F/A-18 Super Hornet Lost Overboard Off CVN In Mediterranean
 

"NAPLES, Italy -- On July 8, 2022, an F/A-18 Super Hornet assigned to Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 1, embarked aboard USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), blew overboard due to unexpected heavy weather in the Mediterranean Sea.

The carrier was conducting a replenishment-at-sea, which was safely terminated through established procedures.

All personnel aboard the ship are accounted for.

One Sailor received minor injuries while conducting operations during the unexpected heavy weather. The Sailor is in stable condition and expected to make a full recovery.

USS Harry S. Truman and embarked aircraft remain full mission capable.

Details and the cause of the incident are under investigation.

For questions related to this release, contact U.S. Naval Forces"

https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Pr...due-to-unexpe/

Thought that replenishment at sea was very much weather limited, so this is indeed a surprise.
The ships presumably have ongoing weather watch. Can someone help?

I have admittedly no knowledge of carrier operations but muss have been quite some weather for such a thing to happen 🤔

Freak Rogue MOFOs WAVEs can come 'out of the blue' "unexpectedly" as per: Not only NOAH Knows but NO

What is a rogue wave? (noaa.gov)

Gulf of Lyon??

In the Mediterranean? Guess every ocean has its surprises.

03 Mar 2010 Rogue Waves Kill Two On Mediterranean Cruise Ship : The Two-Way : NPR

Impressive! Clearly I misunderestimated that body of water.
Separately, would the aircraft on deck not be tied down during replenishment?

Flight ops occur during RAS evolutions. Many factors may determine this event for ships concerned. Any aircraft NOT BEING MOVED anywhere on the ship is always tied down. When being moved they are followed by deck crew with chocks. A classic case of a 'half-tied down A4G in the process of being moved by a flight deck tractor and aircraft handlers' went over the side in the big ditch between Oz & KiwiLand in 1979. There were other factors however the angry sea was part of the mix. Soon after the LARGE rotating RADAR on top of the island of MELBOURNE fell off, luckily over the stbd side and not onto the flight deck. The XO of a Brit Ship was lost in the raging storms during TASMINEX 79. The VF-805 Squadron 'brake man' ABATWL Krenn in the cockpit went over the side also - picked up by nearby destroyer rescue swimmer OK. He had a float coat. YAY!

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....9a5b0ee47f.jpg

Very illuminating, thank you! It helps to have these unexpected hazards explained by someone who has been there.

I was not onboard MELBOURNE in 1979, however when onboard it was 'fun' to see inch tops of green Pacific swell wash down the catapult track whilst waiting for the GO! from the FDO. The Pacific Ocean is notorious for the long cycle swells. There is a classic section in a video about CVN flight ops with Hornets in the INDIAN OCEAN trying to accommodate these long cycle SWELLs, especially at night. A CVN deck is about 65 feet off the water while the MELBOURNE deck was about 37 feet (my approximations). There are photos of the tops of waves blowing down a CVN deck. Life on the bounding main. :}

Sadly blocked here in the USA by PBS, which apparently has copyright on some of the content. Your description however paints a clear picture.

How 'bout this one and one: [They on the INDIAN OCEAN transiting from the Gulf to Perth Oz.] Above I had the impression the CVN was transiting the Pacific however it is clear they are somewhere on INDIAN Ocean. The two video halves below are the same as the full video apparently blocked above.

Thank you for these, sobering to see the real live pictures..
Wonder whether the various auto land systems have reduced the stress in the last few years.
Would certainly expect the Chinese to be working hard to make carrier operations more accessible.

JPALS will have a limit for fully automatic landings, currently it is Sea State 5, plus there will be other weather conditions, how the carrier steers into wind to make any crosswind and other limits - also for the aircraft. Sea state - Wikipedia I did not make the title for this USS Kitty Hawk video:

Still, wasn't a Nimitz-class carrier (which has a waterline of 134 ft (40.8 m)). But clearly it can also happen in the Mediterrenean sea.

The last video above shows USS Kitty Hawk whilst Louise Majesty is now: MS Crown Iris - Wikipedia

Freeboard?
 

Is the height of the deck above water not called "freeboard"? Wikipedia says the beam of this class is 134 feet.

"...Depending on its aircraft load, a carrier’s flight deck may sit as high as 60 feet above the waterline. Its hangar bay elevators lower swimmers to 30 feet from the waves—the equivalent of an Olympic diving platform—so leaping sailors risk a broken bone if not using good form. The USS Eisenhower issued instructions to prevent injuries by asking that the crew “practice to prevent injury from wrongful water entry.”..." Everyone in the Ocean! | Air & Space Magazine| Smithsonian Magazine

North Pacific about 1984. Deck moving up and down 20 feet. ¼ mile vis in heavy snow. Single Phantom airborne after Bear intercept. First two passes waived off for deck out of phase. Third pass trick or treat with 800 lbs of fuel. Traps successfully but slow to throttle back in the wires. Air Boss comes up and says”602 throttle back, your not a rookie out there”. 602 replies, “Boss, do I bother you when your taking a ****?”

Fleet Air Arm Museum carrier experience used to show a parked Buccaneer going over the side of the Ark Royal.

This was done for the flight safety film but we did lose a SHAR overboard from Invincible during the Falklands. The captain was invited to the wardroom that evening and accosted by a SHAR pilot who accused him of driving his ship like an effin speed boat! Cue early bed time.

Mog

“Buccaneer XN954. Deliberately dropped into the English Channel off HMS Ark Royal during the making of a Royal Navy safety film about the accidental loss of XT269 (031/R) from Ark Royal 15/2/1972. The safety training film re-staged the accident, and showed what to do to prevent it happening again.” http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=157090 Last JPG: https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/512214157618381088/

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....31ee799595.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....cc0ce63d2b.jpg

Can't fault this training for lack of realism.

Spaz ... thanks for those videos. Thirteen airborne and nobody is trapping a wire? Deffo not my scene.

I believe "flight deck height" would be a better term to use than "freeboard" when referring to an aircraft carriers flight deck. Happy to be corrected. Freeboard could be lower, as in the hangar deck. Some aircraft carriers such as the Midway's and some WWII era carriers had notoriously low freeboards, and were known as wet ships.

I imagine recovery will be a priority. US Navy SUP Salvage has had some interesting recent recoveries.

On 3 March 2010, three rogue waves hit Louis Majesty, killing two passengers. This accident happened in an area of the Mediterranean called the Gulf of Leon, which is known for big waves when storms hit.

https://abc7news.com/archive/7312146/

You Tube

On 26th September 2010 we were sailing out of Monte Carlo on our first cruise, bound for Barcelona on the P&O Oceana. That evening the captain advised us that they were expecting it to get a bit rough, Force 8; during the night the wind and the waves crashing against the ship woke us up, I said to my wife that is never a Force 8 more like a10. In the morning the captain admitted that it was worse than they had expected :O and was in fact a Force 10. The crew were out early in the morning repairing the broken bits, mostly handrails and deck tiling.

That matches my memory.

Wasn't that in the Caption Competition a couple of years ago?

Rogue waves
 

Here are a few interesting things about rogue waves

Obviously not seen the 1970s disaster movie "The Poseidon Adventure". :)

Here ya go: Navy Weighing Recovery of Super Hornet Lost in Mediterranean Sea - USNI News

P'raps this is a new submarine SupaHorneto wersion? "...According to a source, the Super Hornet was a two-seat F/A-81F[sic] and was assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 211, based at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia Beach, Virginia...." https://seapowermagazine.org/f-a-18-...arry-s-truman/

Yes, agreed. On further enquiry freeboard is the height above the sea up to which there needs to be watertight bulkheads and watertight doors. I can imagine hangars, and even more so the load decks of car ferries are pretty low - as we recall from the Herald of Free Enterprise.

The oil tanker Kirki had the bow fall off in rough seas, aided by a forepeak ballast tank full of water when it was supposed to be dry.


A comedians take.

I was on the "Australis" in 1974 and we were supposed to dock at Cherbourg after sailing from Southampton. There was a gale in the Bay of Biscay and a wave broke several windows on the Promenade deck! We never did get to Cherbourg and sailed on to the next port which was Las Palmas. It was the only time that I have been sea sick on a ship. It didn't help that I had just had lunch in the restaurant.

I'd highly recommend that Rogue Wave doco - it terrified Mrs T. when we watched it years ago.
Astonishing how something as basic as wave theory was found lacking after the Draupner Wave incident - which showed that hundreds of years of mariners' tales about freak waves emerging from nowhere - were likely true.
And the bit where they used a satellite to look for rogue waves globally, and found them all over the place - chilling.

Might be why certain nautical charts had zones marked "here be dragons" back in the day. :}

Naval Aviation News May 1968 "...[USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14)] En route to WestPac, Tico encountered 35-foot waves and high winds gusting up to 90 miles per hour about 400 miles east of Japan...." https://www.history.navy.mil/content.../pdf/may68.pdf
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Have there ever been any successful underwater ejections?

The Ejection Site: Underwater Ejection VERY DRAMATIC VERY DETAILED telling of the tale from a Corsair II pilot going over the side during his arrested landing that had some shortcomings. Then a WHY VERN!
66 years ago today a pilot ejected from an aeroplane trapped underwater! | Hush-Kit (hushkit.net)
This site is damn near impossible to use - you may have some joy: Approach - Google Books
Spend yur mony here folk: Underwater ejection | Journal of The Royal Naval Medical Service (bmj.com)
Google: Underwater Ejections - Google Search

The SEA HAWK 'girdle' off - VIKRANT catapult: Navy’s first underwater ejection- The New Indian Express

Safe underwater ejection from a downed fighter jet. HD Stock Footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfVKUdA433Q