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Wanna see a Hornet ramp strike?

PRB

PRB

Administrator
Staff member
Well, the aftermath of a ramp strike, anyway... The sorry looking plane started out life looking more like the Hornet in the other photo, an FA-18C in VFA-147. One night in the Persian Gulf in the summer of 1991, the sorry looking plane was refueling at night and ran into the refueling basket, resulting in both the pitot tube and AOA probe being knocked off the right side of the fuselage. The old FA-18Cs (Lot 12 in this case) received AOA and airspeed data to the HUD exclusively from the right side probes. This meant the pilot had no airspeed or AOA indication on the HUD when he attempted to land on the ship (Nimitz) at 10:00 at night. It didn’t turn out so good… He went to full after burner after the LSO’s “power … power … POWER … !! :icon_eek:” call, then the plane hit the round down, ripped off the right main gear, then pilot ejected, then the plane caught the arresting gear! So now we had an FA-18, hung on the wire, both engines at full AB, one on them of fire, with no pilot in the cockpit! The crash & salvage guys shut off the engine, and they stashed the bent plane behind the island, where it is in the pic. See all the wooden pallets where the right gear normally would be? The pilot landed on the flight deck in his parachute, and suffered minor injuries.
 
I'm a little surprised that this story hasn't surfaced before. That's pretty incredible. Lucky nobody was hurt or worse. I'd bet the airplane never flew again.
 
The "round down" is the aft edge of the flight deck which is rounded down to allow a plane's tailhook to bounce up instead of catching a sharp angle. Also referred to as the ramp. "Spud locker" is Navy slang for the area in the ship's galley where vegetables are prepared. On a carrier it refers to the ship's fantail which is directly below the round down. If you pull off too much power on approach or for any other reason your aircraft gets too low and too slow, that's where you're headed. PRB's photos are exceptional for the results of a ramp strike. Usually there's no plane left to salvage, it either breaks up into flaming chunks at the ramp or wipes off its gear and skids down the deck as the pilot ejects.
 
Don’t think the plane ever flew again, although I’m not really sure. We got lucky that night. With the right main gear ripped off, the plane was headed off to the right as it slid down the deck. Had it not accidentally caught a wire, it would have run into a bunch of parked planes, and lots of people. That would have been ugly! Also, the plane was carrying a live AIM-7 Sparrow missile on the right fuselage station, and it got a little banged up as it was dragged across the flight deck…
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Evidently there is a fuel shut off switch located in the left main wheel well. One of our QA guys was headed for it, figuring he could starve the engines of fuel to kill them, but he was prevented from doing that by somebody. Instead they tried a 2.5 inch fire hose full blast down the intakes. That didn’t work. Then they put the modified fork lift, used to get wounded pilots from cockpits, up against the fuselage, and the fire suited crash and salvage dude reached into the cockpit and just pulled the throttles to off!
 
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