The Decidedly Unfriendly Skies

For those of you interested in spectacular or merely intriguing aviation videos, this is a pretty good site. Be warned, some of the videos involve crashes, but many are simply films of unusual flight events.

For instance, ever seen a 747 land sideways?

How about an aileron roll in a 707?

This is an interesting one, not just for the startling sight of a Navy crewman disappearing into the intake of a jet fighter (and surviving), but for the backstory that I learned from one of my Porsche buddies who was serving aboard that carrier at the time (internet clubs draw people in from allpoints of the compass and all walks of life). As he explains it, the first person seen in the video is a trainee checking the position of the launch bar in the shuttle of the catapult and then moving away from the aircraft. The next person on the scene is his trainer who attempted to double check the launch bar position. His mistake, with the engine at full throttle, was to walk straight toward the nose gear, which put him in front of the intake. He should have gone behind the intake and looked forward into the shuttle.

A couple of things saved the sailor's life. First, the nose cone on the front of the A-6 engines is about three feet long. When he was sucked in, his arm was extended over his head which caused him to get wedged between the nose cone and inner wall of the intake. Second, his helmet and life preserver were sucked off and destroyed the engine, causing the sparks and flames out the back of the engine that you see in the video. The pilot immediately cut power to that engine and the launch was aborted. The sailor apparently climbed back out of the engine on his own and fell to the deck; it happened so fast, nobody knew he was there.

The incident is now a Navy training video.