The Sentinel, Flight Deck Mishap 210408

      This mishap happened in 1967 onboard the Kitty Hawk.

      I was up on deck sitting in my personal box seat (one of our E-2 aircraft) off the coast of Vietnam, watching planes lining up for a strike over Vietnam. There was an A-6 Intruder aircraft on the catapult just past where I was resting. There are always men around the plane just before launch. A catapult crewman checks the setting on the catapult cables to ensure they are tight. There is also a hydraulics maintenance man from the A-6 squadron checking for leaks in the system. The squadron plane captain was on the front slightly to the side signaling the pilot to hold in place until the hydraulics man finished checking the system. He checked the landing gear and it was fine so he went down both sides to check the air brakes (large thick aluminum baffles on the side used to slow the plane down on landing). I was watching him, not 40 feet in front of me. The plane captain had signaled the pilot to open the air brakes. The plane captain was watching the hydraulics mechanic who had his head inside the fully open brakes. He finished his check, pulled his head out and gave the plane captain a thumbs up to okay the pilot to close the brakes. The plane captain signaled the pilot, and that was when everything went bad. The hydraulics man apparently thought he saw something amiss and without thinking, he stuck his head back in for another look. The air brakes closed back to the side of the aircraft and crushed his head from the normal melon shape down to about the width of a carton of cigarettes. The plane captain saw the poor guy with his head stuck in there and the plane captain signaled the pilot to hold in place until the deck hospital corpsmen could get over there to catch the man when the brakes reopened.

      The accident was not a pretty sight to see and was something I can never unsee. The corpsmen carried him away to sickbay on a stretcher. I heard later that the man lived for several hours. He never regained consciousness. Another myth about the navy being a nice safe place to be in a war will hopefully fade away. Not many people ever hear about fires on the flight deck that happened on the Oriskany, the Forrestal or the Enterprise that killed over a hundred thirty men in a short time.