Saturday, April 16, 2011

Flight Deck Fire

First, watch the video on Defense Tech.



I'm not going to address the reliability issue of the F/A-18s. That's outside my wheelhouse.

Note that the fire crews don't approach the burning jet from the rear. That's probably because there must have been at least 30 knots of relative wind over the flight deck, which might have increased if the Captain or OOD ordered up more speed to keep the flames blowing away from the flight crew. Spraying foam onto a fire is rather difficult if the wind is blowing in one's face.

You can also see that burning JP-5 dripped down into the catapult shuttle track.

The fire never reached the forward end of the jet, so the crew stayed with it. A flight-deck ejection might throw the crew over the side, which has its own risks.

Good work by the flight deck fire crews. That's what they practice for and it paid off.

(H/T)

3 comments:

Jimh. said...

It looked to me that the first responder was putting it down the intake, which would have kept air from reaching the fire from windward, and then the other two came in and cleared it up. We have an amazing navy...so long as they continue to be paid.

Frank Van Haste said...

Dear Miss Fit:

I've said it before and I'll say it again...NOBODY does damage control like the United States Navy. As true today as it was 70 years ago.

FVH

John said...

BRAVO ZULU to the DC folks