ALL
This thread is to bring back the Yankee station ops memories. Specific to Aircraft launch accidents and near disasters. Don't even have to be there, only to know about the incident.
My story, to start the ball:
On station, about to launch a true Alpha strike. The A6As are off first. (now this person really exists). Rick F.... is our Maint officer, from the Tiger A6A,s and is up on number 1 cat. He launches, goes up to almost a stall condition, recovers, and the BN asks for a recovery NOW. Air Boss, of course, wants to know WHAT THE H>>> is going on...
BN says, Rick has caught the Terrain Follower Scope in his lap and is holding the Avionics WRA in place. He had launched and as the cat put the WRA in his lap, had held it there, recovered and pushed it back in place.
Rick recovered the A6A and the WRA was rewired.
Needless to say, one Avionics Green shirt was in deep trouble. The WRA had not been safety wired in and came loose on the cat shot.
Old Rick was a character. He has a rep for saving airplanes and Navy wives.
end

Ah the Intruder community, how well I know them! We had our MO launch one time and as the cat fired a pencil they had put up on the hood came flying back at them and went past the MOs left shoulder. He turned and leaned back and got his helmet stuck between the seat and the canopy stiffener!
We're watching from the deck and as they lift off the bird does all kinds of crazy wing dipping, wing waggles and a bit of porpoising in the air. What the hell are they doing?
It was the MO holding on to the control stick moving around to get his head free! The movements of his body and arm moved the stick and made the plane do funny things in the air.
Finally he got free, and they lifted gear and flew the mission.
Note: It took two more months to find damned pencil. The AMEs found it when they pulled the seat for Calendar Inspection.
He got razzed about that pencil for quite awhile.

1969 or 1970. Gulf of Tonkin. USS Kitty Hawk.
Launching an RA5C off the right Fwd cat.
The A5 was originaly a high speed Nuc. bomber.
Engines set wide apart to accomidate a bomb bay between them (internal stores).
The original attack plan was to arrive target and eject the weapon out the back. This didn't work out as the weapon tended to follow in the aircraft's wake and go off target in unpridctable ways. The Navy removed the bomb bay equipment and put fuel tanks in that space and made them photo birds.
Anyway the aircraft launched and all those fuel tanks fell out the back onto the flight deck, rolling and spewing fuel oll over the place. They luckely had enough momentum and all rolled off the deck and no disaster occured.
The aircraft did not crash right then and I dont know what happened to it.

Shockey

Schokey
This event was a day shot, in the Gulf, Circa 1969. The fuel tanks were, somehow, unsecured, or not tied in correctly. We watched that one on the Plat Camera for days.
The heavies were used for recon photo flights and had a AIMD shop called BACE for thier WRAs.
Seems like the Hawk had only 2 aircraft??
end
This story about Rick and the WRA had a pre event during the workups at NAS Oceana. old Rick saved an A6A from a fire in the hydraulics and earned a day of rest for that one. Rick was a character, but the number one pilot when the chips were down.
end

Jpope
I truly believe the A6 community has more sea stories than the F4s and lately the F14 ready rooms. These stories, undoubtedly are true and have a great line of history.
end

Amen to that. I spent the better part of ten years in and around the A-6 and EA-6B community,ie, at Whidbey Island and Oceana. The tales I could tell!

Back in 66 or 67 we had an A-4 lose brakes while taxiing after landing in the Med. Pilot rolled all the way forward ad over the bow. His hook caught the net on the bow and held him in place. Everything worked out as the plane was lifted back on board, but that poor guy musta prayed hard and fast for a few minutes.
Someone somewhere must have a picture of that.

Jim McLaughlin
Cr Div.
USS America CVA-66
66-67

ALL
The NAS Ocean Va. CAG had a pre deployment work up field south of the station, near NC border. This was a limited take off and landing setup for car quals. I was not involved in the prep, other than AIMD. Anyway, the group goes off for a day of car quals. Old Rick and his BN make a touch and go. The Port Hydraulic crossover line, at strap juncture, parts spraying hot liquid onto the Stbd engine frame. Immediately, the fire warning bells go off,the Master Warning light is on and the A6 is smoking. Rick pulls up, initiates a 180, recovers, and lands the burning A6 on the short field. Saves the aircraft. This rupture was occuring at all the A6 squadrons, west and east coast about the same time. Seems the strap had metal fatigue, was failing across the board, at the same time. Grounded all A6s for a time. But Rick got the credit for being the first to have the fire, in flight. Another of his escapades for the files.
LKA

I remember a rash of fire warning indications we started having in the 72-73 time frame. There were hot air leaks in the air crossover tubes manifold used to start the engines. They found out that maintenance personnel, ADs, AMEs and in some cases AM's were not getting the old con-o-seals off the flanges where the manifolds connected. That would leave a gap where the hot air would blow out into the engine compartment and give a fire in the engine bay warning. Sometimes those blasted con-o-seal rings would have to be pried off that flange with a screwdriver or cold chisel. They'd really stick on there. It would be hard to see sometimes if they really had had a good seal before.
We found one crossover flange that had three con-o-seal rings on the flange. How they got the V-band clamp torqued and not to leak was amzing! There had to be an extra step put in the MRCs and Maintenance Manual to make sure the old ring seals were in fact removed.
About a year to a year and half before that we had a string of tailpipe bellows cracking and areas burninig out and causing overheating and fire warning indications. The first set on corrugations in the bellows of the A-6 tailpipe assemblies was faulty and would crack only after 20 or 30 flight hours. Boy was that a real headache! Seems like there was over a hundred self locking nuts and bolts that held the tailpipre on that J-52. With the engine mounted in the aircraft, it was to your advantage if you had skinny arms to get up along the backside of that tailpipe to loosen those nuts and bolts!
Wish I had a quarter for everyone of those bolts I had to loosen, tighten and torque those ten years in A-6s/EA-6Bs.

J...
That description says it all. The incident I recalled grounded the A6s around the fleet for a fix from Grumman. All in all, the A6 was a true carrier based bomber, served for a long time.
My AIMD tours worked the Avionics problems, that were not so dramatic.
Nav systems, INS systems, were a constant worry for the AIMD folks.
LKA

23 Feb. 1969, U.S.S. Kitty hawk, Gulf of Tonkin
An A-7 of VA 105 traped following a PC-1 fail.
The A-7 did a hard left and the nose went over the side and into the catwalk. When the nose dropped the pilot ejected (LT. G D Merriman) picked up by plane guard helo.
The ship went hard left rudder and healed to the right trying to keep the A-7 on the deck long enough to get chains on it.(sucessfuly)
I was on the aft mess deck and could not see any of this. To me all of a sudden the ship was leaning hard right and everything was going bad.
Trays falling off tables and sliding across the deck, tables and chairs sliding away I guess that a pile of trays in the scullery fell, there was a tremdous crash from that direction. I actualy saw a guy fall off his chair. You could hear crap crashing everywhere.
I had no idea that ship could turn like that.
I was next to a stanchon and just held on, knowing this aint normal and wondering whether to try and move or not.
Ship finaly leveled off and the A-7 story was reveled.

Shockey

Yep, that ole Intruder was like a well broke in old pick up truck. The more and harder you flew it, the better it worked. But, man if you let them sit more than 72 hours with out using them......look out! The oil would drain down from the oil tank and drip out the engine vent, the fuel tanks would leak as the fuel worked its way around the caulking. We always had to bust tail after long in port period to fix all the nickel dime gripes that would pop up from nonuse. Ah well that was life in the A-6 world!

quote:

Yep, that ole Intruder was like a well broke in old pick up truck

ALL
This applies to the Avionics as well. The more you used the Litton gear the better they worked. We "ran" the WRAs in the AIMD shops for a set period, after the SACE logic checks. Over time this "seemed" to increase thier up time.
I was doing March Madness this weekend, Old Memphis tigers are still in the hunt.
Recalling the Litton gear. The Center console had a revolving drum for data storage. This would be a problem at launch, as the G forces would cause the read/write heads to momentarily contact the drum surface, resulting a "crash" of the system. Mind you, this was in the days of moving data systems.
A crash of the drum meant the BN was out of systems for his work.
Roger C... one of our nuggets had this happen on a strike into North Nam. His BN was an LCDR B... who used to entertain the folks with Ballistic Curve problems in the ready room, a Maint sleep time....
Anyway, off they go, systems down, an iron bomber, into the blue.
Roger C and LCDR B... come back with a story of putting the Mark 82s into the target with only the Head Up display cross hairs. Unbeliveable.
This leads to the Skipper challenging the rest to a Iron Bomber competition. Another A6 Story for later.
Seems the Read Write heads were scarring the drum at contact, downing the system. We had an inventory of the drums which was soon depleted. Litton provided, off the shelf, via Fed Ex the remaining stock in the factory inventory. A back door supply of Read Write Heads.
The A6 had a back up system of supply from their vendors that was a salvation in those days.
end

It has been ages since I heard stories about the A-6 Litton gear. I remember one cruise the Trons were pulling their hair out about those suckers.
I served with VAQ-137 when we went on the 79 deployment on the Ranger. VA-145 was the A-6 outift. What happened was supply was putting all the parts, etc on computer records and forgot one whole page of parts listings for our Prowlers. We were lucky in the fact all the parts left off were parts compatible with both aircraft. It saved our necks until Supply got it ironed out!We would use 145's listings ,the ones for the Intruders and get our parts. I can remember going over to pre-ex and getting spare conoseals and clamps as it took forever to get them on the ship.
Our Maintenance Material control officer came over to Powerplants one day and told me to get as many spare conoseal and clamps as I could before going on deployment. I showed him a cruise box I had and he didn't need to say anymore to me. Old hands in NAVAIR soon learned to cover your 6 and not rely, all the time, on supply. If you catch my drift.

I'm sure everyone has seen the video...

A-6 on Cat 3 on USS Theodore Roosevelt in February 20, 1991.

Cat hold back checker was training a boot during night ops. Trainee verifys the hook up and runs clear with flash light signal held up for good. Trainer steps in to check hook up as the yellow shirt signals pilot for military power. Trainer gets sucked right in to intake.

Pilot sees engine FOD and immediately cuts power. Trainer climbs out of intake and walks away.

I was standing on opposite side of aircraft watching launch. No one new what was happening except for those that saw it on TV below deck.

Luckiest guy in the world...

ALL
The Supply side of the A6 community appears to be the same in the early days as well as later on.
AIMD SACE bench processors contained many common parts to the actual aircraft. We had bench failures of small parts, that were available via the Material Management Squadron parts lists. The trick was in the part numbers. If you had a good cross index list, which only the reps had, you could get relief thru that systm. We had a LCDR in AIMD that did nothing all cruise but manage part number lists for the various shops.
Back door supply was an old trick we learned early on in the Maintenance business, in order to survive.
Even in the VR days, which had no 3M data at all, the shop had a PO that did nothing but manage parts, part numbers and dole out favors....
end

quote:

23 Feb. 1969, U.S.S. Kitty hawk, Gulf of Tonkin
An A-7 of VA 105 traped following a PC-1 fail.

Schockey...
That is the outfit I was trying to remember. VA105... I roomed with the Warrant from the Ordnance Shop along with 6 others...Cruise in 1969. If I recall correctly, the A7 XO went right over the Hawk on a victory roll at his last trip into Hanoi. He disappeared into the prevalent mist and lost his altitude, into the drink. The Russian trawler picked up and returned his helmet. Now this is an OLD memory and the A7 Squadron may have been the other outfit on the Hawk.
We had Arrdvarks, Tigers, 2 A7 outfits and a Heavy Recce RVAH1(?) aboard.
end

Slim
You should go to
www,history.navy.mil/shiphist/
select K , find kitty hawk 2, a list of years will come up pic a year
You will get a command history for that year
check it out.
You should do it soon as only current commishoned ships are there and the Hawk is comming back for decomm soon. You can download the files .pdf's
Abebooks has 68 69 and 71 cruse books for sale pricy but they got them.
Shockey

Schockey
The history link will go on after this post.
Thanks. I understand the Hawk is still online in the south Pacific, somewhere, due to return to Bremerton? or maybe NAS North Island first?
The Hawk is the last non nuc CV in commission, I believe. After this, the Japan station will have to host a nuc CV.
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Lost an aircraft in VFA-22 in 1991 on Uss Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72)....."Cold Cat"! After launching an E-2 the catapult was not reset properly for an F/A-18C. Resulting in F/A-18 being launched TOO SLOW and was UNABLE to gain enough airspeed and altitude crashing into the Persian Gulf. Pilot ejected SAFELY. Ironically, this was the PILOTS LAST FLIGHT with our squadron. He was due to transfer in just a few days of this event.