what happens when you don't hit cable 3 and forget to throttle up when you touch. And why the military needs to master the technology of gravity fields
I'm sure the pilot did just that but the cable was slowing him down until it snapped. After that you're pulling the loud handle as your jet tips over the side.
when planes land on a carrier they're typically at full throttle until the pilot is sure he's caught the wire and can stop. This guy caught the wire and probably started to pull back when it snapped. Even if he did or even could get back up to power once he realized the problem I believe his hook was probably still snagging the broken wire. There was really nothing he could do but try and then bail when his plane went over the edge of the flight deck
Yeah if you miss you aren't getting the braking action from the cable at all and just end up doing a touch and go. If you grab the cable for a second or two like this you are still decelerating substantially even under full throttle, and end up moving too fast to stop but to slow to fly when the cable breaks and you run out of flight deck
for some reason I was thinking about this while driving back from work and agree...there wasn't much the pilot could do on this, it probably slowed him enough to think he was arresting and then , surprise! not
I had two uncles on the Saratoga during the first Gulf War. They told me that at the start of every cruise the skipper would remind them that at least one member of the crew was not coming back as that was the average rate of fatality due to accidents on a carrier at sea. He witnessed all sorts of crazy crap like dudes get crushed by the bombs they were trying to load (he was a bomb builder) and even showed me the video tape of the guy getting sucked into the jet engine (http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=41479) years before it made its way out into the world on documentaries and the internet.
I had an Uncle who served on a carrier during the Korean War. His famous "stupid death" story was a sailor who'd stick a plug of steel wool into a light socket as an emergency cigarette lighter. One day a lightbulb burned out, he must have thought it was turned off, and stuck the steel wool into a live socket. I bet they never told the guys family how he really died. Not the dumbest way to die in a carrier accident, but definitely a contender.