I've never seen this before...

[SayethWhaaaa 245]

Admittedly, my nation doesn't have carriers anymore, and when we did, I was about 2. But nonetheless, I've never seen anything as crazy as this...

 

 

...but then a mate of my who hates Flankers sent me this...

 

 

The second one's not as dramatic, but it's still pretty crazy and scary to lose a flanker like that. I mean, there's plently more Hornets in the world, but Flankers... jk

[MigBuster 2,884]

Admittedly, my nation doesn't have carriers anymore, and when we did, I was about 2. But nonetheless, I've never seen anything as crazy as this...

 

 

...but then a mate of my who hates Flankers sent me this...

 

 

The second one's not as dramatic, but it's still pretty crazy and scary to lose a flanker like that. I mean, there's plently more Hornets in the world, but Flankers... jk

 

You have put the same link in twice above

 

Good jump by that bloke on the vid - I assume the F-18 made it back up again ?

[tank03 1]

I can't imagine the kind of energy required to snap a cable like that. Catching that in the back of the legs has go to do some damage.

[Nesher 628]

poor guys... and the pilots :\

they ejected, yeah?

[SayethWhaaaa 245]

Oops... My bad, here's the flanker snap.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lUtvOl9nK0

 

Ctrl C doesn't like to actually copy anything on my keyboard anymore

 

I couldn't get over the yellowshirt! He gets up there!

[Southernap 1]

It happens from time to time. If the Avation Bosun mates Equipment (the greenshirts that take care of the Cats and arresting gear) doing keep a proper count on how many landings a wire makes it will snap then whip around the deck. The way the arresting wire works on an aircraft carrier is that it uses the physical mass of the carrier to stop the physical mass of the airplane in flight. Think of it like this in layman's terms, A dog tied up to a post mounted in concrete in the ground is running at you at the last second the chain jerks him and causes him to crash to the ground. The pole and the concrete were what pulled the dog to a stop. Well if the dog has been doing this a bunch of times with out the chain being replaced then one of the links will eventually snap.

 

The way a wire comes out of the arresting gear engine up to the deck is pretty interesting. Here is a shot of one of the deck entry points.

Basically this is pulley with a turnbuckle that is attached to the wire below deck and the wire above deck , also referred to as the cross deck pendent, is attached to.

 

In this shot you can see the turnbuckle about center of the shot just under the horizontal stab of the F-18.

 

Here is some ABE's changing the cross deck pendant just before the go's. You can see the turnbuckle better in these shots, it is up in their hands and basically has a huge bolt and nut assembly holding them together. A good wire team can strip a wire in the minute and half in between aircraft recovering.

 

Here is an ABE restringing a wire.

 

Here some ABE's are greasing up the sheave that the wire is paid out from.

 

This is what one of the engines looks like below decks

 

It stretches almost completely amidships on the deck just below the flight deck. The engine is basically a double hydraulic piston. As the wire is paid out above it pulls something close to 5 miles of wiring below the deck on the engine and pulls the piston close on the hydraulic reservoir. Once all the pressure is built up a valve opens up and pushes the piston back open and that in turn causes piston to go another way and retract the wire above and build up pressure for the next aircraft. They set these engines for so many pounds, this setting will equal the maxium of what an aircraft can weights at the moment of recovery (with fuel and weapons onboard). That is why you will see some aircraft dumping fuel as they come into the landing pattern.

 

The really fun job is to restring an engine

That whole spool will be used up to restring one of the 4 engines and while it is going into the engine there are usualy people strung out at points holding the wire up to prevent it from scrapping along the deck and to help grease it. They take big leather gloves and just goop some grease similar to axel grease onto thier hands and as the wire is pulled tight it will be greased in their hands.

 

I have never seen a wire part on my time on the flight deck of US carriers, I have only heard about it or seen training films of it happening. The worst one that I saw and heard about was in advance training school. The instructors showed us film from the USS Franklin Roosevelt when a wire parted during landing operations and killed one guy out right when it cleanly seperated his torso from his legs and severely injured about 8 or 9 other guys with all sorts of missing limbs. The biggest thing to do when a wire parts is get out of the way and let engery dissapate from the ends. Then go out clear the landing area for the next jet.

 

The USMC has a portable arresting gear system for use ashore at thier airfields.

[Southernap 1]

poor guys... and the pilots :\

they ejected, yeah?

 

No the aircrew were able to take right back off again and enter the landing pattern again. This is one of the reasons that they go to full throttle on landing and only after a signal from a handler in the landing area do they throttle back.

[Caesar 305]

IIRC, I saw this footage when it aired on the military channel; part of a special on aircraft carriers (still featuring the Tomcat !). The pilot did not get back into the air, but he most definately punched out. You could see the seat shoot just as the A/C went over the edge of the deck. And then they replayed it in slow motion, but also showing the resulting chaos on the deck from the wire whipping back towards the deck crew (the footage in the links.) I still can't believe that guy jumped it twice.

[+pcpilot 181]

No the aircrew were able to take right back off again and enter the landing pattern again. This is one of the reasons that they go to full throttle on landing and only after a signal from a handler in the landing area do they throttle back.

 

I find it difficult to beleive they actually were able to get airborne again even at full military power; That plane was waaaaay too slow to take off again. As to cables being a hazard, back in 79 in the Med some sailors were killed including an XO on a tender in Naples which was Med moored when it moved during sea and anchor detail and snapped a spring-lay mooring line. Lines and ropes are dangerous on ships. Thanks for all the pics, it brought back memories of the Independance for me. Was a BM from 77-79 on her. Sure hard to get used to women being in the navy though...

Edited January 22, 2007 by pcpilot

[tank03 1]

I did a quick check on uTube, and there are dozens of videos of planes crashing/going overboard/ pilots ejecting/ etc, with a lot of expensive aircraft going over the side.

 

I expected it happened from time to time, but the number of videos suggests that it's a more frequent thing than I expected. Can any Navy guys clear this up for me: How often do accidents like this occur?

[Nesher 628]

No the aircrew were able to take right back off again and enter the landing pattern again. This is one of the reasons that they go to full throttle on landing and only after a signal from a handler in the landing area do they throttle back.

 

I know they go full throttle on landing... he was too slow

 

I find it difficult to beleive they actually were able to get airborne again even at full military power; That plane was waaaaay too slow to take off again.

 

that's what I thought... he was almost in a halt before it snapped..

[Southernap 1]

I did a quick check on uTube, and there are dozens of videos of planes crashing/going overboard/ pilots ejecting/ etc, with a lot of expensive aircraft going over the side.

 

I expected it happened from time to time, but the number of videos suggests that it's a more frequent thing than I expected. Can any Navy guys clear this up for me: How often do accidents like this occur?

 

Landing on an aircraft carrier is a hard and dangerous thing to do and there are accidents. Not all of them lead to the lost of an aircraft. The last major lost that I know of where an aircraft went over the side was onboard the USS John F. Kennedy CV-67 in 2001. A F-14 while preparing to take off had its nose gear shear and the aircraft wasn't able to achieve take off speed and the aircrew didn't have time to respond. So they went over with the plane and were lost at sea. The last major landing accident that I heard off was onboard the USS Enterprise in 1998 when the LSO and the Air Boss (the two guys who control safety on the flight deck and the air space) landed an EA-6B on top of a S-3 in the landing area. The S-3 had lost steering control and was awaiting a hook up to be towed out of the landing area. Long story short 4 men died and the US lost 4 airplanes, 2 F-18's that were parked further up the flight deck were hit with flaming debris and burned up to the point that they were write offs, all because a number of people lost situtational awareness. There are all sorts of checks and balances out there to help stop modern accidents on aircraft carriers, but things happen. Such things as engine failures (that is what killed the first female F-14 pilot when on landing one of the engines suffered a compressor stall and quit), tires blowing up on landing (there is a famous video scene of an that happening to an F-18 on the Kennedy then the plane spins out of control), tailhook failures, or the pilots get too low and too slow and suffering a ramp strike. Things like this happen from time to time. Just like ashore with civilian air liners or even the USAF, however there are a number of cameras that are recording every take off and every landing that way if there is an incident there is a way to go back and try to put what happened back together and learn from it.

[tank03 1]

Southernap,

 

Thanks for the info. I suppose the fact that every take-off/landing is recorded explains why there is so much video out there, rather than there is an inordinate number of accidents.

 

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

[SayethWhaaaa 245]

A good example of what Southernap is talking about can be seen in this one.

 

 

I was fortunate enough to get acquainted briefly with some observers from the USN and USMC last year and attended a talk, funnily enough about situational awareness (it was actually about operations/management of defence force assets, but sit-awareness was a large aspect of it) where we were shown a video of an accident on a US Carrier. It might have been the JFK, my memory's a bit hazy and Darwin just takes it out of me whenever I'm sent there. It'd always so damn hot!!

But I just happened to see a snipet of the video on youtube. Its a bit of a nasty accident but, according to the speaker, she said was an integral part of training deck crews and damage control depts. The video we watched was about 7mins long and featured the same accident from a host of different viewpoints, unlike this 20second grab. The particular seminar was a bit of a yawnfest for me in that it had nothing to do with my dept at the time but I can see how it's important for all of the crews (flight, deck, damage etc) to understand every accident in order to refine procedure and head off any potential accidents.

 

This accident by the way (although none of this I can confirm with references, damn lousy Darwin heat!!) was caused either by a sudden pitch down or the slight crosswind it was landing in causing ramp strike. To be honest, I'm surprised it wasn't wabed off. I know naval aircraft are supposed to land in headwinds, that kinda bugged me too. All I do remember with any certainty was that Hornet spent somthing like 8 months being re-engineered. The deck crew and the pilot were fine, despite the close shave.

 

Great, this is gonna bug me all night now! If someone was there, or know about this in more detail, send me a PM about this. Because searching for in on the web is gonna be like looking for the proberbial needle...