A Most Dangerous Place

Imagine taking a stroll on a busy urban freeway during rush hour, wearing nothing more than a soft padded vest and flimsy helmet -- and it's your job to see and avoid all the traffic.

A more dangerous environment challenges the sailors who work the flight deck of an aircraft carrier for launch and recovery of jets. During high tempo operations, these men and women put in long hours in a tense and risky environment. The threats to their lives come from all directions, not the least of which are the jet engines spooling up all over the deck. "Head on a swivel," they are told. Be on constant lookout, because your life could be in danger from even a split second distraction.

The event depicted in this video occurred about a year before I walked on board USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT as an air wing flight surgeon. It became a standard training video across the Navy, a chilling example of what can go wrong, and how quickly it can happen:

Man Sucked Into Jet Engine

Midway through our deployment, we suffered a more tragic flight deck mishap than the A-6 event. The A-6 sailor survived. Ours did not.

During day operations in the Red Sea, a sailor walked along the deck edge behind an F-14 Tomcat just as it spooled up its engines to taxi to the launch area. The jet blast blew the sailor off the flight deck for a 60-foot free-fall to the water's surface.

"Man Overboard, Man Overboard," sounded immediately over the carrier's 1MC system. The medical teams mustered in the flight deck battle dressing station and in the main medical department, ready to do the trauma resuscitation for which all had trained. It was not going to happen.

The rescue helicopter located the sailor floating atop the water. A rescue swimmer dropped into the water, to hoist the unmoving body up to the helo. The swimmer could not tell if the victim was dead or just unconscious. Something went wrong in the process, so the crewman in the helo grabbed the sailor's float coat by the back to pull him into the aircraft. The victim's arms lifted up, and his body slid right out of the float coat and back into the sea, where it immediately sank. The aircrewman was left with the empty float coat in his hand.

The body was never recovered. We believed the sailor died on first impact with the water. Nevertheless--

On the brighter side -- if there is such a side to accidental death --  this mishap resulted in a redesign of the standard float coat, which now includes groin straps to prevent a body from slipping out. Too late for our sailor, but quite possibly has saved other lives.

Not all who go into harm's way risk death from bullets, IEDs, or missiles. Data shows that in all conflicts we lose more warriors from accidental injury than enemy action. Those victims are just as much our American heroes, losing life without warning or apparent reason. God bless them all.