2nd hornet Hornet fire at a carrier in two weeks, this time monday April 11, 2011 at the Carl Vinson:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06zbOZId ... dded#at=38[/youtube]
Aircraft involved is most probably (164683/AA-311) an F/A-18C from VFA-113.
SAN DIEGO — A quick response on Monday by a crash-and-salvage team aboard the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson likely averted a catastrophe when a landing F/A-18C Hornet’s engine caught fire.
The incident happened while Vinson was underway in the Arabian Sea and as the single-seat, twin-engine F/A-18C with Strike Squadron 113 was doing a touch-and-go landing during a post-maintenance functional flight check, Vinson spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Erik Reynolds said Thursday.
The pilot, assigned to the “Stingers” based at Naval Air Station Lemoore, was not injured.
“We had an engine fire, and when [the jet] landed, the fire spread through to the other engine of the aircraft,” Reynolds said. “It was put out. At this point, we can’t speculate on what the cause was.”
The incident, which is under investigation, is the second engine fire on an F/A-18C Hornet aboard an aircraft carrier in less than three weeks.
On March 30, an engine on a Marine Corps F/A-18C exploded and caught fire shortly before being launched from the flight deck of the carrier John C. Stennis, injuring 11 people. The ship’s skipper told reporters the engine failure appeared to be caused by “internal” foreign object debris and said an investigation was underway. The pilot wasn’t injured.
Vinson and its Carrier Strike Group 1 arrived in the 5th Fleet region on Jan. 31 and, as of Thursday, its carrier air wing had completed 1,060 sorties in support of combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reynolds said.
“It’s a very demanding schedule,” Reynolds said, speaking from the ship by telephone as flight operations continued. “It’s constant and ongoing daily maintenance.”
The pilot made the touch-and-go about 11 a.m. local time when ship’s personnel noticed fire in one of the engines.
The concern of the fire spreading is “why we were so aggressive to applying” aqueous film forming foam, said Chief Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) Benjamin Bilyeu, the leading chief petty officer for the crash and salvage teams. “We didn’t want the fire to spread to the fuel tanks.”
The Hornet caught one of the arresting cables and landed. Within seconds, Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) 3rd Class Michael Flosi and the crash team with the ship’s V-1 air department rushed to the jet with their P-25 mobile firefighting truck, as the fire flared in both engines and flames spit out of the rear cowlings. Two hose teams shot firefighting foam into the intakes.
Their reactions were almost textbook, Flosi said, adding: “we run into a fire to put it out before it blows up.”
“The fire was out within 10 to 13 seconds,” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) 3rd Class Julian Berry. “We saved the integrity of the ship and we were safe.”
The incident and crash team’s response were captured on the ship’s flight deck video recording flight operations. (See the video at the top of this page.)
Lt. Carl Thomson, the ship’s air boatswain and crash-and-salvage officer, credits the quick work by crash teams who constantly sharpen their skills needed to react to fires and other mishaps.
“Most sailors go through deployments ... and they never really actively get to apply them,” Thomson said.
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