV School Trainers.
The pilot was probably not a trained firefighter, maybe just as well that he was out of the way rather than impeding the enlisted men who had to fight the fire.
After this incident they made some changes to the A4Skyhawk which prevented pilots from doing wet starts.
I suspect that during the fire fighting efforts all the circa 1935 1000 lb iron was pushed overboard to wait the judgement day.
You’re exactly right about the “pushed overboard” part. That flight deck was clean as a galley when the Forrestal got to port. Same thing happened when the same class clowns tried to sink the Big E. We appreciated ship crew effort to dump everything damaged overboard before they got to Pearl. The only thing we had left to clean up was bent iron.