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Reminds me of an old friend of mine. He joined the navy and became a flight deck mechanic on an aircraft carrier. At the time it was listed as one of the ten most dangerous jobs in the world… He died, but in a drunk driving accident.
The CH46 is a heavy lifter, the Osprey will not replace that. The birds are old, but have gone through many updates and rebuilds.
If you’ve ever had a huge radial catch fire inverted at 5,500 ft. you’ll know exactly why aerobatic pilots are required by the FAA to wear a ‘chute.
Fortunately, sometimes a fuel shutoff, a feathered prop and a really screaming red-line dive can put the fire out (and this is why seats are made from leather).
Notice that in the time that it takes the guys to get out of the burning helo, the fire hoses are strung across the deck and the crew is starting to put out the fire. And no, they do not stand around aiming hoses at the helo just-in-case.
This is NOT something that happens often… having spent 4 years living on an aircraft carrier, we never had a plane catch fire on deck.
The guys are just lucky that the fuel leak didn’t happen 20 seconds later when the helo had already swung over the edge of the ship.
The birds are old, but have gone through many updates and rebuilds.
Comment by RTaylor
Obviously.
Regarding #2… “The CH46 is a heavy lifter, the Osprey will not replace that” this is not exactly correct. Technically the H-46 is a Medium Lift helicopter, the mighty CH-53E is the heavy lift beast. Actually, The V-22 vastly outperforms the H-46 in the Medium Lift mission. The max gross weight of an H-46 is 24,300 versus 60,500 for a V-22. Additionally, the V-22 will carry three times more payload, or cover five times the range of the CH-46.
Wow, I think I see a guy wearing blue jeans in that helo. That can only mean civilians on board, I would imagine. That is NOT considered to be good PR.
It appears I was right:
This happened in Sept of 1998 aboard the
“Bonhomer Richard”, pronounced with a
french dialect. My squadron was HMM-164 and I was
a CH-46 Helo Mech. We were supporting Operation
Urban Warrior off the Monterey coast in
California. This bird was taking media crews back
and forth from land to the carrier all day and at
this moment they were leaving to go back to shore.
I was in the chow hall aboard the Bonhomer
“Dick” when this happened. CH-46
crewchief Sgt. Beyers received smoke inhalation
while saving these people and was treated at the
scene. For his actions “under fire”, no
pun intended, he received a Certificate of
comendation and a “NAM”. After
investigating, it was found that a pinhole in one
of the aft transmission lines was
atomizing(spraying) fluid and the spray was being
sucked into the aft generator and this caused the
fire. Transmission fluid is not flammable in large
quantities but when atomized it is very flammable.
The aft portion of this bird was completely
destroyed and had to be removed and replaced.
After 9 months of rebuilding this bird was put
back into the fleet and renumbered. Before the
fire it was #07 and after we got it back it was
#15.
Cpl Petree USMC 97-02
Posted 1 day ago by “petreeaustin” (R)
#4, Awake, correct me if I’m wrong, but the fire-fighting capabilities on a carrier flight line involve serious training and constant drills. I’ve relatives that served in the Navy and numerous stories to tell…
I kept staring at the helicopter in the background waiting for it to catch fire and when the top of the video screen caught fire it startled me! Almost like that ghost car thing.
#9 I don’t know when Awake was in but I never had one burning on the deck during my tours either. However, after becoming a civilian and going back out on the USS America we had an A7 hit the round down and stop on the angle deck and burn until they pushed her over the side (after getting the pilot out safely). Nothing like watching your home on fire with you in it.
When I was in they trained every sailor to fight shipboard fires. I would not want to go through the training again.