{"id":40099,"date":"2025-12-04T19:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T19:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/a-us-aircraft-carriers-hard-turn-to-avoid-enemy-fire-surprised-sailors-and-sent-a-jet-with-bad-brakes-into-the-sea\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T19:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T19:21:15","slug":"a-us-aircraft-carriers-hard-turn-to-avoid-enemy-fire-surprised-sailors-and-sent-a-jet-with-bad-brakes-into-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/a-us-aircraft-carriers-hard-turn-to-avoid-enemy-fire-surprised-sailors-and-sent-a-jet-with-bad-brakes-into-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"A US aircraft carrier&#8217;s hard turn to avoid enemy fire surprised sailors and sent a jet with bad brakes into the sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6930302304d0f0a114f14e14?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman sails through the Mediterranean Sea on May 18.\"\/><figcaption>The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman made a hard turn before sending a fighter jet and a tow tractor overboard.<\/p>\n<p>US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Mike Shen<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>A US Navy aircraft carrier made a hard turn to avoid enemy fire, sending a fighter jet overboard.<\/li>\n<li>The maneuver to avoid the Houthi missile attack surprised sailors, the investigation shows.<\/li>\n<li>The F\/A-18&#039;s brakes weren&#039;t working properly, and it fell into the Red Sea along with a tow tractor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A US Navy aircraft carrier&#039;s hard evasive turn to avoid enemy missile fire caught crewmembers off guard and sent a $60 million F\/A-18 Super Hornet rolling off the deck and into the Red Sea, an investigation into the fighter jet loss revealed.<\/p>\n<p>The fighter&#039;s brakes weren&#039;t functioning properly, investigators found, allowing the jet to slide across the deck when the carrier USS Harry S. Truman abruptly changed course during the late April action.<\/p>\n<p>Poor communication, bad brakes, and a slippery surface all contributed to the loss.<\/p>\n<p>A tow tractor also fell into the water alongside the expensive F\/A-18 fighter jet, the second of three that the Truman lost during a monthslong Middle East combat deployment. When it went over, it nearly took sailors overboard as well.<\/p>\n<h2>Evading enemy fire<\/h2>\n<p>During their deployment, the Truman and its strike group led Navy combat operations against the Houthis, the heavily armed Iran-backed rebel group in Yemen that spent more than a year attacking key Middle East shipping lanes.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6930be4a71107c9f34574b81?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Three F\/A-18 Super Hornets prepare to launch from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, December 21, 2021.\"\/><figcaption>An F\/A-18 fell overboard the Truman while the carrier took a hard turn.<\/p>\n<p>US Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Abbigail Beardsley<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On April 28, the move crew lost control of an F\/A-18 under tow in the Truman&#039;s hangar bay, a maintenance area below the flight deck, the Navy reported at the time, and both the jet and its tow tractor tumbled into the Red Sea.<\/p>\n<p>Right before it fell in, a sailor jumped from the cockpit, suffering minor injuries. The Navy didn&#039;t share information or insight into the warship&#039;s situation at the time of the plane loss.<\/p>\n<p>According to the command investigation, the fighter jet and the tractor fell overboard while the Truman was conducting evasive maneuvers to avoid an incoming medium-range ballistic missile fired by the Houthis, a detail that had been reported but not confirmed at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The move crew, which was preparing the F\/A-18 from Strike Fighter Squadron 136 (VFA-136), the &quot;Knighthawks,&quot; for planned flight operations, didn&#039;t hear the announcement that the ship was making a hard turn and was caught unaware when the ship began to tilt.<\/p>\n<p>Sailors had removed the chocks and chains to pull the F\/A-18 into the hangar bay. With the brakes engaged but not actually working, there was nothing to hold the aircraft in place when the carrier heeled in an evasive turn.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6930bdf17ecd1d1da662e2e5?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Two US Navy Aviation Ordnancemen transport ordnance across the hangar bay aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the US Central Command area of responsibility.\"\/><figcaption>The hangar bay is an area underneath the flight deck where aircraft receive maintenance.<\/p>\n<p>US Navy photo<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It slid backward toward the deck edge, dragging the tow tractor behind it. The crew moving the Super Hornet abandoned their posts just before the fighter jet fell into the sea.<\/p>\n<h2>Bad brakes<\/h2>\n<p>The command investigation put the blame for the incident primarily on the fighter jet&#039;s inadequate brake engagement and the lack of communication from the Truman&#039;s bridge to flight deck control and the hangar bay.<\/p>\n<p>Leadership also said that the non-skid, a rough, high-friction coating applied to the decks of Navy ships to keep people, vehicles, and aircraft from slipping on smooth steel surfaces, was ineffective, having not been replaced since 2018.<\/p>\n<p>These problems, the investigation said, cost the Navy an F\/A-18, a multirole fighter made by the US aerospace giant Boeing that has been in service with the Navy for decades.<\/p>\n<p>The April incident was one of four major mishaps that the Truman and its strike group suffered during their deployment.<\/p>\n<p>In December, the cruiser USS Gettysburg accidentally shot down one of the Truman&#039;s F\/A-18s in what the military described as a friendly fire incident. In February, the carrier collided with a cargo ship. And in May, the ship lost its third fighter jet after a landing failure caused it to slide off the flight deck and plunge into the sea.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman made a hard turn before sending a fighter jet and a tow tractor overboard. US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Mike Shen A US Navy aircraft carrier made a hard turn to avoid enemy fire, sending a fighter jet overboard. The maneuver to avoid the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-40099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}