Word: nimitz
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When the shrieking Klaxon sounded general quarters, many of the Nimitz's 5,000 crewmen were asleep. Remembered one enlisted man: "They didn't say this wasn't a drill, but when the guy came over the p.a. system he was stuttering, and I knew then something was badly screwed up." Fire-fighting crews clambered across the deck and started laying down gallons of water and "purple K" foam, but to no immediate effect: the blaze had begun its own chain reaction...
...dozen other jets from the Nimitz that were airborne when the Prowler crashed got orders, as standard procedure, to land ashore. By 1 a.m., thanks to courageous work by the young Nimitz seamen, the fires were quelled, and the first of 13 corpses picked from the smoldering havoc; the 14th body was never found. With 48 men in sick bay, the casualties exceeded the capacities of the medical facilities. Medevac helicopters arrived at 4:30 a.m. and minutes later took off for Jacksonville with the 21 most seriously wounded crewmen. Then the reckoning of hardware destruction began: the incinerated Prowler...
Official inquiries into the cause of the crash could take as long as six months, and the investigators will lack some evidence in their search for explanations: hours after the accident, the EA-6B and the two unsalvageable F-14s were pushed overboard. Captain John Batzler, the Nimitz's commanding officer, was authorized to jettison the three irreparable aircraft by Vice Admiral George E.R. Kinnear, Commander of Naval Air Forces Atlantic, who flew to the Nimitz hours after the crash. The wrecked fighters still carried their loads of unexploded missiles and ammunition, which posed a danger to ship...
Although the sunken Prowler is irretrievable, there is a record of its crash: every landing on the Nimitz is videotaped. The responsibility for the accident may finally fall on the pilot. Did White do something wrong? Probably, in Batzler's opinion, though he cautions: "We're not certain." From his perspective on the bridge, the approaching Prowler looked "not in the right position" for a landing, yet "there was no early indication he should have been waved off." There are signs that the plane's crew tried to escape during their fatal career down the flight deck...
...crashed plane could have been an A-6 Intruder loaded with heavy ordnance. The ship's enormous elevator portal could have been open, making the ship's lower levels and hundreds more men vulnerable to the fireballs from above. As it turned out, the Nimitz, which cost $2 billion to buiid, sustained only superficial damage. The nuclear reactor -housed several steel-reinforced levels below-was never at risk...