First Sea Story…Gonna be a long one…

It’s difficult to pick this first sea story because it will likely set the tone of this page for a while.  My kids have their favorite story; it’s a humorous one and I wrote about it already. It will be posted on this BLOG page in the near future.  I apologize ahead of time for any phrases or terms you may not be familiar with.  I will try to provide clarity as I write, but I am so used to using Navy terms that I don’t always realize when what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense.

There were two times that I came within a hairs breadth of dying, and two times that I was very up close and personal during an aircraft ejection.  One story involves both aspects so here goes. 

The 2 videos are the same incident from different angles.

EJECT, EJECT, EJECT!

I have been very up close and personal to two aircraft ejections on the flight deck.  The one I’m going to tell you about today is one kind of similar to the video.  It involved an S-3 Viking, and a ships maneuver that I had never ever heard of or seen performed.  Let me set the stage for what’s about to happen.  The incident I am describing took place in almost the exact same spot as the F-14 in the video.  First we’ll talk about the ship, second we’ll talk about the deck conditions. Then I will get to what happened that very dark night in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. 

The ship, on most nights, goes to a condition of “Darken Ship”.  The normal lights, including all of the interior ones near any hatch that opens to the exterior of the ship, are turned off or switched to a red color.  All of the flight deck lights are off and no flashlights with “normal’ white light are allowed.  You had to use a blue lens in your flashlight which severely restricts your visibility.  This is done to “hide” the ship from any other ships and make us as dark as possible. 

Disappearing Act

All of this is normal, but on this night, we are not normal.  In addition to darken ship, we are also in “Deceptive Lighting”.  This is purposely showing certain “decptive” lights that make the ship appear to be a freighter or a merchant ship instead of a mighty warship.  From any distance away, it would be hard to tell that we were an aircraft carrier.  AND on top of all of that we were in “EMCON” condition.  This means that NO emissions, other than what a civilian freighter would be broadcasting can be used.  No radar, no radios, no nothing.  The aircrews could not use radios and all launch sequence events were done by hand signal. 

I was the Flight Deck Coordinator (a Chief Petty Officer) and as such I was responsible for everything our squadron did on the flight deck, and I had a radio built into the gear I wore on deck.  Normally I could speak to our squadron’s maintenance control, and I could also talk to/hear the officers who controlled the deck like the Handler, and the Air Boss.  Not that it mattered this night, since no radios were allowed to be turned on.  So that sets the stage from the ship’s perspective. To everyone out on the seas, we appear to be ship hauling cargo or some such, not a war ship.  All of what is about to happen, happens around 3 am.

Slippery When Wet

Now let’s talk about the condition of the flight deck.  Everyone who has ever worked on the flight deck knows that after a period of time, the nonskid wears off, and the deck becomes very slippery, like an ice rink.  This is especially true in the aft part of the deck where the arresting gear cables are.  That entire area is super slippery within a month of deploying.  The cables being constantly pulled out and retracted each landing, and all the grease that is used on the cables make it this way.  Our squadron was actively prosecuting a real world target. It was a Russian submarine that we had been tracking for a day or so in the Med.

On this night, our squadron was the only one operating.  We had launched an aircraft 4 or 5 hours earlier, and were launching another aircraft to relieve that one, then recover the earlier aircraft.  As such, the deck was spotted with all aircraft packed into the bow area and leaving the landing area clear.  Our aircraft used the waist catapults to get airborne.  (Interesting side note: the flight deck has all kinds of areas with different names like the waist, the finger, the hole, the fantail, etc…kind of like a city with different neighborhoods).  The waist cats are number 3 and 4….in the video the F-14 on the cat was on cat 4 which is where we were also going to launch from. 

Everything Was Normal, Until It Wasn’t

Everything started normally.  Aircrew manned up, started engines, performed systems checks, and started to taxi to the catapult.  For those not familiar with how things work, when our aircraft starts to taxi, none of our squadron personnel are involved at this point, we just kind of sit back and follow the jet up to the catapult.  The flight deck handlers are in charge of moving any aircraft on deck.  They took our plane from the forward part of the ship back to the aft end then swung it around to face forward and taxied it up to the arresting gear wires.  The aircraft was between the 3 and 4 wires with the main tires touching the 3 wire. The nose tires were 3 or 4 feet from the number 4 wire with the aircraft facing forward. 

At this point, everything stops.  There is no radio traffic like you would hear in a normal launch cycle (usually it is nonstop chatter, and I mean nonstop, constant radio calls).  The handlers don’t know why we are stopped, we don’t know why we are stopped.  We just sit there for about 10 minutes doing nothing!  I cannot figure out why we haven’t already taxied to the cat and launched yet.  I will point out that it would be normal procedure to chain the aircraft to the deck if it was going to be stopped for any amount of time….it was never chained!  We all thought we were going to quickly launch like we always did. 

WHAT Did He Say?

At about this time we hear a voice over the loudspeaker system on the flight deck, EMERGENCY TURN!  EMERGENCY TURN! HEEL PORT! HEEL PORT!  (Let me explain to those who don’t know what heel port or heel starboard means.  If you hear “Heel Port” that means the ship is turning to starboard.  They tell you the most important fact and that is that the ship will be LEANING towards the port side.  I put a pic in this post to show you, except in our case the “lean” was even more!!!!!)

I can honestly say that in all of my Navy days I have only heard that expression exactly ONE time, and this was it!  You would be hard-pressed to find any sailor who has heard that phrase while underway.  So here is what is happening in the space of about 20 seconds:  We hear the frantic announcement….we feel the ship tilting to port…and it doesn’t stop!  It keeps tilting, and tilting…farther than I have ever felt a ship tilt.  Did I mention the aircraft was not tied down? 

Remember That Slippery Part?

Well at this point it starts to slide sideways towards the edge of the deck.  The pilot has the brakes locked up (the tires never moved, just slid).  The pilot performs an emergency procedure that we all were aware of but had never actually seen before…he dropped the tail hook.  This is to indicate the pilot has no control of the aircraft and he is trying to snag something to stop the aircraft from moving. 

As the aircraft is sliding ever faster towards the edge of the deck I kept thinking, “any second now this will stop”, but it didn’t….it got worse!  The main tires were rubbing the arresting cable but the nose tires were not, so this caused the main tires to drag and nose tires to slide faster, causing the jet to be pointed directly over the side.  This made the jet slide even faster since it now pointed “downhill” right toward the port side of the ship, and at this point I knew they were gonners. 

Nothing We Could Do

There was nothing we could do but watch this train wreck happen in front of our eyes.  The aircraft hit the deck edge, popped into the air and stared going over the side, exactly like you see and exactly in the same spot as the one in the video.  I was following beside the aircraft as it was sliding over the side and was about 20-30 feet from it.  As soon the aircraft dropped over the side I heard a loud explosion and was blinded by a brilliant flash.  I assumed all 4 of the aircrew had ejected, as I certainly would have, but that was not the case. 

Let me take a moment and explain the crew configuration of the S-3 Viking.  It had a crew of 4, a Pilot, a Co-Pilot, a TACCO (Tactical Coordinator), and a SENSO (Sensor Operator).  The SENSO was an enlisted man and the others were Officers. There is a selector handle for single seat eject or crew eject.  Normally when the aircraft taxis, the pilot selects crew eject so that if any one person pulls the ejection handle all 4 seats will eject. 

In this case the pilot had NOT selected crew eject and only ONE seat had ejected, the SENSO.  He got into trouble over this incident, but I will always say that he was the only one in the aircraft that did exactly what he should have done!!! Notice in the video’s that the aircrew ejected immediately when the aircraft bumped into the air and as it was falling.  As far as I am concerned the only smart one was the SENSO! 

Six Inches From Death

If that aircraft had been 6 INCHES more forward, he would have been the only one living of all of us who were on deck.  Six inches further, and all the rest of the aircrew, plus all of us on the deck near the aircraft and a bunch of people below deck would have been vaporized in an explosion.  You see, the aircraft did not go all the way over the side because the nose wheel happened, by the grace of God, to drop into the wide part of the catwalk surrounding the deck and the aircraft’s center of gravity was still on the flight deck (just like you see in the video) so it never flipped over upside down like I thought was going to happen. 

Six inches from where the nose went over, there was an electrical hatch where power cables are stored so anyone could apply ground power to a jet to do maintenance.  This hatch takes up about half of the width of the catwalk, so there would be no room for the wheel to drop into the catwalk.  Directly below that spot on the flight deck is a missile launcher that had 8 live missiles in it. The plane would have landed upside down with, 17,000 pounds of jet fuel, on that launcher with the aircraft and all 8 missiles exploding. 

That Was Close

Since the aircraft was precariously balanced on the deck, we immediately ran over and started throwing on as many chains as we could find to tie the aircraft to the deck.  The engines were still running and I had thought all 4 seats had ejected so I was trying to figure out how we could shut down the engines from outside, when all of the sudden (by now my vision was starting to come back) I see a helmet with reflective tape still sitting in the co-pilot seat!! 

I thought maybe his seat had malfunctioned, but then I saw movement in the cockpit and also saw the pilot still in the aircraft.  So at this point I’m not sure who ejected and who was still in the aircraft. About then the pilot shut down the engines. Now we had to figure a way for them to get out of the aircraft because the entrance was resting on the edge of the flight deck and could not be opened. 

The crew eventually crawled out through the hole on top of the aircraft made by the SENSO seat ejection.  Within a few minutes, all the lights on deck were turned on and the radios were turned back on as we all tried to sort out what to do from here on out.  The helo had found the SENSO in the water and he was back on deck within minutes.  We eventually learned that a civilian freighter crossed directly in front of the ship (I guess our deceptive lighting worked too good) causing our ship to have to do an emergency turn to avoid a collision.  Just another exciting night on the high seas…..