Quote: 1969 or 1970. Gulf of Tonkin. USS Kitty Hawk.
Launching an RA5C off the right Fwd cat.
I was on the Connie on a Wespac in '73 when the same thing happened. It was on the Port bow cat, RVAH-12 bird. I was working in AIMD W.C. 610 Com/Nav/Ecm and flight ops was on the ship's TV system. Someone yelled "HOLY %^% look at that!" The tanks stayed put while the Viggie launched, and from what I recall its FWD landing gear collapsed next, and the plane rolled left & disappeared over the bow. The aircrew then ejected sideways and skittered across the water like a flat rock, for several hundred yards. A plane guard helo snatched them up immediately, but I think the Pilot's arm was broken. In the meantime a "twinball" fire rig had put the minor fire around the tanks out & another NC-5 immediately pushed them over the side.
About 10 min. later it was business as usual, since this launch was part of an "ALPHA STRIKE".
There weren't VCR's available back then, or I would have put a splitter on our shop's TV cable and saved some juicy stuff for posterity. I wonder if those (ships') video recordings are still archived & possibly available?

I would almost bet that those old Videos are archived someplace. Have no idea where.
Documentarys, news and movies come up with some every now and then.

Shockey

ALL
On the Hawk, we had a Plate Camera System, maintained by AIMD. This system had a VCR recorder, tape system. The actual tapes were archived by the AIMD office folks.
Now, as to the archived history of the deployment flight ops, some of them may still be in the various ships storehouse.
So much of the Nam ops history has come down to anecdotal stories, without a lot of visuals, that it would be hard to piece together a set of tapes.
The Victory at Sea movies, we all have seen, were built on ships logs, ops reports, actual 16mm camera footage and news reels. The PBS and History channel has footage of some of these events, as I have seen the Hawk in some of their presentations.
Also, the various Aerospace companies made footage of CV ops... Ready on Arrival, an A6 Grumman PR film was around at the time.
I would venture to say, the best source are the stills we took with our 35mm black an white Kodaks.
The RVHA heavy that lost the tanks was spectacular. The A7 fly over into the drink was a bad one. We ALMOST lost the F4s, who were loaded with more Mark 82s than the law allows, in the Tonkin Gulf.
CV ops, even today, produces adrelanine(sic) movies.
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Tenn...,

If you want video's from several era's (including Kitty Hawk) take a look at this site:

http://www.militaryvideo.com/store/store.cfm

A little pricey, but I have tried a few a while back, and they were good. There are all sorts of subjects even old Navy training films they copied. I have VHS, but they now have some on DVD.
Good luck!

All
The posts now have sites for videos, photos and anecdotal stories. My plate is FULL..
The news has an article about the CPOs role and influence in todays navy.
As an off shoot, I would offer the subject of the Most Influential CPO you remember as a part of the anecdotes in the thread. Now this is not a CPO thread, per se, as we have the CPO Mess..
My put in this was the AIMD CPO, AEC John Diamond. He ruled over 5 shops and had the AIMD PO1 who made CPO on the 69 cruise, as his second. Chief Diamond was an Ex Career Counselor and a lost soul in the system, when he and I came together in AIMD USS Kitty Hawk. This CPO was the best fit for the young Va Beachs surfers we had in AIMD shops. I enjoyed his tour and respected his abilities, a fine CPO.
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ALL,
This incident occured aboard the Coral Sea during it's 68-69' WestPac.
It will take some time for me to type out it's telling as I knew and was a friend of the individual who was killed. He was an Alaskan Native who had enlisted at seventeen with his parents consent. Right out of "boot" he came to the ship and was sent to the mess decks which is where I met him. He completed his mess duty just prior to me and he was assigned to the V-4 division as a fueler. I had just returned to my squadron (VA-52) as an AT striker when the accident occured.
Early in the launch cycle a F-4 went down on the catapult, it was taken aft where technicians worked on it as launch continued. The last plane launched. Now is where the apparent confusion leading to the accident occured.
I did not witness the incident but was told that it happened something like this.
The F-4 was still turning while technicians kept working on it.
The fuelers thought launch was over and started preperations for refueling.
Then the F-4 came back on line and the decision to late launch was made.
The F-4 was brought and connected to the catapult.
The deck personel ran through their launch procedures and the signal to launch was made.
My friend, his back to the catapult, was the only person apparently unaware of the late launch. At the same time as the catapult operator hit the buttons to launch my friend jumped up on deck.
It was to late for anything to stop the launch and the plane struck my friend, killing him instantly.
It was one of several very sad days on the Coral Sea that cruise.

Trong...49
These stories of Aircraft, Personnell accidents and incidents are poignant, historicaly accurate and recall heavy emotions.
We have a Naval Aircraft history full of such. I watch the History channel faithfully, and it seems like every story has the F4F coming abd, striking the ramp and careening into the Supertructure,losing his wing.
Folks, we have a lots of such in our memories. It does us all some good to share and to remind the newbies that Naval Air is exciting, dangerous and worth the effort.
Semper Fi
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TennSlim,

On that same Coral Sea WestPac, 68-69', we lost a plane/pilot upon launch.

I was on the tower watching launch/recovery this time.

An A-4 launched off one of the forward catapults and skimmed the waves for a long time. I elbowed a friend and said to watch the A-4 as something must be wrong. Having no more than said that the A-4 abruptly pulled into a steep climb, rolled over on it's back and looked to be coming back at us. My immediate thought was that the pilot was showing off. That thought was quickly replaced by concern, then horror, then helplessness, as we watched the A-4 dive into the ocean in front of us. The pilot did not eject and nothing was recovered.

No one will ever know for sure what happened, but it was assumed the pilot had a cardiac arrest or some such during launch. I think the pilot was the XO of his squadron and had a lot of hours in A-4's.

Later I immagined what might have happened if the plane had hit the ship, plane fully loaded, other planes still on deck fully loaded. Worse than the Forrestal disaster.

USS Enterprise-'98-'99 Med Cruise. I think it was our 1st or 2nd day out, flyin the CVW-3 on-board. End of the recovery, dark out. S-3 (VS-22) was had landed and was waitin to taxi into a spot. EA-6B (VAQ-130) was headin in to land, no one was payin attention in the tower, no wave off, no red lights, Gear Dawgs were out with crossed wands, but didn't work. Prowler slammed into the Viking on deck. Viking crew ejected, 1 landed in the water and the others parachute got caught in the mast. Both of those pilot were ok. S-3 was a ball of flames we eventually got put out, looked like a burnt potato. Prowler went into the water after it hit the Viking. Loss of all 4 crew members, only recovered 1. I was on the island with new blue shirts as part of their quals, heat was so intense we couldn't get the S-3 crew member down (they eventually did) and we had to get off Vultures Row.

ALL
Great history, personal and vivid.
We can garner lots of personal impressions here, and I would encourage that.
Perhaps, a story or two, from the Pilots Point of view. IE As the Ramp comes up, what goes thru ur mind.
I recall one. Lcdr Rick France, VA65, and if he is still alive, he will remember this.
Launch, and the Montior Diplay, comes right off the rails into his lap. Rick hold the stick in his right hand and PUSHES the 70 odd lb wra back into the slots. The BN, who shall remain nameless, is holding desparetly to his ejection handle, waiting for Rick to either recover or die.
Rick carried the wra off the aircraft after recovery and personally deposited it in WO....'s Office. The safety wire was still hanging free.
Great story, happy ending.
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I had an interesting one happen to me.
Our WF2/E1B "Willy Fudd" had an internal combustion cabin heater that drew fuel from the starboard fuel cell.
Winter was approaching so the AE's were dispatched to pull the cabin heaters and do their winter tune ups.
The AE that reinstalled the heater on the aircraft I was flying in forgot to safety wire the connection to the fuel cell.
While we were flying along the fuel line connection vibrated loose and fuel began spilling on to the hot engine. As we were flying the fuel was evaporating off the engine as fast as it spilled onto it.
When we caught a wire and stopped aboard the ship the starboard engine burst into flames.
It was like a 3 Stooges routine next.
I got up to exit the plane and the others were right behind me.
I forgot to unplug my headset cord and after 2 steps my head jerked back and I stopped.
It was bump, bump, bump right behind me.
Fortunately some alert flight deck crew members put the fire out with fire extinguishers.

This is fairly recent. Onboard the USS Ronald Reagan in 2005, we were back out in the water after a visit in Australia. A F/A-18 was on approach and approaching too low. The aircraft tried to fix his approach but his tailhook hit the stern of the ship, causing it to belly slide across the flight deck and over the edge. The pilot ejected safely. The aircraft was unrecoverable as it lays as scrap at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

29 june 1969, Gulf of Tonkin, USS Kitty Hawk, VF-213.
Two of our Phantoms returning from a mission decided to do a flyby. The plan was as they came abeam (at 600 Kts) to pull hard into the vertical and roll in opposit directions.
They came screaming down the port side and pulled hard up. One began to roll as he climbed away (as planned). The other went totaly out of control and did some wild nose up/down movements and out comes the crew (picked up by the helo). The story goes at this point (I can't verify) The aircraft settled down to do a long decending, pilotless cruse, went in the water about 100 yards from the Midway.
Crash wrote off as a maintence problem.

Shockey

Not a launch or recovery incident but, I'll post it here just the same. Med Cruise 87 onboard the Saratoga. My squadron (VF-74) had a couple Tomcats flying CAP. We were in an exercise called Display Determination and we were the aggressors. Due to the tensions with Lybia at the time and where we were at all the CAP birds were armed to the teeth. At one point during the exercise an Air Force F-4 Phantom gets through our outer defenses and is nearing the ship. One of our CAP birds is on his @$$ and the ship radios him with permission to fire (simulated). The pilot misunderstands the radio traffic and punches a Sidewinder right up the tailpipe of the Phantom. The aircrew both eject safely and are brought onboard. The biggest pieces we recovered were one droptank and one horizontal stabilizer. I was changing a rudder pack on the flight deck at the time and saw the Phantom go in. I never saw that pilot fly again and after the cruise he left the squadron and went to work for Fighter Wing at Oceana.

Heres the Wikipedia account of that incident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...y_of_the_F-14_Tomcat
Look for Blue on Blue Engagement about halfway down the page.

22 Dec. 1969, NAS Miramar.
Lt. Cyrus Riddell, flying an F-8J, while practicing ACM west of San Diego suffered a complete oil pressure loss. He returned to Miramar. While on emerency approach from the east, he punched out 200 yds. east of old hwy. 395(safe). The F-8 continued on, drifting right, and flew thru the hanger doors of hanger K-277. (north eastern most hanger)
Inside the hanger were many F-4's and many personnel.
It was a bad day for Navair.

Shockey

quote:

Originally posted by shockey:
22 Dec. 1969, NAS Miramar.
Lt. Cyrus Riddell, flying an F-8J, while practicing ACM west of San Diego suffered a complete oil pressure loss. He returned to Miramar. While on emerency approach from the east, he punched out 200 yds. east of old hwy. 395(safe). The F-8 continued on, drifting right, and flew thru the hanger doors of hanger K-277. (north eastern most hanger)
Inside the hanger were many F-4's and many personnel.
It was a bad day for Navair.

Shockey

I know one of the guys that was in that hangar that day. He's still in a wheelchair.

7 July 1969 USS Kitty Hawk, Yankee Station.
I came up on the roof, port angle fwd, to assume the cat watch. Between me and the cat bird they were backing a EKA-3B of VAQ-131 to turn it around.
Wet oily deck, ship roll, whatever. They backed it right over the side. The mains hung in the catwalk and it stayed on the ship.
we got it chained down and they proceeded to try to get it back on deck. Tilly was inop and they couldn't move it.
They worked all night but couldn't move the A-3.
Next day we started flight op's, launching off the bow cats. We couldn't recover with an A-3 in the LZ, so they all went to Danang. It didn't take long befor we hardly had any planes on the ship.
In the end they took the mains off the A-3 and drug it clear of the LZ and took it below.
All the planes came back and the war went on.

Shockey

Another A-6 story. USS Coral Sea - January 1980 - VA-196 KA-6D.

The plane went out on a mission. When it came back, they hot seated the B/N(bomber/navigator). The plane was refueled while still turning. Only the internal tanks were filled as per the load "A" sheet. When the plane was going down the cat, the pilot thought he had all tanks full, 5 drop tanks as well as internal and wings. He figured that cat shot was too light and the plane wouldn't make it. He punched out during the cat stroke. The B/N punched after.

The plane went straight up and looked for a second like it would come right back on the flight deck. It banked to the right and crashed in to the ocean. The real sad thing is the B/N almost drowned. He got tangled in his chute. Both guys were picked up ok.

quote:

Two of our Phantoms returning from a mission decided to do a flyby. The plan was as they came abeam (at 600 Kts) to pull hard into the vertical and roll in opposit directions.
They came screaming down the port side and pulled hard up. One began to roll as he climbed away (as planned). The other went totaly out of control and did some wild nose up/down movements and out comes the crew (picked up by the helo). The story goes at this point (I can't verify) The aircraft settled down to do a long decending, pilotless cruse, went in the water about 100 yards from the Midway.
Crash wrote off as a maintence problem.

ALL
The above incident was indeed written off as Maint. The F4s of that era, had an oscillatory problem in the flight control systems. If the pilot got into a down/up movement, at low altitude the system did a feed back loop and overcontrolled. End result was an out of control flight and if at low altitude, into the deck. If at Altitude, the pilor simply let go of the stick and the aircraft would settle into normal flight, as this one did.
bt
Lots of good stuff lately. Archives are indeed out there on the net. History channel and Discovery Channel also are good sources. The Nam era of flight had some great aircraft, actually flyable by people.!!
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