"Lieutenant Commander Ross says five other jets were forced to fly in to Brisbane because they were short on fuel."
Is this standard operating procedure after an aircraft mishap or were weather conditions a factor (hard to accept if so) or was this an inexperienced group of newbie pilots? Are there any old Navy salts who can suggest why these pilots could not land on the carrier? After all, aren't they training for combat conditions?
Or did they just want another night in Brisbane? :)
Could have been a fouled deck. Bingo fuel at night while searching for a downed plane/aviator; lack of airborne tanker to refuel the other five;, could have been a number/combination of factors for the other birds to divert.
Sounds like the crash happened during a recovery cycle. Once the plane went down the carrier would have immediately changed course and slowed to assist in the recovery of the pilot, possibly even launching additional helicopters or the ship's boats. This would have prevented the other five planes from landing. Had the ship been operating out of range of a dirvert field then the five others would have been recovered onboard but, since there was a divert option they sent all of the airborne aircraft there and went immediately into search mode.
It is also possible, but not stated in the article, that the plane crashed after attempting a landing, possibly dropping parts of itself onto the flight deck and creating a danger to any other planes trying to land. That would also have created the need to divert the airborne aircraft to shore.
I thought the same thing, that it seems like it would take the other 5 jets more fuel to fly back to land than to actually land on the carrier who is within a smaller small range, that's assuming the other 5 jets were with the same squadron as the one the crashed.