An Oceana-based Super Hornet was severely damaged early this week when part of its main landing gear collapsed during an arrested landing in California.
No one was injured in the mishap, which the Navy initially has ruled a Class A - meaning the damage is estimated to be more than $1 million.
The F/A-18E, a single-seat model, was part of VFA-106, the fleet replacement squadron based in Virginia Beach. It was landing Monday at El Centro Naval Air Facility when the incident occurred.
The plane's tail hook caught the arresting wire as it landed, said spokesman Mike Maus of Naval Air Force Atlantic. However, during the plane's "roll out," or deceleration, the right main landing gear collapsed.
The pilot was able to climb out of the cockpit and walk away, Maus said. The plane suffered a collapsed main mount, as well as damage to the right wing and the fuselage around the engine intake.
The Navy is investigating the cause of the failure.
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EL CENTRO
El Centro is used for Strike Training. Out in the remote California desert, it has alot of open ranges for our pilots to get practical experience dropping both training and live air to ground ordinance. Arrested landings at that facility are not the norm. THe pilot probably recognized there was a landing gear issue before he even landed and decided it was safer to make an arrested landing.
Thank you for the clarification
Yea, there are no close live ordnance (Dare is suppose to be all dummy munition drops).
That scenario is probable and it does make sense our pilots even in the training squadrons, would need to drop a few live ones before they could move on to a Fleet Squadron.
Wonder why that plane was all the way over in California
when the Navy keeps telling us flying that far, or even flying down to Fla or flying to Pickett or AP Hill is bad on the airframes when it comes to flying to an OLF site? Wonder what training is needed that only California can do it? Why cant Oceana do it? Oceana does have that 12,000 feet runway, surely that thing has two sets of arresting gear for this training Oceana's pilots could be using. El Centro runway does not look like its over 10k feet. Granted it does not have the encroachment problem found around Oceana, but the Navy insists there is no encroachment concerns only capacity concerns.
"An Oceana-based Super Hornet was severely damaged early this week" in California.
why we fly that far
the whole reason the navy flies to California is simple . there are only 2 live bombing ranges in the united states and that's Fallon and El centro that's it. where else are they going to drop live ordnance.