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Super Hornet on USS Truman blown off deck in Mediterranean Sea

https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2 ... 07486.html

NAPLES, Italy — A U.S. Navy Super Hornet assigned to an aircraft carrier sailing in the Mediterranean Sea blew off the ship’s deck last week during heavy weather, the Navy said Sunday.

One sailor received minor injuries while conducting operations on the USS Harry S. Truman during the unexpected weather on Friday but was in stable condition and anticipated to make a full recovery, U.S. 6th Fleet said in a statement. All other personnel were accounted for, the Navy said.

The service didn’t say if anyone was on board the F/A-18 Super Hornet when it blew off the ship’s deck. It also didn’t say if the plane, assigned to Carrier Air Wing 1, had been recovered or if recovery efforts were underway.

It wasn’t clear where in the Mediterranean the Truman was when the incident occurred, but USNI News reported on July 7 that the ship was in the Ionian Sea.

A replenishment at sea happening during the heavy weather was safely ended, according to the statement. The Navy did identify the other ship involved in the replenishment.

“USS Harry S. Truman and embarked aircraft remain full mission capable,” U.S. 6th Fleet said in the statement. Details and cause of the incident are under investigation, according to the statement.

The Truman carrier strike group was deployed to the Mediterranean in December as concerns mounted about a buildup of Russian troops and military equipment along the Ukrainian border. Russia subsequently launched its full-scale invasion into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Since then, the Truman has supported training and patrol flights in Eastern Europe, and sailed in the Ionian and Adriatic seas. It also has made several port calls, the latest on June 18 in Marseille, France.

In addition to CVW 1, the strike group includes the cruiser USS San Jacinto and Destroyer Squadron 28. The Truman is expected to remain in the Mediterranean until at least August.

PP

A Buccaneer was lost from Ark Royal's deck back in the 70s. It was correctly chocked, brakes on, double lashings and no one knew it had gone overboard until the morning when they found skid marks and scraped paintwork.

There's no point in recovering the F/A-18 unless it was carrying some super secret stuff. It's not likely to fly again...

In the mid to late 1970s an F-14 rolled off an carrier deck about a hundred mikes off Cape Wrath.

The imperative to recover of it primarily driven by the fact that it had been armed with a pair of AIM-54 Phoenix missiles which in those days was the hotshot weapon of the day. There was also some crypto comms gear in the aircraft which they didn't want the Russkies to capture.

The seabed search and recovery operation was given the highest priority at the time by USN SupSalv.

The classic has to be this one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Phil ... 4_incident

Fox3WheresMyBanana wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 12, 2022 10:27 pm

The classic has to be this one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Phil ... 4_incident

Given that H-bombs are triggered by a fission explosion, one wonders what the fissile material was, given that the traditional way of detonating plutonium weapons is to compress a sub-critical sphere with an explosion round the outside. It would be interesting whether the pressure of water that far down is enough to compress a sphere to the point where it became critical. I assume the fusion material would have been destroyed/dissipated by external pressure before that happened.

Given the potential usefulness of such a thing to certain small states, I would think it extremely unlikely that SupSalv has not quietly recovered that nuclear weapon.

I would expect that they've replaced it with listening devices to detect any further attempts to investigate the scene.

US Navy recovers jet blown off aircraft carrier from bottom of ocean

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics ... index.html

A US Navy team recovered a military jet from a depth of 9,500 feet in the Mediterranean Sea on August 3 after the aircraft had blown overboard during “unexpected heavy weather” in July, a release from US Naval Forces Europe-Africa said.

The jet was aboard the USS Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier, when it blew overboard on July 8, the release said.

The service members who recovered the aircraft used a remotely operated vehicle to attach “specialized rigging and lift lines” to the jet while it was underwater. After attaching the rigging, the recovery team then attached a lifting hook to the rigging to “raise the aircraft to the surface” of the ocean and “hoist it” onto the multi-purpose construction vessel Everest, a separate motor vessel that can be used for a variety of purposes in the ocean, the release said.

Once the aircraft had been recovered from the depths of the ocean and put on the MPV Everest, the team transported the aircraft to a “nearby military installation,” the release said. The aircraft will then be transported from the military installation to the US, the release added.

The team that recovered the aircraft included service members from several different naval units, among them members from Task Force (CTF) 68, Naval Sea Systems Command’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving, service members assigned to the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, Naval Strike Fighter Wing Atlantic and US Sixth Fleet, the release said.

“The rapid response of the combined team… allowed us to conduct safe recovery operations within 27 days of the incident,” Lieutenant Commander Miguel Lewis, US Sixth Fleet salvage officer, said in the statement. “Our task tailored team operated safely and efficiently to meet the timeline.”

PP