Will Kumley
Line Up and Wait
Usually, the pilot safe's the seat while on deck so its not as simple as just pulling the handle to eject. We had a pilot eject on deck once but it was not while taxiing.
During flight ops we hit a decent storm and flight ops were suspended for 15 minutes while we got through the storm. All jets parked as soon as landing was completed and sat with engines at idle waiting it out. 15 minutes turned into at least an hour if memory serves me right and we had to hot fuel the jets. While refueling one of the jets just forward of the island it was noticed that the fuel hose was ruptured and spraying a mist of JP-5 over the aircraft. Everyone scattered quickly but it was too late. A loud pop was heard as the fuel ignited and flames wrapped around the airframe with the student pilot inside. Thankfully a student pilot on the deck of a Carrier is no new pilot and he was actually close to the end of his training. Realizing he wasn't going to be able to open the canopy and get out he pulled the ejection handle but nothing happened. Seeing his seat was safe he re-armed the seat and pulled the ejection handle again. As advertised, the canopy blew off, the rocket motors on his seat launched him straight up at god knows what velocity and thankfully with some stroke of luck he cleared all of the spinning radars, antennas, and other miscellaneous items on the top of the island. As this all happened around midnight the pilot was concerned that if he went in the drink he would be difficult to spot on a moonless night and opted to steer his parachute as best he could to land back on the deck of the carrier. He just so happened to miss the rotor blades of the spinning H-60 helicopter on the fantail by what witnesses said was less than 3 feet and hit the deck with enough force to shatter his femur.
As the maintenance control Senior Chief, I was in maintenance control one deck below as all this happened. I heard the pop, knew it wasn't right and looked at the tv just in time to see an F/A-18 in flames and the camera blanked out. Immediately following, two alarms went off: fire on the flight deck and man overboard. Not knowing who's aircraft it was we immediately went into a man overboard muster in my squadron's ready room. Once complete I was missing about a dozen Sailors. Minutes seemed like hours, we heard on the radio that it was one of our jets. Reality started sinking in that I may have just lost some of the best people I've ever worked with. Turns out, they were all on deck pulling hoses and getting wet stuff on red stuff and doing what they were trained to do. About 30 minutes passed before I had a complete muster and could verify that all hands were onboard and somewhat safe. Nobody actually went over the side but the ship still called away the man overboard immediately as they were unsure from their view in the island.
It was honestly the scariest night of my life as a leader. After the dust settled I made my way to the Chief's mess where I got a bowl of cereal and sat, staring at it for three hours. The ship CMC saw me when I entered and when he returned three hours later he saw me still sitting in silence just staring at the bowl, we were personal friends and he knew I was rattled. In the end, I had one torched jet, 2 burned jets- both parked on either side of the aircraft that took the most damage, a pilot with a busted leg, a plane captain with a burned face and the ships company ABF (Fuelie) with a burned face. The ABF and pilot were flown off but recovered well. The plane captain rode the ship home with us and walked off a few days later.
