If you didn’t take time to click on and watch this week’s video on a Navy E2C carrier mishap earlier this year, I recommend it. Put yourself in the pilot’s seat of the Hawkeye and you’ll appreciate the remarkable outcome.
As the story explains, the Hawkeye was involved in carrier workups off the North Carolina coast last March aboard the U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower when a cross deck pendant parted just after the aircraft trapped and was decelerating. The investigation revealed that the arrestment gear was improperly configured for the weight and type of aircraft, causing the pendant to part.
As the video shows at about 0:30, the Hawkeye catches the four wire, which slows it considerably before breaking. This leaves the airplane in extremis at the very end of the deck, not scooting right along as it would be in a regular bolter. As you can see, the pilot doesn’t have much flying speed before sailing over the bow and disappearing from view, sinking like a stone. It takes no imagination at all to understand what has to happen next. With the airplane short of flying speed and the engines already at full power—carrier pilots are trained to open the throttles on touchdown in case of a bolter—it would take laser-like discipline to let the nose fall through a little to trade altitude for airspeed. But there’s not that much height—about 90 feet on a Nimitz class carrier, depending on the deck pitch state. As the water comes rapidly closer, the urge to pitch up would be overwhelming, countered perhaps by unshakeable faith in ground effect.
The other thing to think about is being run over by the ship if the airplane actually ditches. So would it be worth jinking a little left to get out of the way? I don’t think so. I dragged out my NATOPs manual and it looks to me like unless the airplane plopped right off the angle deck, it would clear the ship’s line of movement on the port side. When recovering aircraft, carriers steam so the wind over the deck is closely aligned with the angle deck. That means that the imaginary line describing the extended approach centerline is constantly moving to the pilot’s right to some degree, requiring a series of right corrections for line up. It also means that the ship would move to the right of an airplane that landed in the water off the angle deck, albeit it would have to be a few hundred feet beyond the bow to have a lot of clearance.
Looking at the specs for the E2C, it has more than 10,000 HP which, according to Grumman, provides a power loading of 0.19 HP/lb. On paper, that makes it a bit of a hotrod, depending on weight. One airplane you’re familiar with which definitely is a hotrod is the Carbon Cub, whose power loading is about 0.13 HP/lb., but more like 0.15 or 0.16 if really light. A Carbon Cub—and others of its ilk—can power through a near stall condition with the nose high by simply hanging on the prop. Maybe an E2C at a light weight could do the same. But either way, when the Navy said the pilot displayed “phenomenal airmanship” in recovering the aircraft, they could be faulted for understatement.
Another Ditching
Monday’s news feed brought news of yet another successful ditching, this one off Kona in the Hawaiian Islands. A Piper Apache with two aboard went into the water for unknown reasons. It happened about 3:15 p.m. local time. One of the news reports I saw said the two survived thanks to good equipment and good training. I’d never argue with success, but I’d also point out that perhaps the equipment and training wasn’t as good as it might have been.
Despite a radio call and apparently good position reports to ATC, the pair was in the water for some 20 hours. In other words, they spent a night at sea in life jackets, one of which was leaking. What could have improved their chances? A raft and signaling equipment. Coast Guard pilots will tell you that the probability of detection for a person in the water is quite low. A raft improves that and signaling devices improve it more. It’s not unreasonable to include this equipment on airplanes that are routinely flown over long stretches of open water. Signaling devices in or attached to the life vests are the best bet. (If they had this equipment, it wasn’t mentioned in the reports I saw.) A chem light or a small flashlight will flare like a beacon in the night vision gear search pilots use.
You may recall that four years ago, I wrote about the ditching of an aeromedical Westwind off Norfolk Island near Australia.The pilot, whom I’ve interviewed several times, successfully got the airplane into the water in fresh seas and low visibility at night and got everyone evacuated. He had injured occupants and a stretcher patient. Quick recovery by boat turned on a small penlight he had in his shirt pocket for signaling. Everyone survived.
The two Hawaii victims benefitted from warm water—about 80 degrees this time of year, which translates to indefinite survival time. Had that happened in the 65-degree water off Bar Harbor or Santa Catalina, surviving overnight would have been unlikely. The accident record is rich with routine flights that started as a sunny afternoon lark and turned into a survival struggle in an eye blink. Survival often turns on the smallest things, like the habit of carrying basic survival and signaling equipment even though you know you’ll never need it. Until you do.
