On the same day that President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between the United States and Yemen’s Houthis, an F/A-18 Super Hornet crashed off the deck of an aircraft carrier. The fighter was landing on USS Harry S. Truman when the “arrestment failed, causing the aircraft to go overboard,” U.S. Central Command told The Intercept by email.
After the $60 million jet’s tail hook failed to catch the wire that slows down the aircraft, it plummeted into the Red Sea. Two aviators ejected from the jet and were plucked from the water by a search and rescue helicopter. Both were injured, according to an unnamed CENTCOM official.
The injured aviators are the latest in a growing number of casualties in the Middle East that the Trump White House prefers to ignore. As The Intercept reported last week, CENTCOM, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the White House are keeping the total number of U.S. casualties from the war secret.
The procedure when doing a carrier landing is to go to full throttle as you touch down. It may seem counterintuitive, but the idea is if you miss all the wires, you have enough thrust to get back into the air to go around and try again. If you catch a wire, they’re designed to stop the plane at full power. I’m curious what went wrong here to leave the plane short of the necessary power to get airborne again.
Are we sure this happing and not they are secretly being sold to our enemies under the table, and Peter is profiting?
Edit: my wife thinks that he is helping Putins army and that Victory Day is something they celebrate in Russia. Its red flags all the way down.
Yeah, three fighters in as many months "dropped in the ocean" is suspicious.
Perhaps it was partially arrested and the lines snapped, leaving it too slow to get airborne?