Bizarre Video Clip!
 

Dunno if anyone else saw it, but a Ch5 programme tonight showed a video clip that I've never seen before and beggars belief !

Its a night time launch aboard a US carrier (Roosevelt I think) an A6 is being positioned onto the cat and the engines run up to t/o power.One of the deck crew walks under the wing and is then sucked in to the port intake!!! ouch! Cue a mass of sparks as his helmet (ooh er missus) is pulled through the engine and causes a serious flame out.He is pulled out with cuts and bruises.
Unbelievable!
As a post script he named his son "blade" in memory of the engine part that could have quite easily terminated his child producing days (and much worse) for good! Only in America ! - well wherever the ship was sailing at the time.

Apparently after 24 hours the chap was back on deck. Little bit Mutt and Jeff however :sad:

Is video of this posted anywhere on the net? I've heard/read about lots of these types of incidents but never seen any....

I have a copy, consisting of the incident repeated about three times, followed by a brief shot of the bandaged result - about 2.5Mb, titled "whirr.avi". I suggest a Google on that name, and if that fails email me (Tocsin at hotmail dot com)

Lucky man...

I heard of another groundcrew that was sucked into the intake of an early F-16 but unfortunately he wasn't so lucky, he lost his life. :uhoh:

I understand they later modded the intake with a vertical strut to prevent this happening again.

Have heard of a number of these type of incidents and been warned to not go near the intake, you will be sucked into the engine etc.

On the strength of 2 bits of data I am a little suspicious of the being sucked in while walking around minding own business part.

1. Engine FOD of the center engine on B-727s understand from airline mechanics that this does sometimes happen and the objects are the usual junk lying around the taxiways and ramp. Incidence of FOD down dramatically with increase in distance from the a/c ahead. Conclusion/theory was that the a/c ahead would kick up the junk into the engine intake and FOD the engine.

2. Mid 1970s many a tale of crew being sucked into the intakes of A-7s (Bs and E's this is USN). A test was performed at NARF Jacksonville by spreading an area of a ramp with corn flakes. A-7 taxis over the cornflaked area and doesn't suck a one in. The exhaust rearranges them pretty good, but nothing sucked up in. Repeated at different power settings. Still no toasted cornflakes.

Conclusion: Unless you get up and in/in front of the engine intake you are (relatively) safe, but always treat these things with great respect.

I believe there was a bit of kit to stop this happening called a "Dalton Stopper" named I think after a chap who got sucked in (or nearly so):\

Try this website for human FOD

http://www.fodnews.com/

There is a clip of an Intruder / Prowler (?) getting headbutted right where it hurts.

An .mpg of the vortex from an F-16 intake too, as well as a .jpg of one in which you can see the vertical groundcrew catcher strut. Also a cracking pic of a vortex in front of a C-17. I think they were all looking for those cornflakes..... ;)

Yep!!! Thats the one - thanks ST for the link

Amazing isn't it!

Looking at the date (20 Feb 1991) -must have been a Gulf war1 sortie - the A6s swansong!

Frequently seen F16s and C17s producing water spouts, never A7s though (then again Ive seen far more Falcons than SLUFs!!-unfortunatley!)

Iron City,

One chap at BA was doing a Top Temp and Speed Control trim on a VC10 at Heathrow when he was sucked out from under the engine and into the intake. The amplifier is only about three feet back from the intake lip. He was quite badly injured - lost a thumb and some fingers and punctured an ear drum - but a man going into the intake causes a compressor stall and is blown straight back out again. Its a long way down from a VC10 intake.

Having done a few TT&SC adjustments on the Conway in my time I'm quite familiar with its sucking power at 103% RPM. It sure does suck! Makes the old cojones vibrate a bit too!

**************************
Through difficulties to the cinema

Interesting thread.
The first mesh guards fitted to the Gloster E28/39 (the first British jet - I have no records of the Heinkel He178 needing them!) were called 'Daunt Stoppers' after the test pilot Michael Daunt, a not insubstantial chap was the first person accidentally ingested. He survived with minimal damage to him and the (then) ultra-rare engine - don't recall why it was minimal damage.

After pulling off an emergency landing in one of the first Meteors in a potato field, the story goes that Daunt filed a patent with the Gloster team for the "Daunt Patent potato lifter-chipper-cooker"...

And another accident inspired a poem asking the chief designer to 'toughen up' the Gloster Meteor ending ...'So please make the Meteor a wee bit meatier still!'

Quite the character.

Cheers
James K

I have seen the one with the guy being sucked down the intake on the carrier.Glad he was OK.That clip is now used as part of the ramps safty course at STN.A couple of months back one of the Ryanair Engineers last half an arm down a JT8.Due to this our company has stopped us doing manual starts on our 737.When I was an apprentice at BAe Hatfield one of the flight test guys was sucked into one of the engines during a full power run.After that engine guards were used.I must admit to having lost most of my fear for jet engines and find myself getting more worried about other people working around them when i'm doing the engine runs.

That video clip with the guy on the carrier being injested should be an advert for Rolex.
He survived but the watch was badly damaged.

As they used to say, "The watch took a lickin', but it kept on tickin' ! "

With regards to the VC10/Conway incident described above by Blacksheep, here's another side to that story: http://www.vc10.net/Memories/testing...html#Neighbour

Edited to get the link working again

Just re-iginiting this thread, excuse my ignorance but surely if someone gets sucked through a jet then the blades will surely reduce them to bits. How could this guy have got through this thing alive?

Only the guy's helmet went through the engine. He came/fell out of the inlet after the engine was shut down.

The incident happened back in 1991 on the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

This clip is used widely in ramp safety training by BA and the BAA in the UK and to a lessor extent overseas. The chap in question was not saved by his bone dome but by his shoulder width blocking the intake and the fast action of the engine/ headset man, who reacted very quickly. In addition there is another clip used which shows the power of blast at Frisco when a pick uptruck is towed behind an A300 with engines set to idle, the truck is picked up and turned over in mid air and ends up in the bay. Interesting about the engine guards as I recall they were used extensively for runups at BA eng LHR/LGW for 747/SSC but I do not recall there use for twin engined a/c. The VC10 incident engineer retired within the last two years from BA and on sader note I recall late 70's a fatality when engineer walked into Viscounts blades on the ED baseat LHR.

LOL - fortunately he obviously didn't "go through" the engine, what you see on the video would be metal fragments after the compressor blades got bent and broken....

:p

Short answer is that he didn't go through the engine.

Only got jammed in the intake, which is quite long on that a/c type.

Lost his helmet/headset apparently which is why the big puff of smoke and flames out the back.:uhoh:

There for the grace of.......

(from the CVN71 site)

February 20, 1991 Arabian Gulf. During Operation Desert Storm, John Bridget, a Greenshirt, was sucked into an A-6E's engine while preparing the jet for take-off. Although the plane was already on the catapult and the engines were running, Bridget was able to crawl out of the engine but collapsed on the flight deck. His only injuries were some scratches. He survived because of his protective suit which destroyed and stopped the engine.

After the accident John Bridget left the Navy.

Two videos of the accident:
Clip 1 Clip 2