U.S. Navy fighter jet crashes on USS Carl Vinson in South China Sea

BNO News ^ | 01 24 2022 | Staff

[logi_cal869]

It was just a ribbin’. Easy mistake.

[daniel1212]

Video shows taking off.

[Taxman]

Thank you for your service!

[rlmorel]

LOL, I simply wasn’t paying attention that closely until I got home...:)

[rlmorel]

Well, I was fortunate to serve during peacetime, but as this shows, even during peacetime...it can be dangerous as Oscar in Batangas said...even if you do keep your head on a swivel!

There was never any horsing around on the flight deck. Never. People were as serious as a heart attack up there.

[rlmorel]

Heh, with these things...that may change!

[rlmorel]

The civilian world doesn’t really know how many military planes crash, although now in the Internet world, they are more aware.

Before the Internet, if a plane crashed without landing on houses and killing civilians, outside of the aviation community at the home base, most people just didn’t know.

During my four years in, I personally witnessed a bunch of planes crash. Saw a Tomcat, a Crusader, a Corsair, and two Intruders. (Actually, I personally only saw one, the other one disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. Not kidding, it really did. Just took off and nobody heard from it again, never knew what happened to it.

Point is, military aircraft are high maintenance, high performance, and flown a lot.

I was on deck sleeping in my plane in 1976 when the famous Tomcat went over the side with a Phoenix missile on it. We were spotted in a row parallel to the waist cat with the tail of my plane pointed towards the port side, and I was a new Plane Captain trainee who was sitting there to ride the brakes if they needed to respot the plane. I had dozed off, when my plane shook violently. I turned in time to see the twin tails disappearing over the side with everyone running over there to see it go in. They had to bring in ships to find it, because there was a Soviet cruiser a few miles off our bow and they saw the whole thing and had the coordinates. The Phoenix was still a big secret back then, so they couldn’t risk the Soviets dredging it up. Apparently, there had been a fuel control malfunction, and one or more of the engines went to full power, got stuck there, and the pilot couldn’t stop it.

I saw a Crusader go off the bow cat, bank and go straight into the water. Oddly, I can’t remember if the pilot survived or not because he ejected at quite a sharp angle. I guess he must have, because I would have remembered otherwise.

I was nearly alone on the flight deck one night near the bow (I forget why I was up there, I think I had to check something on one of our Corsairs spotted on the port side forward of the angle, it was at night, and I heard a sharp “BANG BANG” like a compressor stall, and I instinctively ducked. I turned to see a plane, its running lights on go by me very slowly. As it passed, I was puzzled, because it was going way too slow, and I thought “those guys better get out”. Well, the plane coasted out in front of the ship and the nose began to rise. The moon was behind it and lit everything up pretty well, and as the nose rose further and the plane began to stand on its tail, I had run up to the very bow and had a ringside seat. The plane, an Intruder, stopped and began to slowly pirouette as it descended, and I remember thinking “Get out! Eject! Eject!” but they didn’t, and the plane hit the water about 100 yards in front of the ship and disappeared in a circle of white. Just vanished. I was thinking “Oh, God. They didn’t get out!” When all the lights on the island came on (they had red lights up there before) and I heard the Air Boss saying “Plane in the water! Plane in the water!” It was then that I saw the parachutes coming down into the illuminated area, one guy landed right on the flight deck, and the other came down on the tail of a plane spotted aft of the island. I realized then that the “BANG BANG” I heard was the ejection seats, but it didn’t register. Heh, I remember running down to the Line Shack and bursting in saying “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT I JUST SAW!” What had happened was the Intruder hit the deck, caught the cable, and the tailhook broke off under the strain, and the plane didn’t have enough thrust to keep flying. I always wondered if they had ejected too early, because the plane did keep flying very slowly out in front of the ship, but I guess there is only enough time to choose there. Funny, for years as I thought about it, my mind told me it was a Tomcat not an Intruder, but I looked online at crash records, and it was an Intruder.

And people get hurt just being around them. We had a guy get sucked into a Tomcat. He didn’t die, but was a quadriplegic. I took a look at that engine when they pulled it, and his tools from his pouch did make it into the engine and exited out the side, punching holes as they did. The pilot saw the guy get sucked in and shut the engines off immediately, and the guy lived but broke his neck.

Our sister squadron had a pilot killed in full view of everyone on the ship, it was a cold cat shot and he was able to eject, but got tangled in his parachute cords. It was awful. They had a swimmer in the water, a helicopter actually put down, and they got a launch in the water, and they just could not get him free. He kept poking his head up then when right back under. He fought for about a half hour IIRC, then he drowned, and all we could do was watch from the flight deck. The plane was less than 50 yards away, and the ship was stopped dead in the water while this went on...it wasn’t happening over the horizon. Poor guy.

Yeah. Even in peacetime, it is dangerous. In wartime, as the Forrestal found out, it can be even worse with ordinance all over the place.

[linMcHlp]

Tx for the F4F Wildcat pic.

2 sources of info (re photo above at reply 49)

FIRST SOURCE

"25 August 1942, after an off center landing attempt. The pilot was Ensign G. W. Trumpeter."

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/80-G-11000/80-G-11800.html

SECOND SOURCE

Action on the USS Ranger (CV-4) -- From the Journal of a Signalman (Ernest L. Crochet, SM1c)

"Aug 23, 1942 -- Left NOB Norfolk. Operations. Wildcat (F4F) rolled in port stacks. Pilot OK. Plane was shoved overboard. Crewman few cuts with propeller."

http://www.airgroup4.com/crochet.htm

Searching for USS Ranger / VF-4 / and both August 1942 dates . . . could not locate a/c number at Joe Baugher website - US Navy and US Marine Corps Military Aircraft Serial Numbers and Bureau Numbers.

[linMcHlp]

bttt

[rlmorel]

That is one of the coolest things about FR, is the crowdsourcing of knowledge.

My Mother-in-Law worked at a drug store in Boston back in the late Forties or early Fifties called "Ligetts", and they also did photo processing, and in the course of events, people would have film developed and never come back for it. They would often look at it before they threw it out, and before she passed away, she showed me a pack of photos that had these in them:

I had Freepers giving me all kinds of great info on them when I posted them! It was thought they may have come off the USS Leyte which was being refitted in Boston to be an ASW carrier, and had an explosion that killed 37 men, so she ended up staying around a lot longer. We thought someone might have found the negatives or film in a drawer somewhere during the refit.

[Vaduz]

Indeed McNuts triggered a missile just getting the cockpit and set the carrier deck on fire.
Deck camera recorded it he stacked up 3 planes why did keep his wings daddy was somebody once.

[rlmorel]

You’ve got it backwards-McCain didn’t fire the Zuni, that came from a Phantom on the other side of the flight deck which was triggered by stray voltage that found its way to ground.

For once, he just happened to be the unlucky recipient.

He still has other plane accidents that may or may not be put on him, as many are inclined to do, just not the Forrestal incident.

[Vaduz]

The footage appears other?.

[rlmorel]

It is clear that the Zuni came from a Phantom spotted aft of the island, the pilot (LCDR Bangert) in the Phantom knew his plane fired it as soon as he flipped his switch to go to internal power on the plane (from external power when starting up) the guy the Zuni hit going across the deck and severing his arm certainly knew it, and McCain knew when it hit his drop tank, as did the pilot in the plane next to him.

I have never seen any footage of McCain’s Skyhawk firing that Zuni, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t even loaded out with Zuni that I am aware of. It did have a couple of thousand pound bombs (I believe the older, deteriorated ones that couldn’t withstand flames well) that cooked off.

I had some interest over the years in exploring this, as I served under McCain in a training squadron for a few months, and was assigned to the squadron that McCain was in when the incident happened nine years earlier, where there was still a good deal of institutional memory about the event.

There are a lot of things to dislike about McCain, and I am right up front in agreement with those, but in this mishap, he was just a pilot sitting in a plane that was caught up in an accident. I have heard people say that he hit the bomb jettison and put his obsolete bombs on the deck, or that he was engaged in horsing around doing a hot start (starting with a wet start and then igniting it to produce a flame out the exhaust) but those are just the kind of things the Internet produces.

[Vaduz]

The fire sure looks like it came from his direction not the F4

[linMcHlp]

More info (re photo above at reply 49)

Characters alongside the F4F-4 Wildcat: 9 F 8

Probably VF-9 aircraft number 8 (or last digit of BuNos number?).

At the Joe Baugher website, the info closest to Aug. 23 - 25, 1942 that I found:

"03399 (VF-9) attached to USS Ranger (CV-4) lost off Bermuda Sep 5, 1942"

Another source:

https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/VF-9

"In late August 1942 VF-9 was deployed aboard USS Ranger to support Operation Torch."

[linMcHlp]

First picture appears to be one of the successive surrender ceremonies - noting the USN uniforms (blues/wool). I am guessing, probably Japanese forces of the Korean peninsula. No mention of specific info matching the pic, at:

Wikipedia link to other surrenders:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Further_surrenders_and_resistance

[I did not know, until now:] The legal state of war with Japan, ended with the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, September 1951 - and in effect: April 1952. Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_San_Francisco

[linMcHlp]

Grumman F4F and Apollo Lunar Lander tidbit:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-hit-and-git-fighter-180964344/

EXCERPT:

When building the [Apollo] lunar module, Grumman Aircraft turned to engineers who had worked extensively on Grumman’s carrier-based [F4F] aircraft. “There were two excellent engineers—Virgilio ‘Jiggs’ Sturiale and Marcello ‘Marcy’ Romanelli—who designed the lunar module’s gear deployment mechanism, using their knack for aircraft folding wings on carriers,” says Paul Fjeld, space expert and official NASA artist.

[WhoisAlanGreenspan?]

Here's an update; the F-35 wound up overboard in the South China Sea. Not good.

The U.S. faces a race to beat China in recovering an F-35 stealth fighter that plunged into the South China Sea on Monday after what the Navy termed a 'landing mishap' aboard the USS Carl Vinson.

The pilot was forced to eject and seven military personnel in total were injured.

The $100m warplane, customised for naval operations, plunged overboard, the US 7th Fleet said - making it the second time in three months that an F-35 has been lost overboard.