The Nimitz, which launched the helicopters for the unsuccessful attempt to rescue American hostages from Iran last year, suffered no major damage, according to the Navy. "When we say substantial, it's a big fire."
Ken Pease, a Navy spokesman at Atlantic Fleet headquarters in Norfolk, said Navy firemen fought the blaze for 70 minutes with chemical foam. Jim Lois, a spokesman for Naval Air Force of the Atlantic.Ĭdr.
"As far as I know, weather was not a factor," said Cdr. Tuesday, when the 92,000-ton Nimitiz was conducting night training exercises 60 miles off Jacksonville, Fla. Navy officials said yesterday that they did not know whether the plane missed the wires as it came in to the right of the center line on the deck of the carrier.īut on the basis of reports from the Nimitz, Navy officials said the Prowler evidently clipped the wings of several aircraft parked on the right edge of the deck before slamming into a cluster of parked planes near the bow.
1982 JET CALENDAR SERIES
The bulbous-nosed EA6B Prowler normally lands at a speed of about 140 mph on the carrier, where its tail hook is snagged by a series of four wires stretched across the deck. Over $100 million in fighter and attack aircraft on the carrier were believed to have been destroyed or damaged in a rapid-fire series of collisions as the errant plane careened across the deck. The fireball that shot up from the bow of the flight deck when the EA6B radar-jamming plane smashed into other aircraft parked off to the side of the landing zone apparently caused most of the deaths and injuries. The Navy did not immediately release the names of the dead and injured, because not all the next of kin had been notified.Īlthough preliminary indications suggested pilot error, Navy spokesman said they would not be able to determine the cause of the firey crash until after an investigation likely to take six months. A Marine electronics warfare jet slammed onto the wrong part of the USS Nimitz' flight deck late Tuesday night, skidded off to the right and ended up in a ball of flames near the bow of the giant aircraft carrier, killing 14 men and injuring at least 48 others, Navy officials said yesterday.
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