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Troubling news from the ocean today: Apparently the crew of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier has allowed an F-18 “Super Hornet” fighter jet to fall into the water, where it can no longer be used for its intended purpose of flying in the air, for the second time in a week:
The F/A-18F Super Hornet jet, worth about $67 million, went overboard after an unsuccessful attempt to slow it down upon landing on the USS Harry S. Truman, the Navy said in a statement. Both aviators aboard the jet safely ejected and were rescued at sea by helicopter with minor injuries, and no one aboard the warship’s flight deck was harmed, the service said.
That report is from the Washington Post, which notes that there were also no serious injuries sustained during the Truman’s prior instance of “airplane falling into ocean” one week ago. In that incident, a jet being towed to its hangar went overboard, the military says, because the carrier (if we can still call it that, given its checkered history of carrying aircraft) swerved to avoid Houthi rebel fire off the coast of Yemen in the Red Sea.
A Business Insider write-up of the incident briefly went viral on Wednesday night because its headline appeared to suggest a third jet had just been lost from the Truman; the article was accurate, but in mentioning a third plane, it was actually referring to an incident last December in which a Truman-deployed Super Hornet was accidentally shot down by the USS Gettysburg missile cruiser. (Both of the aviators aboard survived.) So, as far as that third one, we didn’t let it fall off the ship, we just shot it down ourselves.
In total, the cost of USS Truman Super Hornets lost since December ($67 million each) is nearly equal to the entire annual budget of the National Endowment for the Arts ($207 million). “The mishaps have the attention of senior U.S. military leaders, a defense official familiar with the discussion said Tuesday night,” the Post reports. Good to know.
In February, incredibly, the Truman was in the news because it ran into a cargo ship near the Suez Canal. Simply put, we may be talking about one of the worst-performing boats of all time.
Or maybe that’s unfair; maybe the Truman is being stalked by an undersea monster or ocean beast that keeps reaching its hideous tentacles out of the briny deep to grab airplanes.
Either way, deterrence theory calls for a swift counterattack against the ocean. Inaction only emboldens the Truman’s enemies, which in this case include gravity and potentially an octopus, and encourages further mischief. The best time to shoot a nuclear missile at the Great Barrier Reef in order to “show it who’s boss” was yesterday; the second-best time is now (1300 hours). We fight them (sharks) there so they don’t come here. Anchors aweigh!
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