Thanks for the service on the Eisenhower!
Yes...I was only on there for a a couple of months in 1978, but we lost one of our planes and the pilot...our sister squadron. It was a cold cat shot, and the pilot ejected safely, but went down in the drink. He got tangled in his riser cords, and as I recall, they tried for about 15 minutes with the helo over him, a boat that had been launched and a swimmer in the water, the ship motionless.
This all took place several hundred feet away, in full view of the entire ship which had people in the hangar bays and catwalks watching. He went down and didn’t come up for a while. Eventually, they got him in the helo and got him aboard. I remember being in the hangar bay as they brought him down on the elevator and past my powerplants shop, doing CPR the whole time.
He didn’t make it.