This was a big deal, as not only was it the first Tomcat lost with a Phoenix on it, the Soviets saw it and knew exactly where it was.
The Tomcat went over the side near the waist cat (faulty fuel control, as I recall) on the port side, and the Soviet cruiser was about the 2 o'clock position off our starboard bow probably a few miles away, and when the plane went over the side, they poured on the steam to cut across our bow to get a better look a the action they couldn't see, and one of our destroyers cut right across their bow blocking their path.
Such were the state of affairs in the Cold War...we used to have Soviet trawlers trailing us, and when you looked through the binoculars at them, there seemed like 10 sailors on there with binoculars just looking back at you.
One time, when my plane was tied down near the fantail, me and one of my buddies pulled down our pants to moon them. We thought for sure there would have been some response, laughing or such, but...they just stood unmoving, watching through their binoculars.
Dark Moon Rising.
I was on the FDR (WW2 era flat top )-1976
we mooned a cruiser doing high speed passes
close to the carrier- AND mooned them-
must have been an unofficial NAVY WIDE greeting for
the Russki’s!
I remember that incident. Didn’t the US government recover that lost aircraft and missile?
They used to do that near Kennedy Space Center during the space shuttle era. IRRC, one launch had to be scrubbed and rescheduled because a large Russian "fishing boat" wandered inside the safety zone down range.